OTTOMAN EMBROIDERY

deceive. Fraud is not unknown in the carpet and textile world where from time to time all too convincing forgeries are uncovered. 23

In the case of this group of textiles, there is no material evidence to suggest that they are not old. The relatively good condition of the dozen examples illustrated here is balanced by the distressed condition of others. 24 A comparison of the ground material where it has been protected from exposure to light by the embroidery

yarns and in the sewn-under ends reveals, as it should, that light fading has occurred. Dye analysis of two of the pieces yields natural dye sources consistent with those found in Ottoman textiles from the 16th century onwards. The blue is indigo, the yellow weld, the green indigo and weld mixed, and red is from madder in one case and from New World cochineal in the other. 25

If our textiles are forgeries, we might well ask, “of what?” It would be a unique approach to create a

XI .Below: Country Medallion, Ottoman embroideredpanel. Silk on silk, o.64 x 0.97m (2'1" x 3'2"). Private collection

14. Right: Ottoman silk kaftan with çintamani design facings worked in silk, gold and silver (detail), Turkey, ca. 1640. Topkapı Saray Museum, Istanbul, 35/1144, courtesy Alexandria Press, London

StephenPetegorsky

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new category of object, with no established market value, which would inevitably be subject to close scrutiny. Why use an unevenly woven silk ground, a different technique, a different fabric width, and feature a mixture of metropolitan and provincial styles of drawing? Would not more conventional materials, along with consistent court-style drawing, be easier to promote as real, and pass more easily into the marketplace? We may also wonder who would have the knowledge and talent to invent this new class of textiles, particularly as some of the motifs are quite rare. The design of ( IV ) is very close to that of a silk brocade fragment in the study collection at the Victoria & Albert Museum, but the brocade is Italian, in a repeat pattern, presumably copied from a lost Ottoman design. 26 It seems unlikely that a modern-day forger would choose, or even know, such a recondite design. The same embroidery also has an equally rare border pattern, one that appeared in Iznik tiles, but is known only through its publication in a grainy black and white photograph in 1952. 27 So, our forger could be a scholar, but would he or she have the ability to conceive the artistic, original, provincial design we see in ( XI ), and also invent an unknown openwork side finish? That we cannot yet pinpoint the place of manufacture of our embroideries does not say much in the light of the lack of firm evidence for the location of manufacture of various rug and textile products within the Ottoman Empire. The wholesale attribution of a large variety of carpets to Ushak, and the