Ottoman Embroidered Textile

An outstanding example of eighteenth-century Ottoman embroidered textile. Pink roses are embroidered onto the blue silk satin ground in metal-wrapped and silk threads. At the centre and corners are more elaborate floral bursts, featuring sunflowers face on. The border is decorated with a vine from which sprout different flowers and leaves. The flowers would have been sketched out and then filled with tambour stitch, a chain stitch created with a hook. This stitch originated in India and is now closely associated with suzani textiles.1 The stems of the roses stand out, stitched in metal-wrapped threads. 

The staggered rows of roses resemble the layout of contemporaneous Persian textiles, such as three fragments in the George Washington Textile Museum, Washington, D.C. (accession nos 3.273, 3.183, and 3.113). The distinguishing feature of the Ottoman examples is that they are hand-embroidered, rather than woven on a loom. 

This large textile may have been a bedspread (yorgan yüzü) or wall hanging to keep the home warm in winter. The rich silks were also used as ostentatious status symbols. The Sünnet, or circumcision ceremony, was an occasion to display a family’s most precious textiles. Celebrated in the women’s quarters, a professional would come to the home to dress a bed with canopies and covers.2

A barber's apron made from similar blue satin and embroidered with flowers in tambour stitch is in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (accession no. T.258-1934), dated to the 18th century.3 Another similar barber’s apron and matching towel, dated to the second half of the 18th century, are in the Sadberk Hanım Museum, Istanbul (nos. SHM 12129 – İ.1185 and SHM 12130 – İ1186).4 In the same collection, there are two blue wrapping cloths embroidered with tambour stitch on a blue ground, also dated to the 18th century. One is decorated with grape vines (SHM 10447 – İ.1047) and the other with tents (SHM 10682 – İ.1109).5

[1] Royal School of Needlework, ‘Jacket’ RSN.23, retrieved online via https://collections.royal-needlework.org.uk/object-rsn-23 on 12th November 2025. 
[2] Taylor, Roderick. Ottoman Embroidery. Wesel: Uta Hülsey, 1993, p. 110.
[3] Pictured in Johnstone, Pauline. Turkish Embroidery. London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 1985, pl. 9, cat. 33. 
[4] Pictured in Hülya, Bilgi and İdil Zanbak. Ottoman Embroideries in the Sadberk Hanım Museum Collection: Skill of the Hand, Delight of the Eye. Istanbul: Vehbi Koç Foundation / Sadberk Hanım Museum, 2012, cat. 36, pp. 138–139. 
[5] Ibid., cat. 18, pp. 94–95 and cat. 20, pp. 1001–101.