Collection record · Dress & textiles
Scarf
The collection record classifies this work as garment. It is dated early 1900s. Recorded culture or place: Africa, North Africa, Egypt, Assiut, Egyptian maker.
Explore the object recordOBJECT RECORD
A closer look at the details.
- Museum title
- Scarf
- Date
- early 1900s
- Culture / origin
- Africa, North Africa, Egypt, Assiut, Egyptian maker
- Materials and technique
- Probably cotton and silver-plated copper foil
- Dimensions
- Overall: 221 x 82.2 cm (87 x 32 3/8 in.)
- Artist / maker
- Not specified by the museum
- Museum
- The Cleveland Museum of Art
- Accession number
- 1974.1058
FROM THE MUSEUM
In the museum’s words
The following description is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art’s original English record.
Egyptians may have innovated tulle-bi-telli (“net with metal,” also called assiut) after the French introduced machine-made netted fabric (tulle) in the late 1800s. It drew from telli, an earlier metal embroidery technique. Diamond and rectangle designs formed by knotting flattened silver wire into black tulle indicate this scarf’s early age in the genre. Urban Egyptian singers and dancers performed in heavy, shimmering tulle-bi-telli costumes during the late 1800s through the mid-1900s. Elite Egyptian city dwellers also wore it. Similar ones were sold at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago and to tourists in Egypt, a possible origin for this example. In the US, tulle-bi-telli scarves were made into home decor and 1920s flapper-style clothing.
FOLLOW THE SOURCE
Text and image sources
The Cleveland Museum of Art · Gift of Mrs. Edward N. Dekker, Sr. · CC0
The summary is based on public collection data. Refer to the museum’s latest record for the title, date and attribution.
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