Catalog Number
|
Catalog Number |
CAS 0389-2582 | |
| 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. 1000-1200 CE | |
| Collection Name | Rietz Collection of Textiles | |
| Materials | Wool | |
| Description | “Mantle or coverlet fragment. The design is organized into bands, decorated ones interspersed with plain ones. Two bands contain quatrefoils with leaf motifs filling the triangular spaces between the quatrefoils. The third band is half as wide as the other two and is decorated with triangles and leaves. It is in fact a repeat of half the design of the other two bands divided down the center. Tapestry, woven entirely in wool, 9 x 22 [warp : weft per square cm]. One edge is corded. All yarn is S-twist. Eleventh or twelfth century. Remarks: This piece may be Islamic in origin, though not too different, technically, from Coptic work. [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 # 71, pp. 136, 182-183.] | |
| Dimensions (cm) | Width = 22.8, Length = 89.1 | |