Samite fragment with hunters (800s): Art, History and Details

Samite fragment with hunters (800s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

This silk depicts pairs of horsemen hunting ibexes (mountain goats). The ibexes and two pairs of rabbits originally filled the spaces between rows of large floral roundels. Portions of the roundels are preserved at the top and bottom. Although the design was greatly influenced by silks from Egypt and Syria, the abstract style is typically Sogdian, from an area in Central Asia. This is one of many Sogdian silks that were traded to Europe and eventually preserved in church treasuries.

Object facts

• Title: Samite fragment with hunters
• Date: 800s
• Culture: Eastern Iran or Central Asia
• Type: Textile
• Technique: Silk: compound twill
• Dimensions: Overall: 22 x 41.8 cm (8 11/16 x 16 7/16 in.); Mounted: 40 x 61 cm (15 3/4 x 24 in.)
• Collection: Textiles
• Department: Textiles
• Accession number: 1974.98

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Lee, Sherman E. “The Year in Review for 1974.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art, vol. 62, no. 3, 1975, pp. 62–102.
• Müller-Christensen, Sigrid, Mechthild Flury-Lemberg, and Karen Stolleis. Documenta textilia: Festschrift für Sigrid Müller-Christensen. München: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 1981.
• Shepherd, Dorothy G. “Zandaniji Revisited.” In Documenta textilia: Festschrift für Sigrid Müller-Christensen. Müller-Christensen, Sigrid, Mechthild Flury-Lemberg, and Karen Stolleis, editors. München: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 1981.

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.