Catalog Number
|
Catalog Number |
CAS 0389-2580 | |
| Category | Textiles | |
| Object Name | Coptic textile fragment | |
| Culture | Coptic Egyptian | |
| Global Region | North Africa | |
| Country | Egypt | |
| State/Prov./Dist. | ||
| County | ||
| Other Geographic Data | unknown | |
| Maker's Name | Unknown | |
| Date of Manufacture | ca. 800-1000 CE | |
| Collection Name | Rietz Collection of Textiles | |
| Materials | Linen; Wool | |
| Description | “Two fragments of a tunic clavus [CAS 0389-2580, 0389-2581]. The clavus decoration consists of rectangles with groups of dancers alternating with rectangles containing an elaborate, symmetrical flowering tree. The dancers are worked in beige, dark brown, tan, green, pink, and light blue on a medium red ground. The tree is worked in the same colors but on a tan ground. Both rectangles have dark blue borders edged with spiral waves for the dancers’ panels, ornamented with linked cartouches for the tree panels. The weave is tapestry, wool and linen weft on linen warp, 8 x 64 [warp : weft per square cm]. The clavus appears to have been assembled by cutting a banded, tapestry-woven textile into rectangles and sewing sections from different bands together to provide ornamentation for a tunic. All yarn is S-twist. Ninth or tenth century. Related example: Baginski and Tidhar 1980:141, no. 214. Remarks: The dumpy little figures are barely recognizable as human forms. Their drawing contrasts greatly with that of the elaborate, symmetrical plants associated with them. At work here is the turning away from Classical canons that started around the time of the Arab conquest as a reaction against nearly everything Byzantine. [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 # 60B, pp. 136, 168-169.] | |
| Dimensions (cm) | Width = 5.9, Length = 17.9 | |