{
"data": {
"id": 135988,
"accession_number": "1959.48",
"share_license_status": "CC0",
"tombstone": "Pillow cover with Arabic inscription, 800s. Egypt, al-Bahnasa. Wool and linen: tapestry weave; overall: 80 x 83.2 cm (31 1/2 x 32 3/4 in.); mounted: 93.3 x 95.9 cm (36 3/4 x 37 3/4 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund, 1959.48",
"current_location": null,
"title": "Pillow cover with Arabic inscription",
"creation_date": "800s",
"creation_date_earliest": 800,
"creation_date_latest": 899,
"artists_tags": [],
"culture": [
"Egypt, al-Bahnasa"
],
"technique": "Wool and linen: tapestry weave",
"support_materials": [],
"department": "Textiles",
"collection": "T - Islamic",
"type": "Textile",
"measurements": "Overall: 80 x 83.2 cm (31 1/2 x 32 3/4 in.); Mounted: 93.3 x 95.9 cm (36 3/4 x 37 3/4 in.)",
"dimensions": {
"overall": {
"height": 0.8,
"height_inch": 31,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.5,
"width": 0.832,
"width_inch": 32,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.75
},
"mounted": {
"height": 0.933,
"height_inch": 36,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.75,
"width": 0.959,
"width_inch": 37,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.75
}
},
"state_of_the_work": null,
"edition_of_the_work": null,
"copyright": null,
"inscriptions": [
{
"inscription": "\"In the name of God. Blessing from God to its owner. Of what was made in the tiraz.\"",
"inscription_translation": null,
"inscription_remark": "The Arabic script is written in an early stage of ornamental Kufic. Although the location of the tiraz (royal weaving factory) is not given, a few related tapestries are known from their inscriptions to have been woven in Bahnas\u00e1. This city, located in the Faiyum Oasis, is known from contemporary Arab sources to have been an important weaving center that specialized in curtains and furnishings.",
"sortorder": null
}
],
"exhibitions": {
"current": [
{
"id": 300779,
"title": "Juxtapositions",
"description": "Juxtapositions. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (September 11-October 10, 1965).",
"opening_date": "1965-09-11T04:00:00"
},
{
"id": 311451,
"title": "Textiles from Egypt, Syria and Spain: 7th through 15th centuries",
"description": "Textiles from Egypt, Syria and Spain: 7th through 15th centuries. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (November 26-June 6, 1991).",
"opening_date": "1991-11-26T05:00:00"
},
{
"id": 380961,
"title": "Islamic art rotation",
"description": "Islamic art rotation. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (December 16, 2013-December 15, 2014).",
"opening_date": "2013-12-16T05:00:00"
},
{
"id": 334783,
"title": "Social Fabrics: Inscribed Textiles from Egyptian Tombs, 9th - 12th Century",
"description": "Social Fabrics: Inscribed Textiles from Egyptian Tombs, 9th - 12th Century. Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, MA (organizer) (January 22-May 8, 2022) https://harvardartmuseums.org/exhibitions/5836/social-fabrics-inscribed-textiles-from-medieval-egyptian-tombs.",
"opening_date": "2022-01-22T05:00:00"
}
],
"legacy": [
{
"description": "The Heritage of Islam, Houston, San Francisco, Pittsburgh, Washington D.C.(March 10, 1982-September 5, 1983), no. 173.",
"opening_date": "1982-03-10T00:00:00"
},
{
"description": "Gallery 207 textile rotation. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (June 20, 2002-May 6, 2004).",
"opening_date": "2002-06-20T00:00:00"
}
]
},
"provenance": [
{
"description": "(Mrs. Paul [Marguerite] Mallon [d. 1977], Paris, France, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art)",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": "?-1959",
"sortorder": 1
},
{
"description": "The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": "1959-",
"sortorder": 2
}
],
"find_spot": null,
"related_works": [],
"former_accession_numbers": [],
"did_you_know": null,
"early_education_description": null,
"artlens_description": null,
"description": "This rare complete Egyptian pillow cover is a masterpiece of contrasting colors. Crimson and blue-green wool alternate in the ground and bird-inhabited roundels, supported by mustard-colored wool and undyed linen woven in tapestry weave. When folded down the center, based on examples from Egyptian burials, four birds form a unit on each side and are appropriately ascending in flight.
Above, an Arabic text written in angular Kufic script reads, \"In the name of God. Blessing from God to its owner. Of what was made in the tiraz.\" The word tiraz means factory or an Arabic-inscribed textile. This was probably made in al-Bahnasa, the city renowned for colorful wool textiles with figures, as they claimed, from a \"gnat to the elephant.\"",
"external_resources": {
"wikidata": [
"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q60752193"
],
"internet_archive": [
"https://archive.org/details/clevelandart-1959.48-pillow-cover-with-ar"
]
},
"citations": [
{
"citation": "Shepherd, Dorothy G. \"An Early Tiraz from Egypt.\" The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 47, no. 1 (1960): 7-14.",
"page_number": "p. 7-14",
"url": "http://www.jstor.org/stable/25142373."
},
{
"citation": "The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1966. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1966.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p. 213",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/CMAHandbook1966/page/n237"
},
{
"citation": "The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1969. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1969.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p. 213",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/CMAHandbook1969/page/n237"
},
{
"citation": "The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1978. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1978.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p. 269",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/CMAHandbook1978/page/n289"
},
{
"citation": "Edwards, Holly. Patterns and Precision, the Arts and Sciences of Islam. Washington, DC: National Committee to Honor the Fourteenth Centennial of Islam, 1982.",
"page_number": "p. 54, no.173",
"url": null
},
{
"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": null,
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Baker, Patricia L. Islamic Textiles. London: British Museum Press, 1995.",
"page_number": "p. 55",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Paetz, Annette gen. Schieck. \u201cLate Roman cushions and the principles of their decoration.\u201d In Moor, A. de, and Ca\u0308cilia Fluck. Clothing the House: Furnishing Textiles of the 1st Millennium AD from Egypt and Neighbouring Countries : Proceedings of the 5th Conference of the Research Group \"Textiles from the Nile Valley\" Antwerp, 6-7 October 2007. Tielt, Belgium: Lannoo Publishers, 2009.",
"page_number": "Mentioned: pp. 115-131; Reproduced: p. 130",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Cleveland Museum of Art. The CMA Companion: A Guide to the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2014.",
"page_number": "Mentioned and reproduced: P. 225",
"url": ""
},
{
"citation": "Mackie, Louise W. Symbols of Power: Luxury Textiles from Islamic Lands, 7th-21st Century. Cleveland; New Haven: Cleveland Museum of Art; Yale University Press, 2015.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: P. 58-59, fig. 2.20; Mentioned: P. 57, 76,189",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "McWilliams, Mary, and Jochen A. Sokoly. Social Fabrics: Inscribed Textiles from Medieval Egyptian Tombs. Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard Art Museums, 2021.",
"page_number": "Mentioned: p. 133; Reproduced: Cover, p. 132, 146,fig. 7.",
"url": ""
}
],
"url": "https://clevelandart.org/art/1959.48",
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"date_created": "2012-11-13T15:51:47",
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"date_created": "2012-11-08T16:29:16",
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],
"creditline": "Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund",
"image_credit": null,
"sketchfab_id": null,
"sketchfab_url": null,
"gallery_donor_text": null,
"athena_id": 135988,
"creators": [],
"legal_status": "accessioned",
"accession_date": "1959-02-21T00:00:00",
"sortable_date": 800,
"date_added_to_oa": null,
"date_text": "800s",
"collapse_artists": false,
"on_loan": false,
"recently_acquired": false,
"record_type": "object",
"conservation_statement": "Until 1856, when British chemist William Henry Perkin discovered the first synthetic dye (mauvine), dyestuffs were sourced from nature\u2014plant or animal materials. It was expected that the dyes used in this fragment dating from the 800s would be natural dyes. In conjunction with a 2021 exhibition at the Harvard Art Museums to which Cleveland lent this textile, the conservation scientist at Harvard undertook dye analysis using a technique known as high-performance liquid chromatography\u2013mass spectroscopy (HPLC-MS), and determined the red fiber was dyed with a combination of lac\u2014a resinous secretion of the lac insect\u2014and madder\u2014a plant. This shows the way dyers used two reds to obtain a desired shade.",
"has_conservation_images": true,
"cover_accession_number": null,
"is_nazi_era_provenance": false,
"impression": null,
"alternate_titles": [
"Tapestry Panel",
"Textile Panel"
],
"is_highlight": false,
"updated_at": "2026-05-29 06:56:37.792000"
}
}