Enrica Medugno
Senior Sale Coordinator
Lot 28R
Three Seljuk lampas weave panels Persia, 12th/ 13th Century(3)
22 May 2025, 11:00 BST
London, New Bond Street£8,000 - £12,000
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Oliver White
Head of Department
Three Seljuk lampas weave panels
Persia, 12th/ 13th Century
Persia, 12th/ 13th Century
each of rectangular form, the gold silk ground woven in blue with a series of roundels with dotted borders, containing four birds interspersed by stylised palmettes around a smaller central floral roundel, the interstices with further small roundels containing flowerheads and surrounded by stylised palmettes, mounted together on grey cloth
each panel approx. 135.8 x 28 cm.(3)
each panel approx. 135.8 x 28 cm.(3)
Footnotes
Provenance
Christie's, Islamic Art and Manuscripts, 26 April 2005, lot 54.
The iconography of birds such as in the present lot draws on antecedents including Sogdian textiles, and was a popular and widespread motif during the Seljuk period (Sheila R. Canby, Deniz Beyazit, Martina Rugiadi and A. C. S. Peacock, Court and Cosmos: The Great Age of the Seljuqs, New Haven and London, 2016, p. 96). A Kashan star tile in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, attests to this popularity, depicting a seated ruler whose robe is decorated with birds, and possibly indicating a preference for the motif amongst the ruling classes (Object No. 40.181.1). It is also typical to find these birds portrayed in confronting or addorsing pairs, as on a lampas fragment in the Metropolitan Museum of Art featuring roundels containing pairs of falcons (Object No. 2016.441). A further fragment in the Cleveland Museum of Art features roundels containing four birds, in confronting pairs (Object No. 1975.38).
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