Cloth with Border of Crowned Double-Headed Eagles with Various Emblems, Birds, and Other Animals (1800s): Art, History and Details

Cloth with Border of Crowned Double-Headed Eagles with Various Emblems, Birds, and Other Animals (1800s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

A range of techniques were used to create textural variation in this lace cloth: buratto, bobbin, and crochet. Figural motifs appear within the inserted buratto bands. Different birds, with crosses visible on their chests, crowned double-headed eagles, and feline figures facing a vessel may allude to the heraldic symbols of a particular family.

Object facts

• Title: Cloth with Border of Crowned Double-Headed Eagles with Various Emblems, Birds, and Other Animals
• Date: 1800s
• Culture: Italy
• Type: Lace
• Technique: Bleached linen (est.): needle lace, burato (twined ground and darned in two directions), bobbin lace insert and edging, and crochet insert
• Dimensions: Overall: 62.4 x 132.3 cm (24 9/16 x 52 1/16 in.)
• Collection: T - Lace
• Department: Textiles
• Accession number: 1933.315

A detail from the museum

This cloth was given to the museum by Louise Tifft Brown, a native Clevelander who became an expert in lace while living in Venice for 35 years.

Collection credit

Bequest of Louise Tifft Brown

Further reading listed by the museum

• Underhill, Gertrude. "Louise Tifft Brown Bequest of Lace." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 20, no. 10 (1933): 157-59.
• Ricci, Elisa. Old Italian Lace. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1913.
• Cooper-Hewitt Museum, and Milton Sonday. Lace: In the Collection of the Cooper-Hewitt Museum, the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Design. 1982.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.