Fragment with Octagons and Four-Pointed Stars (before 1949): Art, History and Details

Fragment with Octagons and Four-Pointed Stars (before 1949) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

The design consists of aligned large-scale octagons and four-pointed star-shaped interspaces filled with leafy scrolls. Each octagon encloses pairs of regardant gazelles and non-regardant rabbits in mirror image against a foliate background, patterned in white on a light pinkish-tan ground. Framing the octagon is a Kufic inscription repeated in orthograde and retrograde around the central design.

Object facts

• Title: Fragment with Octagons and Four-Pointed Stars
• Date: before 1949
• Culture: Iran or Iraq, in the style of the Seljuq period (1037–1194)
• Type: Textile
• Technique: Silk: lampas weave
• Dimensions: Overall: 25.5 x 20.5 cm (10 1/16 x 8 1/16 in.)
• Collection: T - Islamic
• Department: Textiles
• Accession number: 1949.165

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Shepherd, Dorothy G. “Two Seljuk Silks from Raiy.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art, vol. 37, no. 1, 1950, pp. 16–12.
• Schmidt, Heinrich Jakob. Alte Seidenstoffe; ein Handbuch für Sammler und Liebhaber. Braunschweig: Klinkhardt & Biermann, 1958.

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.