Oliver White
Head of Department
Lot 67
A Greek Islands silk embroidered linen Cushion Cover with cockerels North Sporades islands, Skyros, late 18th Century
23 April 2013, 10:30 BST
London, New Bond StreetSold for £25,000 inc. premium
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A Greek Islands silk embroidered linen Cushion Cover with cockerels
North Sporades islands, Skyros, late 18th Century
North Sporades islands, Skyros, late 18th Century
depicting two cockerels, one above the other with large lyre-like tails from which issue forth curling feathers, on a ground of pomegranates, tulips, mounted
100 x 43 cm.
100 x 43 cm.
Footnotes
Provenance: Private collection, Paris.
Many versions of the great cockerel or hoopoe of the Sporades are found on embroideries from the region where it was used as a secret symbol of independance and resistance to Ottoman rule and as a symbol of the character of the Skyran people. It appears in several versions in neo-Hellenic art and possesses an apotropaic-talismanic symbolism, beyond which lies a wish for fertility but also for the fighting strength that might protect it.
A very similar example with the same design though with different colours is in the Benaki Museum, Athens (ΓΕ 6381); the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (T.61-1950), Dawkins Collection; and in the Textile Museum, Washington D.C. (illustrated in Roderick Taylor, Embroidery of the Greek Islands and Epirus, New York, 1998, p. 96).