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Textile Fragment

7th Century - 10th Century (made)
Artist/Maker
Unknown (maker)
Place of origin
Egypt (made)
Akhmim (made)

Three roundels of woven silk in purple and buff, with the same pattern as on tunic no. 820-1903.
Similar roundels are 2066-1900 and 355-1887

Object details

Categories
Archaeology
Textiles
Africa
Object type
Textile fragment
Materials and techniques
Silk samite
Silk (Textile)
Weaving
Brief description
Textile fragment, roundel from a tunic, samite (weft-faced compound twill) in brown and buff silk, Egypt, probably Akhmim, 7th - 10th Century
Physical description
Roundel from a tunic, in bichrome samite (weft-faced compound twill) woven in red-brown and cream/buff silks. At the centre is a symmetrically-composed floral design of a flowering plant, with two pairs of spade-shaped leaves. The roundel has a circular border (approximately 20mm wide), with an abstracted wave-like floral design.
Dimensions
  • Diameter: 8in
Object history
Roundels such as this would have been cut from larger sheets with multiple rows of medallions. For an intact sheet of this sort see Dumbarton Oaks BZ.1977.2.
Summary
Three roundels of woven silk in purple and buff, with the same pattern as on tunic no. 820-1903.
Similar roundels are 2066-1900 and 355-1887
Bibliographic references
  • A similar piece to this, in the Metropolitan Museum, is depicted in H.C. Evans and B. Ratliff, Byzantium and Islam: Age of Transition 7th-9th Century (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2012): 148. There it is described as "roundel with Central Asian style 'candelabra tree'. 7th-9th century."
  • For the dating of the Abegg-Stiftung pieces see S. Schrenk, Textilien des mittelmeerraumes aus spatantiker bis fruhislamischer zeit (Riggisberg: Abegg-Stiftung, 2004), 321-323. The V&A's piece is similar to both cat. no's 147 and 148: No. 147 C14 dated to AD793-995 (100% probability) and no. 148 C14 dated to AD664-827 (93.3% probability). Further similar examples in Antwerp (657/DM 33D and 151/SM 33C) have also been carbon dated to between the 7th - 10th Centuries; see A. De Moor, "Radiocarbon dating of ancient textiles: State of research", in A. de Moor and C. Fluck, Methods of Dating Ancient Textiles of the 1st Millennium AD from Egypt and Neighbouring Countries: Proceedings of the 4th Meeting of the Study Group “Textiles from the Nile Valley" (Tielt, 2007), 102-3, Figs. 7-8. Their examples were dated to 650-948 AD (95%).
  • Two colour silks like the present example have often been attributed to Akhmim; see A. De Moor, S. Schrenk, and C. Verhecken-Lammens, “New Research on the So-Called Akhmim Silks,” in S. Schrenk, Textiles in situ: Their Find Spots in Egypt and Neighbouring Countries in the First Millennium CE (Riggisberg, 2006), 85–94.
Collection
Middle East Section
Accession number
2180-1900

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Record createdJune 24, 2009
Record URL
https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O359761/textile-fragment-unknown/
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