Three Lengths of Woven Silk

Discussion

FROM THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO’S CATALOG

These textiles feature leafy vines clasped by crowns encircling floral palmettes to create a continuous network. Notably, both the crowns and the palmettes reverse orientation from one row to the next, ensuring that the fabric would never appear upside-down, whether it was used as a wall covering, furniture upholstery, or even a garment. Italian merchants bought Iranian raw silk in Bursa, at the western edge of the ancient trade route known as the Silk Road (in present-day Turkey). They sold the resulting goods to the Ottoman court in Istanbul. During the 1500s and 1600s, Ottoman sultans were avid consumers of luxury textiles from the Italian peninsula, buying more than Western European monarchs and the Roman Catholic Church.

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