A 14th Century Textile of Islamic or Italian Origin

As a part of my ongoing research I'm attempting to explore a new extant textile week. This week I thought it would be appropriate to highlight the textile I chose for my background.  

This textile can be found Here at the MET and is a part of thier Islamic textile collection. 

This is one of my favorite extant textiles. The colors in this particular photograph are lovely. It's intricate so keeps your eyes moving and engaging with the fabric. It's got both a pomegranate floral style motif, and rabbits, so I suspect it is very likely to be a late 14th century fabric. This particular Silk is attributed to both Islamic textiles and Italy. The providence and reference suggests that it's more likely to be middle eastern in origin. 

One aspect that I find fascinating is that this silk has texture. The gold colored motif stands out from the ground, it has lager threads with visible stitches. 

The blue ground shows no threads, indicating a very fine cloth, also wear pattern suggests that it might be a velvet. 

A few close ups of the texture!

One of the things I'm currently studying is how contact with the Islamic world affected the fashion of the early 15th century Europe, so the fact that this fabric is attributed to both is a bit frustrating but also highlights how much the trade and contact was influencing the Silk Industries.

Bisous 

~Isabelle~