Textile with Diamonds (1000s): Art, History and Details

Textile with Diamonds (1000s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

Few Central Asian luxury silks dating from the 900s–1000s have survived. Here the cotton wefts, together with thin, widely spaced silk warps, identify this example as Central Asian. Its date has been determined by comparing it with two related textiles that are securely dated. At this time Chinese silks with small-scale diamond patterns were usually reserved for undergarments or linings. The use of silver thread for the tiny diamonds in this example, however, may indicate that in Central Asia the design had greater importance. Over time, this textile made its way to Europe, where it was preserved in a church treasury. Because such textiles were expensive, rare, and sometimes associated with saints, they were highly valued regardless of their condition.

Object facts

• Title: Textile with Diamonds
• Date: 1000s
• Culture: Central Asia
• Type: Textile
• Technique: silk, cotton, and silver thread: tabby with supplementary weft
• Dimensions: Overall: 51.5 x 30.3 cm (20 1/4 x 11 15/16 in.)
• Collection: Textiles
• Department: Textiles
• Accession number: 1993.139

A detail from the museum

A complete selvage is preserved along one side of the fragment.

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• “1993 Annual Report.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 81, no. 6 (July 1994): 143–218.
• Watt, James C. Y., Anne E. Wardwell, and Morris Rossabi. When silk was gold: Central Asian and Chinese textiles. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art in cooperation with the Cleveland Museum of Art: Distributed by H.N. Abrams, 1997.

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.