Fragment with star pattern and griffins (950–1050): Art, History and Details

Fragment with star pattern and griffins (950–1050) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

This fragment's design consists of interlaced bands, bordered with inner band of foliate ornament, forming an eight-pointed star with center of floriated cross and flanked in four corner compartments by winged griffins. It was woven in green and white silk. The warp in green silk has two wefts, one of green silk and one of white silk floss for the design.

Object facts

• Title: Fragment with star pattern and griffins
• Date: 950–1050
• Culture: Iraq or Iran, Buyid period
• Type: Textile
• Technique: silk: plain weave variation with supplementary weft
• Dimensions: Overall: 40.3 x 30.5 cm (15 7/8 x 12 in.)
• Collection: T - Islamic
• Department: Textiles
• Accession number: 1941.292

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Underhill, Gertrude. "A Tenth-Century Byzantine Silk from Antioch." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 29, no. 1 (1942): 6-7.
• Los Angeles County Museum. 2000 Years of Silk Weaving: An Exhibition Sponsored by the Los Angeles County Museum in Collaboration with the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Detroit Institute of Arts. New York: E. Weyhe, 1944.
• Walters Art Gallery (Baltimore, Md.), and Dorothy Eugenia Miner. Early Christian and Byzantine Art, An Exhibition Held at the Baltimore Museum of Art, April 25-June 22 [1947]. Baltimore: Trustees of the Walters Art Gallery, 1947.

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.