Textile ArtsByzantine5th-6th century

Textile Fragment: Rabbit

5th-6th century

Description

A slit tapestry square (tabula), woven from dark purple and undyed wool wefts on linen warps, is surrounded by several inches of plain/tabby woven linen fabric. The figural design is dark against a light background. At the center of the fragment is a running rabbit inside a medallion. The wide decorative border around the rabbit contains sections of delicate interlace (triple strand guilloche) with dots inside the lobes on all four sides, separated by vines and leaves at each corner. The vines and rabbit are outlined in buff thread and stand against false hatched backgrounds (false hatching creates a mottled effect by alternating light and dark threads in the weft. A crowstep border runs around the outside of the square. Supplementary weft wrapping ('flying shuttle') creates many of the vertical lines in the design (parallel to the warp direction), details of the rabbit, and the four dots outside the inner medallion. Strongly eccentric wefts can be seen in the curves of the figural design. The large slits to the right and left of the tapestry square are stitched closed. The square is inwoven with the warps grouped in the area of tapestry weave. Several pairs of self-bands, created by taking multiple threads together in the weft, decorate the areas of plain weave.

Classification

Textile Arts

Technique

Woven, mixed technique

Medium

Wool and linen

Culture

Byzantine

Period

Byzantine period, Early

Century

5th-6th century