The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of August 17, 2022

Silk Decorative Tunic Band with a Hunter

700s

Egypt or Syria, Umayyad period (661–750) or Abbasid period

(750–1258)

Silk: complementary weft-faced twill with inner warps (samit)

Overall: 27.3 x 6.7 cm (10 3/4 x 2 5/8 in.); Mounted: 34.9 x 14.3 cm (13 3/4 x 5 5/8 in.)

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund 1939.505

Location

116 Islamic

Description

This prestigious silk band displays a stylized
palmette leaf above a hunter who holds a sword
and a shield and pursues a lion and a rabbit.
Another fragment with Arabic script indicates
Islamic manufacture. Green and ivory silk wefts
(horizontal threads) dominate, interlaced by warps
(vertical threads) in a diagonal twill weave. A
second inner warp does not come to the surface.
Such compound structures were woven on large
looms with automatic pattern repetition, called
drawlooms.

Provenance
?–1939
(Adolf Loewi [1888–1977], Los Angeles, CA, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art,
1939–
The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
Citations
Los Angeles County Museum. 2000 Years of Silk Weaving: An Exhibition Sponsored by the Los Angeles County Museum in Collaboration with the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Detroit Institute of Arts. New York : E. Weyhe, 1944. no. 11
Weibel, Adèle Coulin. Two Thousand Years of Textiles; The Figured Textiles of Europe and the Near East. New York: Published for the Detroit Institute of Arts [by] Pantheon Books, 1952. no. 53, p. 91
Katzenberg, Dena S. Blue Traditions; Indigo Dyed Textiles and Related Cobalt Glazed Ceramics from the 17th Through the 19th Century. [Baltimore]: Baltimore Museum of Art, 1973.
Exhibition history

Masterpieces of the Weavers' Art. Hackley Art Gallery, Muskegon, MI (October 7-November 3, 1957).

Blue Traditions: Indigo Dyed Textiles and Related Glazed Ceramics from the 17th through the 19th Century. Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD (December 4-January 20, 1974).

2000 Years of Silk Weaving. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (March 18-April 16, 1944).

The Indigo Tradition in Textiles. The Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD (organizer) (December 2, 1973-January 20, 1974).

Byzantine Gallery 210 Rotation. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (November 2, 2001-October 15, 2002).

Source URL: https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1939.505