Section of Silk Fabric with Falconers Amid Rose Bushes (c. 1675): Art, History and Details

Section of Silk Fabric with Falconers Amid Rose Bushes (c. 1675) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

Twill-weave fabrics were used to make garments, especially jackets, during the Safavid period. It was not until after the 1570s that Iranian textiles began to regularly feature the human figure as a decorative motif. Weavers drew from Persian paintings for their subject matter, such as the favorite princely pastime of falconing. Trained falcons were brought on royal hunts to locate and retrieve the prey; close relationships developed between the falcon and the falconer.

Object facts

• Title: Section of Silk Fabric with Falconers Amid Rose Bushes
• Date: c. 1675
• Culture: Iran, Safavid period (1501–1722)
• Type: Textile
• Technique: Silk and silver-metal thread: twill weave with complementary and discontinuous weft
• Dimensions: Overall: 47.7 x 48.3 cm (18 3/4 x 19 in.); Mounted: 58.4 x 58.4 cm (23 x 23 in.)
• Collection: T - Islamic
• Department: Textiles
• Accession number: 1949.467

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Shepherd, Dorothy G. "A Persian Textile of the Safavid Period." CMA Bulletin 37 (June 1950): 118-19.
• Shepherd, Dorothy G. "A Persian Textile of the Safavid Period." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 37, no. 6 (1950): 118-19.
• Mackie, Louise W. Symbols of Power: Luxury Textiles from Islamic Lands, 7th-21st Century. Cleveland; New Haven: Cleveland Museum of Art; Yale University Press, 2015.

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.