Woolen carpet with millefleurs decoration (early 1600s): Art, History and Details

Woolen carpet with millefleurs decoration (early 1600s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

Pashmina, a very fine fiber made from the fleece of Himalayan goats, was a material highly valued at the Mughal courts. Luxury rugs functioned in several ways, including as insulators for palatial and ceremonial spaces and as framing devices for important figures. In a biography of the Mughal emperor Akbar (reigned 1556–1605), called the Ain-i-Akbari, the court historian Abu’l Fazl (1551–1602) poetically wrote that such textiles created “a beautiful flowerbed.” The description is apt, as this carpet features an impressively symmetrical floral design known as millefleurs, or “thousand flowers” in French. Viewing several of these carpets and other hangings at once would have been visually impressive for court attendees.

Object facts

• Title: Woolen carpet with millefleurs decoration
• Date: early 1600s
• Culture: India, Kashmir
• Type: Carpet
• Technique: Pashmina (wool): asymmetrical knot
• Dimensions: Average: 292.7 x 248.9 cm (115 1/4 x 98 in.)
• Collection: Textiles
• Department: Textiles
• Accession number: 1936.17

A detail from the museum

The border contrasts with the central design, putting red flowers against a white background.

Collection credit

Dudley P. Allen Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Comstock, Helen. “An Indo-Persian Carpet for the Cleveland Museum.” The Connoisseur XCVIII (July 1936):
• Comstock, Helen. “An Indo-Persian Carpet for the Cleveland Museum.” The Connoisseur XCVIII (July 1936):
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art Handbook. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1958.

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.