Gold-patterned Silk with Falcons and Heraldry (1360–1400): Art, History and Details

Gold-patterned Silk with Falcons and Heraldry (1360–1400) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

Instead of international designs, this splendid gold-thread patterned silk displays a mixture of heraldic and falconry emblems. Pairs of falcons stand on a main d’aigle, a heraldic charge consisting of a bird’s wing and claw. They alternate with a panache, or plumes, from an ostrich with an ornamental interlacement at its base. Traditionally panaches were helmet or hat ornaments, but here is a heraldic crest. Although European motifs form the pattern, the dramatic energy of asymmetrical Chinese design persists.

Object facts

• Title: Gold-patterned Silk with Falcons and Heraldry
• Date: 1360–1400
• Culture: Italy, last third of 14th century
• Type: Textile
• Technique: Silk, gold thread; a combination of two weaves (lampas)
• Dimensions: Overall: 40.3 x 24.8 cm (15 7/8 x 9 3/4 in.); Mounted: 45.1 x 28.6 cm (17 3/4 x 11 1/4 in.)
• Collection: Textiles
• Department: Textiles
• Accession number: 1943.283

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• 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. 1944.
• Weibel, Adèle Coulin. Two Thousand Years of Textiles; The Figured Textiles of Europe and the Near East. New York: Published for the Detroit Institute of Arts [by] Pantheon Books, 1952.
• Wardwell, Anne E. "Flight of the Phoenix: Crosscurrents in Late Thirteenth- to Fourteenth-Century Silk Patterns and Motifs." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 74, no. 1 (1987): 2-35.

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.