Fragment (1300s): Art, History and Details

Fragment (1300s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

On this textile fragment, a pair of phoenixes, affronted and nonregardant, flanking a floral motif are framed in an ogive formed by a vine with trifoliate leaves. This, in turn, is framed with a scrolling vine with leaves and pairs of small birds. The design is in Cyprian gold on a coral ground.

Object facts

• Title: Fragment
• Date: 1300s
• Culture: Iran or Iraq ?, Mongol period, 14th century
• Type: Textile
• Technique: Silk and gold thread; lampas
• Dimensions: Overall: 26.7 x 14 cm (10 1/2 x 5 1/2 in.)
• Collection: T - Islamic
• Department: Textiles
• Accession number: 1945.34

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Wardwell, Anne E. “Flight of the Phoenix: Crosscurrents in Late Thirteenth- to Fourteenth-Century Silk Patterns and Motifs.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 74, no. 1 (January 1987): 2–35.
• Indictor, Norman, Robert J. (Robert John) Koestler, Christopher Blair, and Anne E. Wardwell. “The Evaluation of Metal Wrappings from Medieval Textiles Using Scanning Electron Microscopy-Energy Dispersive x-Ray Spectrometry.” Textile History 19 (1). 1988.

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.