Object
Plain weave
27,80 x 44,80 cm
, 300 - 499
RKM 348-1930
Purchase
Currently not on display
Description
While most tunics are decorated only in certain areas, all-over patterned garments were extraordinary and luxurious. For weaving such a small-scale, all-over repeat pattern like on the present fragment, special skills were required, as the complex technique – a taqueté or compound tabby weave – is based on two sets of warp and weft.
The present fragment is from the bottom corner of a woollen taqueté tunic, preserving part of the tunic’s bottom horizontal edge and vertical side edge. Matching fragments from the same tunic are held in other collections; they reveal that the wide violet band belonged to the clavi and that the tunic was sleeveless. The all-over pattern shows hunting scenes, in undyed colour against a red background, including riders, archers and spear-bearers attacking lions and deer.
Literature
Marianne Erikson, [drawings by Märta Oldfors and Ingela Berntsson ; photographs: Alf Bokgren, Øysten Brochs ; language scrutineer: Skans Victoria Airey], Textiles in Egypt 200-1500 A.D. : in Swedish museum collections, Göteborg, 1997, p. 158, ill. p. 159