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ring bearer pillows
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ring bearer pillows - These catlike creatures are probably jaguars, shamanic animals of ancient mythological lineage and a frequently used motif in pre-Columbian textiles. Great garden builders as well as warriors, certain Persian rulers were known to have had outstanding plant collections, particularly of the exotic tulip. They often commissioned arts that featured images of the flowers they grew and prized. As a result Persian manuscripts and textiles reveal a catalogue of Near Eastern plants; the lost gardens of Safavid Iran have been reconstructed in part from these works. Carnations or pinks, the large upright standards of the iris, and the cupped petals of tulips are identifiable in this textile. This particular design is typical of Persian art of the second half of the seventeenth century. Scholars have suggested that it was influenced by the work of Shafi-i-Abbasi, a court painter who visited Mughal India and was inspired there by court interest in botanical illustration. He produced a number of naturalistic drawings for textiles, which seem to have been widely influential in Iran. Although the flower forms are natural, there is an element of artifice and restraint in the repeating vine pattern, which sprouts such disparate blooms, and the birds, which perch at such regular intervals. This balance between abstraction and naturalism was a permissible way to deal with Muslim theological opposition to the depiction of living forms. The weaving of this brocaded compound twill is exceptional in its fineness and detail. Prized in the Near East and coveted in the West, these fabrics found their way into European royal collections and churches in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Among the world's most famous artifacts, the Ardabil carpet and its mate in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, are products of the great floweri_ng of the arts, particularly those of textile and the book, under the Safavid rulers of Iran. The site of Ardabil in northwest Iran was sacred to these Shiite rulers; tradition holds that both carpets were presented to the shrine there as royal gifts, and current scholarship confirms this. Magnificent gifts to this shrine—an entire library of sacred and secular Islamic texts, a treasure of Ming dynasty porcelain, as well as lamps, si_lk brocades, and candlesticks confirm the esteem in which these princes held it. Both versions of the carpet are signed and dated early in the reign of Shah Tahmasp I, a renowned patron of the arts, and were probably made in Tabriz, a site of royal textile manufacturi_ng (r. 1524 - 1578). This carpet contains 35,000,000 knots and probably took eight to ten craftsmen more than three years to complete. The carpet's subtle design, dominated by a large central medallion, is typical of Tabriz work. The overall scheme seems largely abstract, but individual motifs have figural sources. Sixteen ogival shapes surround the central sunburst medallion, and a pair of mosque lamps in the vertical axis flank the design. The undulating border forms derive from Chinese cloud-band motifs. Over the shimmeri_ng indigo surface is a meticulously balanced, if botanically improbable, meander of blossom-laden vines. The blossoms are a typical Sasanian lotus palmette crossed with a Chinese peony, some in full bloom and others barely emerging from buds. At the center of the great medallion is a roundel shaped like a geometrical pool of the kind that still exists in the Islamic gardens of the Alhambra in Spain. Such pools were essential to both the design and concept of Persian gardens, an art form that evoked the pleasures of paradise for the Muslim believer. Identical inscriptions are woven into each of the carpets: "Except for thy haven, there is no refuge for me in this world: / Other than here, there is no place for my head. / Work of a servant of the court, Maqsud of Kashan, 946. " This evocation of a heavenly refuge is particularly appropriate for a work of art that recalls the abundance and fertility of the garden, the most powerful symbol of physical and spiritual peace in the Muslim world. This dalmatic is part of a rare complete set of ecclesiastical vestments surviving the troubled period of the Protestant Reformation in sixteenth-century Holland. Its preservation and that of its companion pieces today in the Metropolitan Museum of Art are of special interest because the robes share a linked symbolism and can be dated to 1570 from an inscription on one of the Metropolitan garments. "We are bent, not broken by the waves", reads the motto woven on the banderoles of the design, a particularly appropriate sentiment for Dutch Catholics. From the 1560s they had endured Protestant hostility against the church and its clergy, a situation prevailing in Utrecht until 1580, when Roman Catholic public worship was finally suppressed. This robe bears the coats of arms of the Van Der Geer and Van Culenborch families of Utrecht, probably confirming that the set was commissioned for use in a private chapel, a timely decision in light of events. The biblical imagery is also fitting; the bulrushes rising above the waves allude both to the inscription and to Moses, who led the Israelites out of their bondage in Egypt. The kesa became the prescrib_ed garment for priests. Obeying vows of poverty, they made these robes from donated pieces of old cloth and rags. Eventually the cloaks acquired the status of investiture and were handed down from master to disciple as symbols of priestly descent and authority. As Buddhist ceremonial observance became more complex and hieratic, the patchwork kesa, composed of finer and finer fragments, grew more luxurious. This seven-jo kesa minimizes the patchwork effect because it was apparently cut from one garment, a Noh robe, and thus retains a strong visual unity. It is patterned with chrysanthemums brocaded on a si_lk ground; the long floats of si_lk give the petals their shimmeri_ng appearance. Some of the blossoms are outlined in gold. The Four Directional Guardians of Buddhist cosmology are symbolized by the traditional small squares (shitenno) appeari_ng in the kesa's four corners. Elements of the allegorical vocabulary of Chinese ceremonial garb appear in this imperial hunting cloak, which is ornamented with some of the many traditional sacred Buddhist symbols that pervade Chinese art. The body of the cloak is a si_lk tapestry fabric woven in the kesi technique. Over its ground of yellow, a color the Manchu rulers reserved for their sole use, twines a graceful, naturalistic network of many-colored lotuses, stems, and leaves. The religious and allegorical allusions of the design begin in the high collarband, where an angular interlace pattern signifies the endless knot, a symbol for Buddha, and the circular rebus incorporates characters for happiness and long life. This message of salvation has been interpreted with technical virtuosity. The dalmatic is done in a flat tapestry weave, but its design imitates piled Italian velvets. ring bearer pillows 
