Weiner Mihályné szerk.: Az Iparművészeti Múzeum Évkönyvei 12. (Budapest, 1970)

IPARMŰVÉSZETI MÚZEUM — MUSÉE DES ARTS DÉCORATIFS - Egyed, Edit: On a Textile from the Safavid Period

In our study first of all the place and date of the production of the textile will be examined and an attempt will be made at defining it. The form and the cut of the coat will not be dealt with in length in the present paper. The stuff of our coat is gold brocade (fig. 2.). On examining the colours, the application of several shades of seven basic colours can be found: two kinds of pink, bronze, light green, golden, silver, grey, cornflower blue and ivory. At weaving the craftsman made use of 5—6, occasionally seven colours at the same time. Within the patterns the colours are changed with perfect accuracy, no deviation, slipping can be seen even with the most careful study. The patterns of the fabric are made up of representations of six animals and their fightings within two garlands. These are scenes of animal fights. The species of the woven animals could could not be identified with certainty in all the cases. After a study of handbooks on animal identification, a classification could be given only with the help of zoogeographical researches refering to this period; but even in that case a certain amount of mistakes at the recognising must be reckoned with — because the working of the artist's fantasy must be taken into consideration here as well as at the classification of the plants. The fights of three pairs of animals are visible on the brocade. The lion stands on the back of an artiodactyl and fights with it, the spine of the running gazelle (?) is lacerated by a bird of prey, and the spotted beast holds a hare in its forelegs and looks back. Among the representations of the animal fights stylized pomegranates showing strong Chinese influence, tangles of eight petalled flowers alternate with sarmentous leaves. The whole surface of the woven fabric is completely covered with patterns and ornamentations. In our examination the following steps were taken: First the width and weaving pattern of the woven fabric were examined, then with this knowledge the remaining relics of Persian art were studied regardless to form of art in order to find analogies. Lastly with the help and guidance of the analogies an attempt was made at drawing conclusions regarding the place and date of production. The complete width of the textile is 56 cm. The pattern repeat of width of the woven pattern is 9, and height repeat is 16 cm. The patterns within these distances alternate with precision.

2 On examining the fabric, it can be seen that it is doubly woven. The right side is patterned, the reverse is of plain weaving, and naturally the colours of the weft are visible, and nothing of the patterns on the right side can be seen here. This means that double weaving was applied, that is one for forming the patterned surface appearing on the right side of the fabric, while the other is for the weaving of the plain reverse. On counting the picks, we get a surprising result. Its frequency is 50 per cm, which is identical on the right and the back sides. At the picks two silk threads are followed by a metal one. The metal threads are hammered flat. The quality of the stuff has been examined and we got the following results'': beside the extraordinary fine thrown silk threads the quality of the silver and gold threads is quite exceptional and rare. The analysis showed the 2 I am very grateful to Mrs. Êva P. Szabó designer and to Prof. Erzsébet Bakay, who gave invaluable help to me in defining the weaving technics. 3 I am greatly indebted to goldsmith Jocchim Szvetnik for executing the examination oJ the precious metals used in the woven fabric.