IRAN, 17TH CENTURY

This is a fine example of the lavish brocade technique where silver, gold or metal-wrapped threads float on the face of the cloth. The designs frequently incorporate flowering plants, birds and animals. The motif became popular in the second half of the seventeenth century, largely due to the artistic output of court painter Shafi ‘Abbasi (1633-74), son of the celebrated master Reza ‘Abbasi. Shafi ‘Abbasi’s sensitive portrayal of birds and flowers were translated into silk inspiring many variations of the theme.

The present motif of the perching bird in a rosebush, which is termed gul-u-bulbul (rose and nightingale), was popular in Safavid silks and continued into the nineteenth century. Artists used variations on the motifs, sometimes adding further animals such as on a comparable silver-ground panel in the Metropolitan Museum of Art that also includes a deer (acc.no.49.32.99). As noted in the entry for that textile, the artists favoured an unnatural scale of drawing among the birds, animals and flowers adding to the playful nature of these charming motifs.

A group of further sections of the same textile are published in Jules Guiffrey & Gaston Migeon, La Collection Kelekian: Étoffes & Tapis d’Orient & de Venise, Paris, Librairie Centrale des Beaux-Arts, 1908, pl.69. They are held in the State Historical Museum in Moscow (inv.no.242) and were exhibited in the Burlington House, International Exhibition of Persian Art, London, 1931 cat. nos. 230 and 849.