| Description |
“Band fragment from al-Faiyūm. One edge of this dark pink band has a dark blue zigzag border. Filler motifs are of two types, cream-colored rectangles placed on diagonals slanting in opposite directions and angular, dull yellow birds with black spots and one black bird with yellow spots. The rectangles are ornamented with motifs resembling birds with pink bodies and large yellow beaks. Spaces around the principal motifs are filled with dots and eight-petaled rosettes. The material is wool, woven in tapestry on two-ply Z-twist warp, 6 x 64 [warp : weft per square cm]. A surviving portion of selvedge shows that it was formed of double-paired [S-twist] wefts. Ninth or tenth century. Related examples: Brooklyn, Brooklyn Museum of Art acc. no. 38.754 (Thompson 1971:80, no. 35); Paris, Louvre 836 (Du Bourguet 1964:286, no. I F 105). Remarks: al-Faiyūm is the modern name of Piom, more anciently, Arsinoë. In the Coptic period it was an important weaving center. This textile was anciently cut and sewn together so as to form either a gamma, a common form of tunic ornament, or a textile edging. A piece in similar style is in Brooklyn (see above). About it Thompson states, ‘Examples closely related in style to this textile are preserved with woven Arabic inscriptions datable to the ninth to tenth century’ (Thompson 1971:80). [This] piece is undoubtedly of the same date. [Regarding textiles in this group, DL Carroll # 41-72 (CAS 0389-2382, -2384, -2389, -2390, -2391, -2392, -2393, -2396, -2399, -2401, -2405, -2409, -2410, -2411, -2414, -2415, -2416, -2417, -2419, -2420, -2422, -2423, -2424, -2427, -2434, -2435, -2436, -2453, -2454, -2457, -2579, -2580, -2581, -2582, -2599):] After the Arab conquest in the mid-seventh century, Coptic textile design changed its character, moving ever more distant from its classical Roman and Greek sources. In part, this was a reaction against Byzantine culture, associated in the Coptic mind with oppression. Contributing to the change may have been Islamic prohibitions against depicting human and animal figures. Such figures when they appear in Coptic textiles of the later periods become increasingly abstract to the point of being virtually unrecognizable.†[From Looms and Textiles of the Copts by Diane Lee Carroll (San Francisco, CA: Memoirs of the California Academy of Sciences, No. 11, 1988); Catalog # 62, pp. 136, 170-171, 187.] |
