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
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.