Star and Cross Pattern from a Tomb Cover(?) (800s–900s): Art, History and Details

Star and Cross Pattern from a Tomb Cover(?) (800s–900s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

This fragment is one of several that may have come from a tomb in the Caucasus (the region between the Black and Caspian seas). The design displays rows of eight-pointed stars, here with a rooster on a blue ground, alternating with striped pointed crosses.

Object facts

• Title: Star and Cross Pattern from a Tomb Cover(?)
• Date: 800s–900s
• Culture: Byzantium, Islamic or Byzantine periods, 9th -10th Century
• Type: Textile
• Technique: complementary weft-faced plain weave with inner warps (samit); silk
• Dimensions: Overall: 8.5 x 24.1 cm (3 3/8 x 9 1/2 in.); Mounted: 15.2 x 30.5 cm (6 x 12 in.)
• Collection: Textiles
• Department: Textiles
• Accession number: 1977.17

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Shepherd, Dorothy G.. “Medieval Persian Silks in Fact and Fancy (A refutation of the Riggisberg report).” Bulletin de liaison du CIETA (Lyon), no. 39-40 (1974) pp. 1–239.
• Lee, Sherman E. “The Year in Review for 1977.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 65, no. 1 (January 1978): 2–42.

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.