Medallions with confronting peacocks (1660–1955 (radiocarbon date, 95% probability)): Art, History and Details

Medallions with confronting peacocks (1660–1955 (radiocarbon date, 95% probability)) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

This textile preserves six ovals aligned in two vertical columns; the top two ovals are fragmentary. Columns are separated by two guard lines that are interrupted by smaller vertical almond-shaped motifs; these are tangent to the large ovals at the widest point. Each large oval, bordered by a band of floriated Kufic, has a central ogival medallion, also bordered with floriated Kufic, with palmettes at each end. The medallions are placed on a ground of white on white with small aligned circles. Interspaces between large ovals are filled with pairs of opposed palmette trees flanked at each end with confronting birds in flight.

Object facts

• Title: Medallions with confronting peacocks
• Date: 1660–1955 (radiocarbon date, 95% probability)
• Culture: Iran ?, in the style of the Buyid period (945–1055)
• Type: Textile
• Technique: Silk: lampas weave
• Dimensions: Overall: 59 x 57.4 cm (23 1/4 x 22 5/8 in.)
• Collection: T - Islamic
• Department: Textiles
• Accession number: 1968.73

Collection credit

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mallon

Further reading listed by the museum

• Lee, Sherman E. “The Year in Review for 1968.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art, vol. 56, no. 1, 1969, pp. 3–50.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1978. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1978.
• Blair, Sheila S., Jonathan M. Bloom, and Anne E. Wardwell. "Reevaluating the Date of the "Buyid" Silks by Epigraphic and Radiocarbon Analysis." Ars Orientalis 22 (1992): 1-41.

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.