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Lot Essay
Documents from Shah Jahan's reign (1628-1658) offer little information on textiles. The emperor’s main interest lay in architecture with his most significant achievement being the construction of the Taj Mahal, a mausoleum for his beloved wife Mumtaz Mahal, famous for its carved marble relief panels of botanical specimens. Although textiles do not figure predominantly in the emperor's memoirs, miniatures illustrating life at his court are rich portrayals of textiles in the sovereign’s daily life and ceremonials. These paintings suggest that he was fond of fine fabrics and sophisticated costumes, and the complexity of the fabrics depicted implies that there must have been workshops serving the imperial court.
This use of textiles, richly decorated in the Mughal 'Floral' style, is abundantly evident in the miniature of Prince Aurangzeb reporting to Emperor Shah Jahan, 1649, where textile wall panels displaying ascending single flowering plants, similar to the present example, are shown flanking the emperor. For a wider discussion on the Mughal 'Floral' style, see the imperial 17th century Mughal pashmina carpet in the sale, Art of the Islamic and Indian Worlds, Including Oriental Rugs and Carpets, 27 October 2022, lot 200.
A small fragment, probably from the same velvet as the present lot, remains within an Italian private collection. There are seven other single flower velvet panels in the collections of; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (M.75.22); the Cincinnati Art Museum (1966.1179); the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; the Musée Guimet, Paris (ex-AEDTA); and the National Museum, New Delhi. The last three have an identical pattern, although an unpublished source notes that these do not contain metal threads. Another is in the Calico Museum, Ahmedabad, and the last is in the Indictor collection in the U.S (HALI, Issue 183, p. 94, fig. 3) The Calico museum and the Indictors' contain metal threads.
Large-format pictorial patterns such as this one are created by artists within wealthy and highly organised polities. Their drawings (cartoons) or paintings are subsequently transferred to the squared format of woven structures by specialist technicians. Within the textile arts, pictorial patterns are commonly created in tapestry, embroidery or knotting techniques, but in Mughal India and Safavid Iran, large-scale velvet and metal-ground fabrics were created by means of sophisticated drawlooms. The products have the appearance of pictorial patterns. For connoisseurs and scholars alike, such works are admired as a pinnacle of loom technology from the sixteenth to seventeenth centuries.
This use of textiles, richly decorated in the Mughal 'Floral' style, is abundantly evident in the miniature of Prince Aurangzeb reporting to Emperor Shah Jahan, 1649, where textile wall panels displaying ascending single flowering plants, similar to the present example, are shown flanking the emperor. For a wider discussion on the Mughal 'Floral' style, see the imperial 17th century Mughal pashmina carpet in the sale, Art of the Islamic and Indian Worlds, Including Oriental Rugs and Carpets, 27 October 2022, lot 200.
A small fragment, probably from the same velvet as the present lot, remains within an Italian private collection. There are seven other single flower velvet panels in the collections of; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (M.75.22); the Cincinnati Art Museum (1966.1179); the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; the Musée Guimet, Paris (ex-AEDTA); and the National Museum, New Delhi. The last three have an identical pattern, although an unpublished source notes that these do not contain metal threads. Another is in the Calico Museum, Ahmedabad, and the last is in the Indictor collection in the U.S (HALI, Issue 183, p. 94, fig. 3) The Calico museum and the Indictors' contain metal threads.
Large-format pictorial patterns such as this one are created by artists within wealthy and highly organised polities. Their drawings (cartoons) or paintings are subsequently transferred to the squared format of woven structures by specialist technicians. Within the textile arts, pictorial patterns are commonly created in tapestry, embroidery or knotting techniques, but in Mughal India and Safavid Iran, large-scale velvet and metal-ground fabrics were created by means of sophisticated drawlooms. The products have the appearance of pictorial patterns. For connoisseurs and scholars alike, such works are admired as a pinnacle of loom technology from the sixteenth to seventeenth centuries.