embroidered, 1600s, Turkish

Cover, silk satin embroidered with silk in atma and with couched metal threads for the outlines.The ground is red and is decorated with offsets bands of medallions. Each lobed medallion contains a spiky flower with one leaf and is edged with three borders: the first is spiky the second is lobed and the outer one is very spiky and contains small flowers on stems.
The colours vary by row: in one row all the motif are identical and from the outer border are blue, white, green and yellow with a gold flower in the centre. In othe rows the colours of the motifs alternate: (i) white, gold, yellow, green with a white central flower and (ii) yellow, gold, blue and white with a gold central flower.
There is a narrow border around the cover with trilobed motifs in a sequence of white, blue and yellow.
Made from two widths joined before being embroidered.

The oldest Ottoman embroideries in the V&A date from the 16th and 17th centuries. They are either whole covers and wall hangings or fragments of them. They are decorated with large-scale, bold designs in red, blue, green and yellow, with some white and black. The oldest designs were based on the intersecting lines of a lattice which enclosed oval compartments filled with flowers. In this example you can only see the compartments. The undecorated ground forms the lattice.

588-1890