Fragment (before 1975): Art, History and Details

Fragment (before 1975) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

This silk was originally reported to be one of several fragments from garments, shroud, and tomb covers unearthed during the early 1900s at Bibi Shahr Banu outside the ancient city of Rayy, a few miles from Tehran. The fragment preserves a beginning (or finishing) edge at the bottom and a small portion of selvage along the left edge. The exceptionally beautiful design of this silk is filled with ornament. Even the spaces between the roundels containing birds and palmette trees and the octagons with inscriptions enclosing floral devices are ornamented with an intricate geometric pattern. Islamic art is, above all, decorative in accordance with Muhammed's dislike of representing living forms. In Iran, floral and animal motifs never ceased to be represented even after the Islamic invasion, but they were depicted in a highly ornamental fashion as seen here.

Object facts

• Title: Fragment
• Date: before 1975
• Culture: Iran or Iraq, in the style of the Buyid period (945–1055) or Seljuq period (1037–1194)
• Type: Textile
• Technique: Silk: lampas weave
• Dimensions: Overall: 38.5 x 67 cm (15 3/16 x 26 3/8 in.)
• Collection: T - Islamic
• Department: Textiles
• Accession number: 1975.38

Collection credit

Gift of The Textile Arts Club and Andrew R. and Martha Holden Jennings Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Lee, Sherman E. “The Year in Review for 1975.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art, vol. 63, no. 2, 1976, pp. 31–71.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1978. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1978.
• Wardwell, Anne E. Material Matters: Fifty Years of Gifts from the Textile Arts Club, 1934-1984: [Exhibition] 21 November-30 December 1984, the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland: The Museum, 1984.

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.