AN OTTOMAN METAL THREAD TEXTILE PANEL

Rich satins and velvets were highly prized by the Ottomans, who regarded them as luxury items that reflected the wealth of their courts. As such they were used in ceremony, preserved in treasuries, given as gifts and demanded as tribute (Esin Atil, The Age of Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent, exhibition catalogue, New York, 1987, no.177). The most treasured Ottoman fabric was seraser, which was woven with gold and silver threads and seems to have come into fashion in the middle of the sixteenth century, under the reign of Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent. This gilded satin panel relates closely to a circular caparison in the Moscow Kremlin that was recently exhibited in The Tsars and the East exhibition at the Sackler. That shared the large scale design and light ground of ours, and is dated to the mid-sixteenth century (The Tsars and the East. Gifts from Turkey and Iran in the Moscow Kremlin, exhibition catalogue, Washington D.C., 2009, no.22, pp.60-61). A yastik with a similar colour scheme including an identical use of pistachio green outlines is in the Textile Museum, Washington (Atil, op.cit., no.156, p.223).

Cloth of gold or silver, with large scale designs is also used for two kaftans in the Topkapi Saray Museum - one associated with Ahmed I (1603-17) and the other with Ahmed III (1703-30), showing the continuation of appreciation of the style (Hülye Tezcan, Selma Deliba and J.M. Rogers (trans. and ed.), The Topkapi Saray Museum. Costumes, Embroideries and other Textiles, Boston, 1980, nos.32 and 54, pp.153-155).