{
"data": {
"id": 154198,
"accession_number": "1988.243",
"share_license_status": "CC0",
"tombstone": "Carpet Fragment, late 1800s\u2013early 1900s. Iran, Rayy. Silk: knotted pile; overall: 61 x 37.5 cm (24 x 14 3/4 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift of Milton Girod, 1988.243",
"current_location": null,
"title": "Carpet Fragment",
"creation_date": "late 1800s\u2013early 1900s",
"creation_date_earliest": 1884,
"creation_date_latest": 1928,
"artists_tags": [],
"culture": [
"Iran, Rayy"
],
"technique": "Silk: knotted pile",
"support_materials": [],
"department": "Textiles",
"collection": "T - Islamic",
"type": "Carpet",
"measurements": "Overall: 61 x 37.5 cm (24 x 14 3/4 in.)",
"dimensions": {
"overall": {
"height": 0.61,
"height_inch": 24,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.0,
"width": 0.375,
"width_inch": 14,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.75
}
},
"state_of_the_work": null,
"edition_of_the_work": null,
"copyright": null,
"inscriptions": [],
"exhibitions": {
"current": [],
"legacy": []
},
"provenance": [
{
"description": "(Paul Mallon [1884\u20131975], Paris, France, sold to George Hewitt Myers)",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": "?\u2013before 1928",
"sortorder": 1
},
{
"description": "George Hewitt Myers [1875\u20131957], Washington, DC, returned to Paul Mallon",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [
"George Hewitt Myers (1875\u20131957) was a well-known carpet and textile collector in the 1920s. He was also the founder and benefactor of The Textile Museum in Washington, DC (now the George Washington University Museum and The Textile Museum).
"
],
"date": "by 1928\u20131947",
"sortorder": 2
},
{
"description": "Paul Mallon [1884\u20131975], Paris, France, given to his stepson Milton Girod?",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": "1947\u20131975",
"sortorder": 3
},
{
"description": "Milton Girod [1922\u20132011], La Jaille Chahaignes-sur-Loir, Sarthe, France, given to the Cleveland Museum of Art",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": "1975?\u20131988",
"sortorder": 4
},
{
"description": "The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": "1988\u2013",
"sortorder": 5
}
],
"find_spot": null,
"related_works": [],
"former_accession_numbers": [],
"did_you_know": null,
"early_education_description": null,
"artlens_description": null,
"description": "This rectangular fragment has large spade-shaped palmettes filling each corner. The palmettes bear dark blue and red animals and birds on a cream/ivory background. The central dark blue medallion encloses an irregular, inscription-bearing green square. At the top and bottom center is a smaller inscription-bearing square with date palms extending from cardinal points; vertical palms divide the rectangle, and horizontal palms delineate the start of a new repeat wherein palmettes have dark blue background with cream/ivory animal figures.",
"external_resources": {
"wikidata": [
"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q79940879"
],
"internet_archive": [
"https://archive.org/details/clevelandart-1988.243-carpet-fragment"
]
},
"citations": [
{
"citation": "Koechlin, Raymond, Gaston Migeon, and Florence Heywood. Oriental Art; Ceramics, Fabrics, Carpets; One Hundred Plates in Colour. London: Ernest Benn Ltd., n.d. [1928].",
"page_number": "Reproduced: color plate LXXXII",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "\"The Year in Review for 1988.\" The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 76, no. 2 (1989): 30-75. Accessed May 25, 2020.",
"page_number": "Mentioned: p. 73, no. 191",
"url": "www.jstor.org/stable/25160061."
},
{
"citation": "Smith, Gregory D., Joan M. Esson, Victor J. Chen, Robin M. Hanson. \u201cForensic dye analysis in cultural heritage: Unraveling the authenticity of the earliest Persian knotted-pile silk carpet.\u201d Forensic Science International: Synergy, Volume 3, 2021, 100130, ISSN 2589-871X,",
"page_number": "pp. 1\u201310",
"url": "http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2589871X20300681"
}
],
"url": "https://clevelandart.org/art/1988.243",
"images": {
"annotation": null,
"web": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1988.243/1988.243_web.jpg",
"width": "586",
"height": "893",
"filesize": "508189",
"filename": "1988.243_web.jpg"
},
"print": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1988.243/1988.243_print.jpg",
"width": "2132",
"height": "3248",
"filesize": "6578661",
"filename": "1988.243_print.jpg"
},
"full": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1988.243/1988.243_full.tif",
"width": "2132",
"height": "3248",
"filesize": "20795092",
"filename": "1988.243_full.tif"
}
},
"alternate_images": [
{
"web": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1988.243/1988.243_alt0_web.jpg",
"width": "571",
"height": "893",
"filesize": "469715"
},
"print": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1988.243/1988.243_alt0_print.jpg",
"width": "2173",
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"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1988.243/1988.243_alt0_full.tif",
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},
"date_created": "2009-12-09T00:30:44",
"annotation": ""
}
],
"creditline": "Gift of Milton Girod",
"image_credit": null,
"sketchfab_id": null,
"sketchfab_url": null,
"gallery_donor_text": null,
"athena_id": 154198,
"creators": [],
"legal_status": "accessioned",
"accession_date": "1989-02-24T00:00:00",
"sortable_date": 1884,
"date_added_to_oa": null,
"date_text": "late 1800s\u2013early 1900s",
"collapse_artists": false,
"on_loan": false,
"recently_acquired": false,
"record_type": "object",
"conservation_statement": "Dye analysis
Scholars have long debated about this carpet fragment; some think it to be the earliest known silk knotted pile carpet from Persia while others think it is a modern creation. To answer this question, in 2019 the CMA collaborated with conservation scientists at the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields (IMA) who undertook dye analysis on samples of the red, blue, and green silk pile. Scientists at IMA performed Raman microspectroscopy, X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy (XRF), and liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LCMS). Based on results from these analyses, we now can date the carpet fragment to between 1884 and 1928. The green silk is blue overdyed with yellow. The yellow dye is Metanil yellow, first synthesized in 1879. The red dye is Congo Red, first synthesized in 1884. The blue dye is indigo, but we don\u2019t know if it is natural or synthetic indigo as it is difficult to distinguish between the two. If we could definitively prove that the blue is synthetic indigo, that dye was not available until 1898, allowing us to further narrow the creation date of this carpet fragment.",
"has_conservation_images": true,
"cover_accession_number": null,
"is_nazi_era_provenance": false,
"impression": null,
"alternate_titles": [],
"is_highlight": false,
"updated_at": "2026-07-15 12:51:58.264000"
}
}