Ottoman Silk Textile Fragment with Gilt Silver Embroidery

A nineteenth-century Ottoman textile fragment in silk, worked with gilt silver embroidery. Small in scale and frank about what it is, it belongs to that class of material that rewards close looking: the thread, the ground, the hand behind the stitch.

The piece comes from a study collection of fine Islamic textile fragments assembled with attention not only to design but to the range of techniques and materials employed, which is precisely what makes a fragment like this useful to have in hand.