| Description |
“Fragment of a tunic clavus. The multicolor clavus band has borders of reverse scallops, each scallop containing a trefoil. The center motifs are quatrefoils and roundels in alternation. Each quatrefoil has a dot rosette, composed of nine dots, in the center. The roundels contain, respectively, a bird with a large spoon-shaped bill, the bust of a woman, robed and wearing a wreath, and a butterfly. The design motifs are worked in brown, dull medium-red, blue-green, light green, and pink on a beige ground. The clavus is woven in tapestry, wool and linen weft on paired linen warps, 8 x 60 [warp : weft per square cm]. All yarn is S-twist. Ninth century. Remarks: The strong degree of stylization of this piece makes its subject matter difficult to recognize at first sight. The elements of the quatrefoil are particularly obscure, but from similar, more realistic examples it can be determined that the motifs are, in fact, rolled acanthus leaves. [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 # 61, pp. 136, 168-169.] |
