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Unknown Maker, Persian

Patka (Sash)

Maker

Unknown Maker, Persian

Culture

Persian

Title

Patka (Sash)

Year

1840-1875

Medium

  • Silk-wrapped and gold-wrapped thread compound weave,
  • continuous and discontinuous supplementary weft patterning

Materials/Techniques

Techniques

  • Silk-wrapped and gold-wrapped thread compound weave,
  • continuous and discontinuous supplementary weft patterning

Materials

silk, metallic yarn

Geography

Place Made: India

Dimensions

325.1 x 67.9 cm (128 x 26 3/4 inches)

Credit / Object Number

Credit

Bequest of Miss Lucy T. Aldrich

Object Number

55.529

Type

  • Costume Accessories

Publications

  • Journal

Glimpses of Grandeur: Courtly Arts of the Later Islamic Empires

Exhibition History

Woven with Silk
Rockefeller Asian Textiles
Jun 10, 2014 – Mar 08, 2015

Label copy

The small floral sprays dancing across the interior of this Persian sash closely approximate those adorning the adjacent Indian woman’s sari and man’s robe. The designs and the use of gold thread illustrate the fluid exchange between Indian Mughal and Persian court cultures through the 19th century. Royal Indian workshops supported traditional Persian craftsmanship, with Mughal rulers of northern India importing not only Persian court artisans for their own royal weaving workshops but motifs such as the Persian flowering tree, or buta. Over centuries, this realistic floral motif became the stylized, teardrop-shaped mass of swirling vegetation known in Europe as paisley.

Asian Textiles and the Grammar of Ornament
Design in the Victorian Age
Nov 16, 2007 – Aug 03, 2008

Label copy

The visual relationship is readily apparent between the floral sprays gracing this Mughal sash and those depicted on Jones’s plate, taken from a Persian manufacturer’s pattern book at the South Kensington Museum, London. Having spent time in Persia’s courts, the first Muslim conquerors brought with them to India a preference for what Jones describes as the “great simplicity and ingenuity displayed in the conventional rendering of natural flowers” in Persian art. At the hands of India’s master weavers and designers, the floral spray developed over the course of the 19th century into a larger flowering plant motif called a buta (note the Indian skirt on view here); and then, responding to the European market, into the well-known paisley motif, seen as a teardrop-shaped mass of swirling vegetation in the large shawl in this gallery.

Glimpses of Grandeur
Courtly Arts of the Later Islamic Empires
Sep 24, 1999 – Dec 26, 1999

Image use

The images on this website can enable discovery and collaboration and support new scholarship, and we encourage their use.

Public Domain This object is in the Public Domain and available under a CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication

Tombstone

Unknown Maker, Persian
Patka (Sash), 1840-1875
Silk-wrapped and gold-wrapped thread compound weave; continuous and discontinuous supplementary weft patterning
325.1 x 67.9 cm (128 x 26 3/4 inches)
Bequest of Miss Lucy T. Aldrich 55.529

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Feedback

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