# Fragment (Border from Wide Towel)

- By: Republic of Türkiye
- Date: 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
- Credit line: Gift of Burton Y. Berry
- Museum: [Art Institute of Chicago](https://www.artic.edu/artworks/79204)
- Rights: [Public domain (CC0)](https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)
- Picture: https://www.artic.edu/iiif/2/a80452b3-a077-dec1-bdcd-2d4081ba922a/full/!1920,914/0/default.jpg
- Who can see it: Little Ones profiles and older (museums give no ratings; placed by Invisible Network from the museum's own words)

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)

Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0