Textiles

Mughal

• Part of a Jamawar (coat) length

  Circa 1700
  129 x 55 cms

Both selvages present, and one end of the length, indicated by six lines of silver thread about three centimeters from the bottom. Colours; buff ground, probably dyed rather than discoloured from white. Pattern in two greens and silver. Repeating pattern of trefoil leaf with serrated outlines, on a central stem.

Where the work is worn away there are faint traces of the red “Indian earth “ used in solution to stamp the outlines of the design. According to the Cyclopaedia of India this was in fact imported from the Persian Gulf via Bombay.

Leaf patterns in many forms were among the most favoured designs for patterning jamas in princely India in the 17th & 18th centuries, occurring in woven, painted and printed fabrics as well as embroideries. The embroidery is in the pervasive later Mughal Style which is associated with courts of the Deccan as well as Upper India.

The cloth retains parts of the three stamps in black ink, two rectangular and one round, all with Persian inscriptions.