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Fragment (Border from Wide Towel)

1775‒1900

Medium: Linen, plain weave; embroidered with silk and metallic strip wrapped thread and metal paillettes
Classification: Textile
Dimensions: 21.6 × 99 cm (8 1/2 × 39 in.)
Culture: Turkey
Museum: Art Institute of Chicago, Textiles
Credit line: Gift of Burton Y. Berry
Rights: Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
Who can see it: Little Ones profiles and older: it shows gentle subjects for the very young. How works are placed

About this work

This embroidered textile fragment was cut from the ends of a bath towel. During the 19th and early 20th centuries, Europeans were fascinated by these intricately decorated textiles and fervently collected them, creating a market for fabric fragments. European influence on the market led to stylistic shifts: the stylized floral imagery of earlier periods was replaced with architectural forms and detailed depictions of nature, as seen in this example.

—Atlas Defne Erkan (Turkish), graduate student in art history, University of Edinburgh; School of the Art Institute of Chicago (BFA 2025)