Textile Length with Design of Stylized Carnationssecond half of 16th century

On view:

Geffen Galleries, Luxury Arts of the Ottoman Empire

Title: Textile Length with Design of Stylized Carnations
Place Made: Turkey
Date Made: second half of 16th century
Medium: Cut and voided silk velvet on metallic ground
Dimensions: Length: 65 in. (165.10 cm) Width: 25 1/4 in. (64.14 cm)
Credit Line: Mr. and Mrs. Allan C. Balch Collection
Accession Number: M.45.3.126
Classification: Textiles
Collecting Area: Costume and Textiles
Curatorial Notes: In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the Ottoman city of Bursa was a major hub of the international silk trade and a center of fine silk weaving, supplying palace workshops in the capital, Istanbul, with bolts of cloth to be tailored into royal garments and upholsteries. Rarely used for clothing, silk velvets such as this example were probably made as furnishing fabrics.

Its repeat pattern of polylobed carnation-shaped medallions filled with smaller carnations and tulips, as well as its color scheme of red, cream, and pistachio-green, suggest a date in the second half of the sixteenth century. By the seventeenth century, court commissions began to dwindle, and Bursa’s weavers increasingly produced fabrics for export to Europe, where they were made into ecclesiastical and royal garments or decorative furnishings.

2024

On view:

Geffen Galleries, Luxury Arts of the Ottoman Empire

Title: Textile Length with Design of Stylized Carnations
Place Made: Turkey
Date Made: second half of 16th century
Medium: Cut and voided silk velvet on metallic ground
Dimensions: Length: 65 in. (165.10 cm) Width: 25 1/4 in. (64.14 cm)
Credit Line: Mr. and Mrs. Allan C. Balch Collection
Accession Number: M.45.3.126
Classification: Textiles
Collecting Area: Costume and Textiles
Curatorial Notes: In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the Ottoman city of Bursa was a major hub of the international silk trade and a center of fine silk weaving, supplying palace workshops in the capital, Istanbul, with bolts of cloth to be tailored into royal garments and upholsteries. Rarely used for clothing, silk velvets such as this example were probably made as furnishing fabrics.

Its repeat pattern of polylobed carnation-shaped medallions filled with smaller carnations and tulips, as well as its color scheme of red, cream, and pistachio-green, suggest a date in the second half of the sixteenth century. By the seventeenth century, court commissions began to dwindle, and Bursa’s weavers increasingly produced fabrics for export to Europe, where they were made into ecclesiastical and royal garments or decorative furnishings.

2024