Royal Carpet with Silk and Metal Thread (1600–1625): Art, History and Details

Royal Carpet with Silk and Metal Thread (1600–1625) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

The Safavid dynasty was the greatest dynasty from Iran in the Islamic period. Similarly, woven textiles and carpets from this period are some of the best produced in the region. Royal workshops produced luxurious textiles, like this one, to furnish the royal court. Expertly woven silks were highly prized by the Iranian elite but were also produced for export to the European aristocracy.

Object facts

• Title: Royal Carpet with Silk and Metal Thread
• Date: 1600–1625
• Culture: Iran, Isfahan, Safavid period (1501-1722)
• Type: Carpet
• Technique: Cotton: warp; cotton and silk: wefts; silk: pile, asymmetrical knot; gilt- and silver-metal thread: brocaded
• Dimensions: Overall: 236.2 x 143.5 cm (93 x 56 1/2 in.)
• Collection: T - Islamic
• Department: Textiles
• Accession number: 1926.533

A detail from the museum

16th- and 17th-century Iranian carpets with silk and metal thread were mistakenly called "Polish," based on one displayed in the Polish exhibit at the Paris World Fair in 1878.

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Underhill, Gertrude and William M. Milliken. "A "Polish" Rug in the J. H. Wade Collection." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 14, no. 4 (1927): 54-56.
• Hall, Helen B. 1937. “Exhibition of Islamic Art, San Francisco, 1937.” Ars Islamica 4: 484–98.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1966. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1966.

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.