Scarf (1800s): Art, History and Details

Scarf (1800s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

This woven linen textile is embroidered with a cascading pattern of dusty pink, mauve, and navy blue flowers. The embroiderer created this design with dyed silk thread, outlining the shapes in black and then filling in the designs with dense stitches. Textiles with this composition were made across the Mediterranean Sea in the 1800s, and were used as scarves or towels.

Object facts

• Title: Scarf
• Date: 1800s
• Culture: Africa, North Africa, Algeria, Algerian embroiderer
• Type: Embroidery
• Technique: Linen, silk, dye
• Dimensions: Overall: 173.4 x 46 cm (68 1/4 x 18 1/8 in.)
• Collection: T - Islamic
• Department: Textiles
• Accession number: 1921.920

A detail from the museum

This example was displayed in one of the CMA’s earliest exhibitions, 1923’s Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Oriental Embroideries in 1923.

Collection credit

Gift of Mrs. Charles William Wason

Further reading listed by the museum

• "Accessions." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 8, no. 9 (1921): 138-41.
• G. U. [Gertrude Underhill]. “An Exhibition of Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Oriental Embroideries.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 10, no. 9 (1923).

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.