Hanging fragment with boar head (600s–early 700s): Art, History and Details

Hanging fragment with boar head (600s–early 700s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

This fragment preserves parts of two distinct designs. In the lower section, a boar's head is framed by a pearl roundel; to left and right are fragments of two other roundels, and in the spandrels are segments of stylized flowers. In the field above are four feet of what must have been a rather large-scale horse standing in a meadow of flowers of which only fragments remain. A fifth hoof, turned in the opposite direction, indicates that originally the composition included a pair of horses addorsed. A double row of pearls occupies the spaces beneath the horses' feet, and a narrow plain band separates this field from the one below.

Object facts

• Title: Hanging fragment with boar head
• Date: 600s–early 700s
• Culture: Iran
• Type: Textile
• Technique: Wool and linen: tapestry weave
• Dimensions: Overall: 21 x 25.2 cm (8 1/4 x 9 15/16 in.)
• Collection: T - Islamic
• Department: Textiles
• Accession number: 1950.509

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Erdmann, Kurt. "Eberdarstellung und Ebersymbolik in Iran". Bonner Jahrbücher Des Rheinischen Landesmuseums in Bonn. 1942
• Breeskin, Adelyn Dohme and Charles Crehore Cunningham. 2000 Years of Tapestry Weaving: A Loan Exhibition: Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Dec. 7, 1951 to Jan. 27, 1952; the Baltimore Museum of Art, Feb. 27, 1952 to Mar. 25, 1952. Hartford, CT: Wardsworth Atheneum, 1951.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art Handbook. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 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.