Silk Decorative Tunic Band with a Hunter
Unknown Artist
700s
Medium
Silk: complementary weft-faced twill with inner warps (samit)
Dimensions
27.3 × 6.7 cm · mounted: 34.9 × 14.3 cm
Classification
Textile
Department
Textiles
Museum
Cleveland Museum of Art
Credit
Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund
Accession Number
1939.505
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
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.