Fragment of Velvet

CC0 Public Domain Designation

13th-14th century

Possibly Tabriz, Iran (Persia)

Status: On View, Gallery 58
Department: Textiles

Title: Fragment of Velvet
Place: Persia (Object made in:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: Made 1201–1300
Medium: Silk and gilt-animal-substrate-wrapped silk, plain weave variation with weft-float faced 1:2 "Z" twill interlacings of secondary binding warps and supplementary patterning wefts and with supplementary warps forming cut voided velvet
Dimensions: 17.1 × 16.6 cm (6 3/4 × 6 1/2 in.); Repeat: 3.9 × 2 cm (1 1/2 × 3/4 in.)
Credit Line: Art Institute of Chicago Purchase Fund
Reference Number: 1907.508
IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world. Learn more.: https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/95137/manifest.json

Barbara Markowski, Europaische Seidengewebe, des 13-18. Jahrhunderts (Koln: Kunstgewerbemuseum de Stadt Koln, 1976), 727, no. 389.
Milton Sonday, “A Group of Possibly Thirteenth-Century Velvets with Gold Disks in Offset Rows” The Textile Museum Journal 38 and 39 (1999-2000): 101-151.

Art Institute of Chicago, Elizabeth F. Cheney and Agnes Allerton Textile Galleries, Renaissance Velvets and Silks, Dec. 18, 2002-Apr. 13, 2003.
Art Institute of Chicago, Islamic Art, Gallery 50, Islamic textile rotation, July 21-Dec. 5, 2017.
Art Institute of Chicago, Elizabeth F. Cheney and Agnes Allerton Textile Galleries, On Loss and Absence: Textiles of Mourning and Survival, Sept. 6, 2025–Mar. 15, 2026, cat. (not in cat.)

Field Museum of Natural History [The Field Museum], Chicago, by 1907 [note in Ledger Book, 1900–1913, 229; memo R5771, May 1935; copy in curatorial object file]; sold to the Art Institute of Chicago, 1907.

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Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

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IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world. Learn more.

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IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world.

Learn more.