Matthew Thomas
Senior Specialist
Lot 11
A fine woven silk Textile Fragment depicting paired cockerels Sogdiana, Central Asia, circa 8th Century
8 October 2013, 10:30 BST
London, New Bond Street£80,000 - £120,000
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A fine woven silk Textile Fragment depicting paired cockerels
Sogdiana, Central Asia, circa 8th Century
Sogdiana, Central Asia, circa 8th Century
of irregular rectangular form, woven in red, blue, green and cream, depicting two large scale roundels enclosing paired cockrels with elaborate tail feathers, within three pearl bands, the interstices with partial floral quatrefoil motifs, mounted
100 x 44 cm. max.
100 x 44 cm. max.
Footnotes
The pearl roundels creating the frame for the paired cockerels on this textile is a motif often found on silk textiles of the Sassanian era, where it was associated with cosmology and sovereignty (L'etrange et le merveilleux en terre d'Islam, Exhibition Catalogue, Paris 2001, p. 118). It was also popular on Sogdian textiles of the 7th-8th Centuries which were found along the Silk Road, where the Sogdians were a major mercantile force. A similar depiction of a stylised cockerel with elaborate tail feathers can be seen on a textile in the collection of the Museo Vaticano, although there is only one bird in the roundel (Pope, Alexander Upham, A Survey of Persian Art, reprint, Ashiya, 1981, Vol. VII, Pl. 201C).
The present lot, as is the case with lot 7, is notable for the large scale of the roundels.