Cloth with Winged and Two-Tailed Animals (1600s-1700s): Art, History and Details

Cloth with Winged and Two-Tailed Animals (1600s-1700s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

Strange two-tailed animals accompanied by birds appear on the filet/lacis lace. The compact pattern repeats horizontally, with inserted bands of two-tailed animals confronting birds. The bird motif is also depicted alongside a flower motif on the outer filet/lacis border.

Object facts

• Title: Cloth with Winged and Two-Tailed Animals
• Date: 1600s-1700s
• Culture: Italy
• Type: Lace
• Technique: Bleached plain weave linen (est.): needle lace, filet/lacis (knotted ground and darned in two directions) and bobbin lace edging
• Dimensions: Overall: 88.3 x 137.5 cm (34 3/4 x 54 1/8 in.)
• Collection: T - Lace
• Department: Textiles
• Accession number: 1933.303

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.

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.