Eastern Art Online, Yousef Jameel Centre for Islamic and Asian Art

Ashmolean − Eastern Art Online, Yousef Jameel Centre for Islamic and Asian Art

The Newberry Collection of Islamic Embroideries

An unpublished catalogue of the Ashmolean’s collection of Islamic embroideries from Egyptologist Percy Newberry, by Ruth Barnes and Marianne Ellis.

The Newberry Collection of Islamic Embroideries by Ruth Barnes and Marianne Ellis

Publications online: 1018 objects

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Textile fragment with band of cartouches and S-shapes

Location

    • currently in research collection

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Publications online

  • Embroideries and Samplers from Islamic Egypt by Marianne Ellis

    Embroideries and Samplers from Islamic Egypt

    The four repeating patterns illustrated here [EA1984.443, EA1984.329.a, EA1984.426, EA1984.435] provide us with a glimpse of some of the designs and stitches worked as narrow bands of decoration. The usual format for arranging bands of embroidery on square and rectangular cloths, as seen on the Newberry pieces, leaves the centre ground fabric plain and places three parallel bands along two opposite sides and one across each of the other two. However, two samplers in the collection show how patterns should be adjusted to turn corners, so it is clear that some embroideries did have continuous borders.

    The embroidery worked on the bands was sometimes very fine indeed; an example in the collection is even finer than that seen on No.60 [EA1984.329.a], where an interlace pattern has been carried out in stem stitch over a count of four threads on a cloth with a thread count of 36 to one centimetre. The patterns, colours and stitches illustrated here demonstrate the refined nature of this embroidery from the later period of Mamluk rule in Egypt.
  • The Newberry Collection of Islamic Embroideries by Ruth Barnes and Marianne Ellis

    The Newberry Collection of Islamic Embroideries

    A narrow blue band with a dark blue border, filled alternately with white cartouches with black frames, and white horizontal S-shapes with black borders.

    The band is 1.5 cm wide. The patterning of the band is apparently done with needle-woven bars on drawn thread.
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