{
"data": {
"id": 127888,
"accession_number": "1950.524",
"share_license_status": "CC0",
"tombstone": "Ikat tiraz, 900s. Yemen, San'a, Reign of Rassid Imams. Cotton and gold leaf: resist-dyed warp (ikat); plain weave with inscription; overall: 41.7 x 30 cm (16 7/16 x 11 13/16 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, John L. Severance Fund, 1950.524",
"current_location": null,
"title": "Ikat tiraz",
"creation_date": "900s",
"creation_date_earliest": 900,
"creation_date_latest": 999,
"artists_tags": [],
"culture": [
"Yemen, San'a, Reign of Rassid Imams"
],
"technique": "Cotton and gold leaf: resist-dyed warp (ikat); plain weave with inscription",
"support_materials": [],
"department": "Textiles",
"collection": "Textiles",
"type": "Textile",
"measurements": "Overall: 41.7 x 30 cm (16 7/16 x 11 13/16 in.)",
"dimensions": {
"overall": {
"height": 0.417,
"height_inch": 16,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.4375,
"width": 0.3,
"width_inch": 11,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.8125
}
},
"state_of_the_work": null,
"edition_of_the_work": null,
"copyright": null,
"inscriptions": [
{
"inscription": "an elaborate Kufic inscription is painted; it has many braided letters and is so damaged that it cannot be read.",
"inscription_translation": null,
"inscription_remark": null,
"sortorder": null
}
],
"exhibitions": {
"current": [],
"legacy": []
},
"provenance": [
{
"description": "(Dr. Emil Delmar [1876\u20131959], New York, NY, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art)",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": "?\u20131950",
"sortorder": 1
},
{
"description": "The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": "1950\u2013",
"sortorder": 2
}
],
"find_spot": null,
"related_works": [
{
"id": 127672,
"description": "Ikat tiraz, 960\u201380. Yemen, San'a', Zaydi Imam period. Resist-dyed warp (ikat); plain weave with inscription: cotton and gold leaf; overall: 60.3 x 64.5 cm (23 3/4 x 25 3/8 in.); mounted: 67.9 x 74.3 cm (26 3/4 x 29 1/4 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund, 1950.353",
"relationship": null
}
],
"former_accession_numbers": [],
"did_you_know": null,
"description": "The \"flame\" pattern was dyed on the vertical warp threads before weaving began by tightly binding them to resist dye penetration, and repeated for each color. The process and fabric are called ikat, a Malaysian word which may have originated in South Arabia. Yemeni ikats with historical Arabic inscriptions from the 10th century are among the oldest known. This text, written in Kufic script with gold leaf outlined in black, is so damaged that it cannot be read.",
"external_resources": {
"wikidata": [
"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q79908255"
],
"internet_archive": [
"https://archive.org/details/clevelandart-1950.524-ikat-tiraz"
]
},
"citations": [
{
"citation": "Institut franc\u0327ais d'arche\u0301ologie orientale du Caire, Etienne Combe, Jean Sauvaget, and Gaston Wiet. Re\u0301pertoire chronologique d'e\u0301pigraphie arabe. Le Caire: Impr. de l'Institut franc\u0327ais d'arche\u0301ologie orientale, 1931.",
"page_number": "vol. IV, p. 174, no. 1544",
"url": ""
},
{
"citation": "Wiet, Gaston. 1935. \u201cTissus Et Tapisseries Du Muse\u0301e Arabe Du Caire.\u201d Syria 16 (3): 278\u2013290.",
"page_number": "p. 287",
"url": ""
},
{
"citation": "Lamm, C. J. Cotton in Mediaeval Textiles of the Near East. Paris: P. Geuthner, 1937.",
"page_number": "p. 146",
"url": ""
},
{
"citation": "Textile Museum (Washington, D.C.), and Ernst Ku\u0308hnel. Catalogue of Dated Tiraz Fabrics: Umayyad, Abbasid, Fatimid. Washington: National Pub. Co, 1952.",
"page_number": "p. 90",
"url": ""
},
{
"citation": "Golombek, Lisa and Veronica Gervers. \"Tiraz Fabrics in the Royal Ontario Museum.\" In Burnham, Harold B., and Veronika Gervers. Studies in Textile History: In Memory of Harold B. Burnham. Toronto: Royal Ontario Museum, 1977.",
"page_number": "Mentioned and Reproduced: pp. 92\u201393, fig. 3",
"url": ""
},
{
"citation": "Edwards, Holly. Patterns and Precision, the Arts and Sciences of Islam. [Washington, D.C.]: National Committee to Honor the Fourteenth Centennial of Islam, 1982.",
"page_number": "p. 54, no. 186",
"url": ""
},
{
"citation": "Cornu, Georgette, Odile Valansot, and He\u0301le\u0300ne Meyer. Tissus islamiques de la collection Pfister. Citta\u0300 del Vaticano: Biblioteca apostolica vaticana, 1992.",
"page_number": "p. 65",
"url": ""
},
{
"citation": "Balfour-Paul, Jenny. \"Islamic Art, VI, 2(ii)(d), Fabrics, before c. 1250: Spain and North Africa, Yemen.\" In Turner, J. S. The Dictionary of Art. New York: Grove, 1996.",
"page_number": "p. 438",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Baginski, Alisa and Orit Shamir. \u201cThe Earliest Ikat.\u201d HALI; the international journal of Oriental carpets and textiles. [London] Issue 95, November 1997.",
"page_number": "pp. 86\u201387",
"url": ""
},
{
"citation": "Bier, Carol. \"A Calligrapher's Art: Inscribed Cotton Ikat from Yemen\" (2001)",
"page_number": null,
"url": "http://works.bepress.com/carol_bier/9/"
},
{
"citation": "Bier, Carol. \u201cPatterns in Time and Space: Technologies of Transfer and the Cultural Transmission of Mathematical Knowledge Across the Indian Ocean.\u201d Ars Orientalis 34 (2004).",
"page_number": "p. 172-94",
"url": ""
},
{
"citation": "Bier, Carol. \"Inscribed Cotton Ikat from Yemen in the Tenth Century CE.\" in International Shibori Symposium, Feng Zhao, Yoshiko Iwamoto Wada, and Edith Cheung. Resist Dye on the Silk Road: Shibori, Clamp Resist and Ikat. Hangzhou: China National Silk Museum, 2014.",
"page_number": "pp. 32\u201340",
"url": "http://works.bepress.com/carol_bier/21/"
},
{
"citation": "Weinstein, Laura, and Emine Fetvac\u0131. Ink, Silk & Gold: Islamic Art from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. 2015.",
"page_number": "p. 36, no.10",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Mackie, Louise W. Symbols of Power: Luxury Textiles from Islamic Lands, 7th-21st Century. Cleveland, OH; New Haven, CT: The Cleveland Museum of Art; Yale University Press, 2015.",
"page_number": "pp. 123, 215. Similar object reproduced: p. 122",
"url": ""
},
{
"citation": "\"The Ubiquitous Ikat.\" HALI; the international journal of Oriental carpets and textiles. Issue 200. Summer 2019. London: Oguz Press, 1978- London : Hali Publications",
"page_number": "p. 60-63",
"url": ""
},
{
"citation": "McWilliams, Mary, and Jochen A. Sokoly. Social Fabrics: Inscribed Textiles from Medieval Egyptian Tombs. Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard Art Museums, 2021.",
"page_number": "Mentioned and reproduced: p. 56, fig. 9",
"url": ""
}
],
"url": "https://clevelandart.org/art/1950.524",
"images": {
"annotation": null,
"web": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1950.524/1950.524_web.jpg",
"width": "687",
"height": "893",
"filesize": "531788",
"filename": "1950.524_web.jpg"
},
"print": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1950.524/1950.524_print.jpg",
"width": "2617",
"height": "3400",
"filesize": "8378130",
"filename": "1950.524_print.jpg"
},
"full": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1950.524/1950.524_full.tif",
"width": "3675",
"height": "4774",
"filesize": "52664456",
"filename": "1950.524_full.tif"
}
},
"alternate_images": [],
"creditline": "John L. Severance Fund",
"image_credit": null,
"sketchfab_id": null,
"sketchfab_url": null,
"gallery_donor_text": null,
"athena_id": 127888,
"creators": [],
"legal_status": "accessioned",
"accession_date": "1950-12-28T00:00:00",
"sortable_date": 900,
"date_added_to_oa": null,
"date_text": "900s",
"collapse_artists": false,
"on_loan": false,
"recently_acquired": false,
"record_type": "object",
"conservation_statement": "In this textile, the gold leaf layer is so thin it appears slightly red, from the gummy resin used to adhere it. Scanning electron microscopy\u2013energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (SEM-EDS) of a similar textile in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, determined that the leaf was 90 percent gold and 10 percent silver. And its thickness was measured at 500\u2013900 nanometers. For comparison, a sheet of copy paper has a thickness of 0.1 millimeters; it is roughly 140 times thicker than the gold leaf layer. We would expect these same results for this textile in the CMA\u2019s collection.",
"has_conservation_images": true,
"cover_accession_number": null,
"is_nazi_era_provenance": false,
"impression": null,
"alternate_titles": [
"Fragment of a Tiraz"
],
"is_highlight": false,
"updated_at": "2026-05-29 06:36:00.679000"
}
}