Metal-Ground Textile with Birds, Deer, and Flowers
Exhibition of Persian Art, The Iranian Institute, New York, April 15-May 15, 1940, gallery 10, no. 20 as Silver Ground Silk Serge.
Two Thousand Years of Silk Weaving, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, January 23–February 28, 1944; Cleveland Museum of Art, March 26–April 17, 1944; Detroit Institute of Arts, May 12–June 4, 1944, no. 281 as Front of a Chasuble of Metal Brocade.
Masterpieces of Weaving, Denver Art Museum, May 15-June 30, 1945, no cat.
The Here and the Hereafter: Images of Paradise in Islamic Art, Asia Society, New York, June 27–September 8, 1991; Bowdoin College Museum of Art, September 26–December 15, 1991, no. 48b as Silk Brocaded Fabric with Birds and Sprays of Flowers.
Weaving Splendor: Treasures of Asian Textiles, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, September 25, 2021–March 6, 2022, no cat.
Safavid ruler Shah ′Abbas I (ruled 1588–1629) centralized Iranian silk manufacturing as a court-controlled industry that produced luxury textiles such as this for domestic and foreign markets. This panel traveled to Europe. We can tell this because the round neckline suggests that European designers intended to use it to make a court dress or religious garment.
The colorful decoration, featuring birds roosting in a rosebush, is an example of the "rose and nightingale" (bul-o-bul-bul) theme. Commonly referenced in Persian poetry and visual culture, this theme symbolized a lover and beloved.
With Arthur Upham Pope (1881-1969), New York and Itran, Iran, by 1932;
Purchased from Arthur Upham Pope by The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1932.
The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Handbook of the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1933), 86, (repro.).
Arthur Upham Pope and Phyllis Ackerman, A Survey of Persian Art vol. 3, Volume 2 Text, The Art of the Book, Textiles, Carpets, Metalwork, Minor Arts (London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1939), 2136.
Phyllis Ackerman, Guide to the Exhibition of Persian Art, exh. cat. (New York: The Iranian Institute, 1940), 269.
The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, The William Rockhill Nelson Collection, 2nd ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1941), 137, (repro.).
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2000 Years of Silk Weaving, exh. cat., (New York: E. Weyhe, 1944), 38, plate 65, (repro.).
Sheila S. Blair and Jonathan M. Bloom, Images of Paradise in Islamic Art (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1991, 63, 108, (repro.)
