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of media in the 16th-17th century classical era: cloudbands ( VII , 9, 11), tulips ( III , 2, XII ), pomegranates ( V 1, 15 ), çintamani balls and stripes ( IX , 11), reciprocal trefoils ( VIII , 10), serrated leaves ( V , 7) and so on. However, many examples diverge from the stylistic norms of known Ottoman embroideries, either in the drawing of the pattern elements or in the overall layout and design. There are also many technical differences. Early Ottoman embroideries are rarely executed on a silk ground: linen is the norm, while the new group is without exception on silk. 4 Moreover, the silk is different from atlas, the finely woven satin we see in the occasional silk-ground example. Here the ground material is a relatively coarse, balanced plainweave, unevenly woven, with variations in the thickness of the silk yarns forming sections with differing textures. Traditional Ottoman embroideries are typically worked on lengths of fabric about 50cm (20") wide, but here the fabric is consistently narrower, about 30cm (12"), indicating the use of a narrower loom. Another notable difference is that the separate narrow lengths of fabric are joined before being embroidered. This means that the

embroidered decoration bridges the seams in the ground fabric (3). As a general rule Ottoman pieces are embroidered separately and then joined, producing breaks in the design and slight mismatches at the seams. Our group is also different in that in all but one example, the pattern is equally readable from both front and back, with only a small technical difference between the two faces. 5 Traditional early

III .Below left: Tulips,Ottoman embroidered panel. Silk on silk, o.69 x 0.74m (2'3" x 2'5"). Private collection

2. Above: Ottoman tulip design silk kaftan with seraser appliqué, Turkey, 17th century. Topkapı Saray Museum,Istanbul, 13-514. Courtesy Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Washington DC

3. Right: Detail of ( I ). The characteristic stitch has long floatsanda ridge along one edge of the motif, with the pattern crossing the joins. The design can be read on both sides of the fabric, but the raised edge appears only on the front

4. Below right: Detail showing the openwork edge found on some of the group

Ottoman embroidery tends to be more economical in the use of silk, and only occasionally is the pattern readable from the back. The most striking difference, however, is that most of the textiles in our group are worked in a single type of stitch not normally used in traditional pieces. Similar to a closed blanket stitch, it has long floats and a characteristic outlining ridge on one side of each motif (3). The presence of this ridge on the ‘right’ side of the textile is the sole difference in the appearance of the work on front and back. By contrast, traditional Ottoman embroideries use a variety of stitches on any given example: running stitch, atma, chain stitch, and others. Their surface has a distinctive and varied texture that is very different from the equally distinctive appearance of our group. 6

Some of our group also have a type of openwork running the full length of each side – a section about 12mm wide beginning some 10mm from the outer selvedges, where the warp threads are omitted. To create this openwork, the wefts are gathered in bundles of 8-12 threads and tied at the edges of this warpvoided section (4). No traditional early Ottoman embroideries are known with this feature. 7

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What can we infer about how and when our group were made? For the Ottomans, textile production was an important economic and artistic endeavour, highly organised in guilds and regulated by the state. 8 Patterns for fabrics such as silk brocades, velvets, and embroideries were based on designs that originated in the nakkaÎhane, or royal design ateliers. These created a repertoire of motifs for use in many media, including ceramics, metalwork, arms and armour, carpets, textiles and woodwork. The objects were manufactured in both royal and commercial workshops. The high style of 16th century Ottoman court art can be seen in the collections of the Topkapı Saray Museum in Istanbul, for instance in silk, gold and silver thread embroidered kaftans (14), or in a velvet portfolio embroidered with a cloudband design, also in silk, gold, and silver (9). But while these products of court workshops represent Ottoman embroidery at its grandest, most of what has come down to us in this medium consists of commercial and domestic production. In a culture where decorative textiles played an important role in daily life, embroidery offered a simple and accessible way of producing

IV . Right: City Medallion, Ottoman embroidered panel. Silk on silk, o.61 x 0.89m (2'0" x 2'11"). Private collection

5. Below left: Ottomangold embroidered leather book binding, Turkey, late 16th century. The central medallion design originatedin the arts of the book, but was also usedin ceramics, carpets, metalwork and wood-carving. Rare in traditional Ottoman embroidery, it appears in at least four of our group, including ( IV ) and ( XI ). Istanbul University Library, A6570. After Esin Atıl, The Age of Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent,Washington 1987, pl.19

StephenPetegorsky

fashionable designs. It required little in the way of equipment or capital and was by its nature the least organised of textile productions, much of it remaining a domestic activity outside the realm of guilds, regulations or organised marketing. 9 Thus most embroideries are worked in a style that is at several removes from the nakkaÎhane. Domestic or commercial embroideries show a freedom in motif interpretation that clearly differentiates them from court-designed objects. Although the patterns were still often drawn by specialist designers, their proximity to the

royal workshops and the extent to which they chose to replicate workshop designs varied widely. Embroidery has few technical limits as to what can be drawn, and close adherence to designs created by a court artist was always feasible. Yet such fidelity is only occasionally evident (5,9). 10

The most common compositions in traditional early Ottoman embroidery, published in numerous sources, 11 consist of short design repeats, either single elements in rows, or rows of alternating primary and secondary motifs. Sometimes they are in an ogival arrangement, or

NOTES

1| One exception is a small square example offered at the 10th ICOC dealers’ fair in Washington, DC in April 2003, which included some white and yellow. Since I saw the first one in March 2000 I have examined 23 examples, of which four are square, the rest yastık-shaped.

2| The first example to be published (IX) was sold as lot 143 at Rippon Boswell in Wiesbaden on 20 November 2004 (HALI 139, 2005, p.117). 3| Examples may yet be uncovered in museum collections. However, according to Walter Denny, during the ten years preceding the publication of Ipek. The Crescent & The Rose. Imperial

Ottoman Silks and Velvets(Nurhan Atasoy, Walter Denny, Louise Mackie and Hulya Tezcan, London, 2001) the authors visited the world’s major museum repositories of Ottoman silk textiles and came across no such silk embroideries. 4| An early large cover on a yellow silk ground and a later yastıkon a

yellow silk ground are published in Roderick Taylor, Ottoman Embroidery, Wesel, 1993, pp.76 and 182. An embroidered yastıkon yellow ground is published as pl.S 9/1 in Christian Erber (ed.), A Wealth of Silk and Velvet, Bremen 1993, although the composition of the ground fabric is not specified. An embroidered bohçaon

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