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.a

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

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

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.