CENTRAL ASIA, 13TH CENTURY

The present example of nasij, or ‘Cloth of Gold’, relates very closely to a much larger panel which was sold in these Rooms, 26 October 2023, lot 68. This lot has the same ogival medallion design against a dense ground of swirling split palmettes. As discussed in the note to lot 35 in this sale the Mongol ‘Cloth of Gold’ is a fusion of techniques and motifs from across the Mongol territories. As new territories were conquered skilled weavers were forcibly located but at the same time many artists travelled freely from East to West Asia under the fluid condition of the Pax Mongolica (James Watt, “A Note on Artistic Exchanges in the Mongol Empire”, in L. Komaroff and S. Carboni (eds.), The Legacy of Genghis Khan: Courtly Art and Culture in Western Asia, 1256-1353, New York, 2002, p. 63). Due to this movement of craftsmen and fusion of techniques it is difficult to precisely identify the place of production for these textiles (Jon Thompson, Silk. 13^th to 18^th centuries. Treasures from the Museum of Islamic Art, Qatar, Doha, 2004, p. 12). However, the technical composition of the fabrics offer some clues. Textiles produced in the eastern Mongol world use gold wrapped around a paper substrate, as with lot 35, whilst those woven in Central Asia and the Eastern Persian domains use an animal substrate. Both this lot and the 2023 panel fall into the latter group which are also dated slightly earlier than the Eastern group. Two further panels from the same textile are in the David Collection, Copenhagen (inv. nos. 4⁄1993 and 15⁄1989).