Cushion cover

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.

Historical period(s)
Ottoman period, ca. 1600
Medium
Compound satin and velvet
Dimensions
H x W: 175 x 128.5 cm (68 7/8 x 50 9/16 in)
Geography
Turkey
Credit Line
Purchase — Charles Lang Freer Endowment
Collection
Freer Gallery of Art
Accession Number
F1998.306
On View Location
Currently not on view
Classification(s)
Costume and Textile, Furniture and Furnishing
Type

Cushion cover

Keywords
cut velvet, Ottoman period (1307 - 1922), Turkey, voided velvet, weft patterning
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.

Previous Owner(s) and Custodian(s)

Momtaz Islamic Art

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.

Collection Area(s)
Arts of the Islamic World
Web Resources
Google Cultural Institute
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