BUKHARA, CENTRAL ASIA, EARLY 19TH CENTURY

A very similar robe, though catalogued as 17th century Safavid is in the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon (inv.no.1460). Another, less similar in decoration, but also of gold-embroidered velvet is published in Johannes Kalter and Margareta Pavloi (eds.), Heirs to the Silk Road. Uzbekistan, London, 1997, no.478, p.239. There it is described as being the coat of an emir or high official, and is dated to around 1880. Jonathan Bloom and Sheila Blair write that as the rich were the major clients for gold embroideries, Bukhara – home of the amir and his court – was the main centre of production (Jonathan Bloom and Sheila S. Blair, The Grove Encyclopaedia of Islamic Art and Architecture, Oxford, 2009, pp.416-417).