A Study of Some Early Islamic Textiles in the MFA Boston (Britton)

A Study of Some Early Islamic Textiles in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston is a book by Nancy Pence Britton, formerly assistant in the Museum's Department of Textiles, published by the Museum in 1938. ^{1 4} In her foreword she calls it a brief catalogue of representative Islamic textiles of the eighth to thirteenth centuries, mostly tapestry-weaving and embroidery with a few printed stuffs, excluding woven silks and brocaded woollens. ³ She thanks those who read inscriptions or suggested attributions, including Richard Ettinghausen, Gaston Wiet, Zaky Hassan, Carl Johan Lamm and R. Pfister, and notes that Zaky Hassan read the manuscript and made corrections. ³

An introduction (calligraphy, tiraz, technical evidence), then sections on Mesopotamia (eighth, tenth, and tenth to eleventh centuries), Egypt (transitional period, the Fayyum, Upper Egypt, Abbasid period, Fatimid period, miscellaneous twelfth–thirteenth-century pieces), the Yemen and Persia, followed by a chronological table and a select bibliography for the study of tiraz. ²

The author uses three kinds of evidence to date and place a piece: the content of the inscription, the style of its writing and ornament, and the technique and materials. ⁵ A linen ground usually points to Lower Egypt; wool to Mesopotamia, the Fayyum and Upper Egypt; silk or mulham to Persia and Mesopotamia; cotton to Mesopotamia and the Yemen; since cotton was very rare in Egypt, pieces containing it were probably made elsewhere. ⁶ She draws on R. Pfister's research at the Musée Guimet linking the appearance of a new red dye in Egyptian textiles with the time of the Arab conquest, and so includes transitional pieces formerly attributed to the pre-Islamic Copts. ⁶