Part of a Skirt (Ghaghara) (early 1800s): Art, History and Details

Part of a Skirt (Ghaghara) (early 1800s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

Brightly colored floral vine patterns were embroidered using fine chain stitches. Since there are continuous, unbroken lines of stitches on the back side of the cloth, they were created using a hooked awl, which is a much faster process than embroidering with a straight needle. This type of embroidery is known as ari work, which flourished in Gujarat during the 19th century.

Object facts

• Title: Part of a Skirt (Ghaghara)
• Date: early 1800s
• Culture: Western India, Gujarat, possibly Kutch
• Type: Embroidery
• Technique: silk satin embroidered with silk in "ari" chain stitch
• Dimensions: Overall: 83.8 x 35.9 cm (33 x 14 1/8 in.)
• Collection: Textiles
• Department: Textiles
• Accession number: 1925.794

A detail from the museum

The renowned art historian A. K. Coomaraswamy (1877–1947) gave another section of this skirt to the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, UK (IM.108-1912).

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Fotheringham, Avalon. The Indian Textile Sourcebook. 2019.

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.