Cart
0
Product
Products
(empty)
No products
Free shipping!
Shipping
0 €
Total
Product successfully added to your shopping cart
Quantity
Total
There are 0 items in your cart. There is 1 item in your cart.
Total products
(tax incl.)
Total shipping (tax incl.)
Free shipping!
Total
(tax incl.)
13
Fragment of an early antique wall hanging
New
45 x 25 cm (1' 6" x 10")
Middle East, 5th-6th century
Condition: Fragment, composed of several pieces, sewn onto fabric
Wool on linen fabric
In addition to the thousands of flat-woven Coptic fragments, textiles made using the pile-forming nub technique are very rare. This is partly due to the more complex weaving technique and partly to the fact that clothing was far more commonly found in desert tombs than furnishing textiles. Among these, it is wall hangings in particular that feature pile. These hangings often depict figures, biblical characters, and other mythological personifications.
A large example in the Benaki Museum in Athens shows a man and a woman with their hands raised in prayer under an arch resting on columns. In the British Museum in London, there is a figure, probably a man, who raises only one hand
(James Trilling, "The Roman Heritage", p. 94). In the Louvre, there is a captivating depiction of Jonah rising from the whale with both hands raised (Égypte, la trame de l'histoire, Paris 2002, fig. 2). In the Rietberg Museum, we also find two faces, numbers 88 and 89, in the catalog "Textiles from Egypt", Zurich 1976.
What all these faces have in common is that the eyes are depicted with slightly lowered eyelids. Only the whites of the eyes are visible to the right and left of the pupils. An exception with wide-open eyes was shown in "Favorite Fabrics from the Katoen Natie Textile Collection", illustration 1. In Austria, too, a face was published in nubby technique, prominently featured on the cover of a catalog. The director of the TKF, Peter Bichler, writes in "Antike koptische Textilien in österreichischem Besitz" ("Ancient Coptic Textiles in Austrian Ownership") that the way the faces are depicted departs from the classical Greek style and develops its own Coptic style.
Estimate: € 6000 - 8000
Middle East, 5th-6th century
Condition: Fragment, composed of several pieces, sewn onto fabric
Wool on linen fabric
In addition to the thousands of flat-woven Coptic fragments, textiles made using the pile-forming nub technique are very rare. This is partly due to the more complex weaving technique and partly to the fact that clothing was far more commonly found in desert tombs than furnishing textiles. Among these, it is wall hangings in particular that feature pile. These hangings often depict figures, biblical characters, and other mythological personifications.
A large example in the Benaki Museum in Athens shows a man and a woman with their hands raised in prayer under an arch resting on columns. In the British Museum in London, there is a figure, probably a man, who raises only one hand
(James Trilling, "The Roman Heritage", p. 94). In the Louvre, there is a captivating depiction of Jonah rising from the whale with both hands raised (Égypte, la trame de l'histoire, Paris 2002, fig. 2). In the Rietberg Museum, we also find two faces, numbers 88 and 89, in the catalog "Textiles from Egypt", Zurich 1976.
What all these faces have in common is that the eyes are depicted with slightly lowered eyelids. Only the whites of the eyes are visible to the right and left of the pupils. An exception with wide-open eyes was shown in "Favorite Fabrics from the Katoen Natie Textile Collection", illustration 1. In Austria, too, a face was published in nubby technique, prominently featured on the cover of a catalog. The director of the TKF, Peter Bichler, writes in "Antike koptische Textilien in österreichischem Besitz" ("Ancient Coptic Textiles in Austrian Ownership") that the way the faces are depicted departs from the classical Greek style and develops its own Coptic style.
Estimate: € 6000 - 8000