Wall cover with flora, peacocks, and portrait medallions (1800s): Art, History and Details

Wall cover with flora, peacocks, and portrait medallions (1800s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

The European fashion of installing Chinese export silks with painted decoration as luxurious wall coverings may have inspired this exceptional Iranian silk. European engravings, which had flooded the Iranian market by the 19th century, most likely inspired the pattern. This rare silk fabric with painted figural and foliate decoration may have been a luxurious wall covering in a palace or grand mansion in the city of Kashan where mural paintings display similar 19th-century designs. Glistening silver pigment originally formed the palmette-leaf compartment outlines (now mostly deep yellow) that display colorful blossoming plants enlivened with now tarnished silver peacocks. At their junctures, portrait medallions of Iranian princesses are distinctly Qajar in attire and style, as are the composite blossoming plants.

Object facts

• Title: Wall cover with flora, peacocks, and portrait medallions
• Date: 1800s
• Culture: Iran, Qajar period (1779-1925)
• Type: Textile
• Technique: taffeta, hand-painted, block-printed: silk and pigments
• Dimensions: Overall: 82.6 x 194.3 cm (32 1/2 x 76 1/2 in.)
• Collection: T - Islamic
• Department: Textiles
• Accession number: 1916.1483

Collection credit

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. J. H. Wade

Further reading listed by the museum

• Baker, Patricia L. Islamic Textiles. London: British Museum Press, 1995.
• 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.