Cushion cover

Object Details

• Description

  Two color velvet (primarily red with details in light blue) with silver and gold brocade, decorated with a repeating fan-shaped palmette motif. An interior border within the design suggests that this textile was originally intended as a cushion cover. In its present state, it consists of two rectangular panels sewn together vertically, tacked to a linen backing material and attached to a wood stretcher.

  The technical details fit the description of a chatma, (1) a Turkish velvet in a raised design with metallic thread. The white satin weave, warp-faced ground has a fine silk warp and a thicker weft, likely to be cotton. (2) The supplemental weave consists of velvet, which is cut and voided, and silver and gold brocade, which has white and yellow silk weft threads respectively, each wrapped with silver foil.

• Label

  Textiles have played a central role in the economic, cultural, and artistic life of the Islamic world. They were not only fashioned into sumptuous garments, furnishings, or "movable architecture" such as tents, but were also exchanged as gifts, taken as booty, and bestowed as tokens of honor.

  One of the richest textile traditions in the Islamic world flourished in sixteenth-and seventeenth-century Ottoman Turkey. Ottoman weavers particularly excelled in producing a type of velvet, referred to as catma or velvet brocade, associated primarily with the city of Bursa, one of the principal Ottoman production centers.

  This unusually large catma is made up of two loom widths and probably served as a floor-cushion cover. Dazzling to the eye and sumptuous to the touch, the crimson pile is combined with gold and silver designs made up of yellow-and ivory-colored silk threads that are wrapped in silver thread. The elegant floral motifs are typical of seventeenth-century Ottoman art and were adapted to a variety of surfaces, lending the arts a distinct visual unity.

• Provenance

  From 1940s to 1976

  Collection in England, from the 1940s

  1976

  Collection in Switzerland, in 1976

  To 1998

  Momtaz Islamic Art, London, to 1998

  From 1998

  Freer Gallery of Art, purchased from Momtaz Islamic Art in 1998

  Notes:

  [1] According to Curatorial Note 3 in the object record

  [2] See note 1.

• Collection

  Freer Gallery of Art Collection

• Exhibition History

  Engaging the Senses (October 14, 2017 - ongoing)

  Arts of the Islamic World (May 3, 1998 to January 3, 2016)

• Previous custodian or owner

  Momtaz Islamic Art (established 1977)

• Origin

  Turkey

• Credit Line

  Purchase — Charles Lang Freer Endowment

• Type

  Costume and Textile

• Restrictions and Rights

  Usage Conditions Apply

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Keep Exploring

• Related Resources

  collections.si.edu

• Date

  1590s, 1600s

• Name

  Momtaz, Irene

• Topic

  Art, Ottoman period (1307 - 1922), Arts of the Islamic World, Cut velvet, Brocading, Weft patterning

• Culture

  Muslims, Turks

• Object Type

  Costume, Textiles