Fragment with jewel-like silk (800s): Art, History and Details

Fragment with jewel-like silk (800s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

This fragment is brocaded in a jewel-toned silks: red, rose, turquoise, salmon pink, pale pink, golden tan, green, dark blue, and dark brown. Flat strips of gold foil were wound on tan silk strands to create gold thread adding to the luxuriousness of the brocade.

Object facts

• Title: Fragment with jewel-like silk
• Date: 800s
• Culture: Iraq, probably Baghdad
• Type: Textile
• Technique: Silk: plain weave, brocaded
• Dimensions: Overall: 17.1 x 12.7 cm (6 3/4 x 5 in.)
• Collection: Textiles
• Department: Textiles
• Accession number: 1950.526

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Kühnel, Ernst. "Abbasid Silks of the Ninth Century." Ars Orientalis 2 (1957): 367-71.
• Wilckens, Leonie von. Die textilen Künste: von der Spätantike bis um 1500. München: C.H. Beck, 1991.
• Baker, Patricia L. Islamic Textiles. London: British Museum Press, 1995.

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.