Chintamani Tiger in blackcurrant and marigold: triple-disc chintamani roundels above paired wave bands, translated from a 15th-century Bursa silk velvet at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. tiled preview square
Chintamani Tiger in blackcurrant and marigold: triple-disc chintamani roundels above paired wave bands, translated from a 15th-century Bursa silk velvet at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. cohort1 vb chair
Chintamani Tiger in blackcurrant and marigold: triple-disc chintamani roundels above paired wave bands, translated from a 15th-century Bursa silk velvet at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. cohort1 vb curtains
Chintamani Tiger in blackcurrant and marigold: triple-disc chintamani roundels above paired wave bands, translated from a 15th-century Bursa silk velvet at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. cohort1 vb dining
Chintamani Tiger in blackcurrant and marigold: triple-disc chintamani roundels above paired wave bands, translated from a 15th-century Bursa silk velvet at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. cohort1 vb parlor
Chintamani Tiger in blackcurrant and marigold: triple-disc chintamani roundels above paired wave bands, translated from a 15th-century Bursa silk velvet at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. ruler
Chintamani Tiger in blackcurrant and marigold: triple-disc chintamani roundels above paired wave bands, translated from a 15th-century Bursa silk velvet at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. fabric fold mockup
Chintamani Tiger in blackcurrant and marigold: triple-disc chintamani roundels above paired wave bands, translated from a 15th-century Bursa silk velvet at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. cohort1 linencottonblend texture
Chintamani Tiger in blackcurrant and marigold: triple-disc chintamani roundels above paired wave bands, translated from a 15th-century Bursa silk velvet at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. cohort1 upholsterychenille texture
Chintamani Tiger in blackcurrant and marigold: triple-disc chintamani roundels above paired wave bands, translated from a 15th-century Bursa silk velvet at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. designs flat mockup
Chintamani Tiger in blackcurrant and marigold: triple-disc chintamani roundels above paired wave bands, translated from a 15th-century Bursa silk velvet at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. tiled preview square
Chintamani Tiger in blackcurrant and marigold: triple-disc chintamani roundels above paired wave bands, translated from a 15th-century Bursa silk velvet at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. cohort1 vb chair
Chintamani Tiger in blackcurrant and marigold: triple-disc chintamani roundels above paired wave bands, translated from a 15th-century Bursa silk velvet at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. cohort1 vb curtains
Chintamani Tiger in blackcurrant and marigold: triple-disc chintamani roundels above paired wave bands, translated from a 15th-century Bursa silk velvet at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. cohort1 vb dining
Chintamani Tiger in blackcurrant and marigold: triple-disc chintamani roundels above paired wave bands, translated from a 15th-century Bursa silk velvet at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. cohort1 vb parlor
Chintamani Tiger in blackcurrant and marigold: triple-disc chintamani roundels above paired wave bands, translated from a 15th-century Bursa silk velvet at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. ruler
Chintamani Tiger in blackcurrant and marigold: triple-disc chintamani roundels above paired wave bands, translated from a 15th-century Bursa silk velvet at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. fabric fold mockup
Chintamani Tiger in blackcurrant and marigold: triple-disc chintamani roundels above paired wave bands, translated from a 15th-century Bursa silk velvet at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. cohort1 linencottonblend texture
Chintamani Tiger in blackcurrant and marigold: triple-disc chintamani roundels above paired wave bands, translated from a 15th-century Bursa silk velvet at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. cohort1 upholsterychenille texture
Chintamani Tiger in blackcurrant and marigold: triple-disc chintamani roundels above paired wave bands, translated from a 15th-century Bursa silk velvet at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. designs flat mockup

Chintamani Tiger, 08.109.23: Blackcurrant / Marigold Fabric by the Yard

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'Chintamani Tiger' begins in a fifteenth-century silk velvet woven on a Bursa loom. Translated from a loom-width fragment in The Metropolitan Museum of Art — one of several pieces cut from a single bolt, now scattered across several museums — the çintamani was carefully redrawn by hand to retain the character of the original, so a thousand-year-old emblem reads across a room.

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The Source

The shape is older than the cloth by six hundred years, and it began as a wish.

Çintamani is Sanskrit for a jewel that grants what you ask of it. In Buddhist art it sits as three flaming pearls in the headdress of a bodhisattva. By 1383 it is on coins struck at Samarkand — Timur had taken the three circles for his own badge, and what had been a jewel was now the mark of a conqueror. It kept moving. By the later fifteenth century it is in nearly every medium of Ottoman art, and it has changed species: Ottoman sources call it benekli, spotted, and pelengi, leopard-like. Walter Denny writes that the form gathered, alongside good luck and the warding off of evil spirits, a distinctly masculine aura — probably from the leopard-skin helmet and tiger-skin coat worn by Rustam, the hero of the Persian epic. The drawing never changed. The meaning kept turning into power.

Then it was woven into this. A full loom width of silk velvet, twenty-nine and a half inches with a selvedge on both edges, the pile dyed dark purple-red with expensive insect dye, the pattern brocaded in ivory silk wrapped with thin strips of silver. Probably cut from the back of a garment. Someone wore this.

That did not last. The silver tarnished to dark grey, so what hangs in Gallery 459 is darker than what came off the loom. The bolt was cut apart and sold in pieces — others are at the Textile Museum in Washington and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. This piece reached Dikran Kelekian, a dealer in New York, who sold it to The Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1908.

The silver went dark and the bolt came apart. The shape did neither. It has been moving for a thousand years and it has never once depended on the cloth it was carried on.

The Specifications

  • Source: Fragmentary Silk Velvet with Repeating Tiger-stripe and 'Chintamani' Design, second half 15th century, Bursa, Turkey. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, accession 08.109.23


The Cloth

Decor Chenille

A short, dense pile with a velvet-like surface on a firm woven ground. Fine striations catch the light as it moves across the room, deepening the colour. Substantial weight keeps a clean line on upholstery and gives tailored drapery a decisive fall.

  • Composition: 100% polyester
  • Width: 56 in printable (57 in full)
  • Weight: 400 gsm
  • For: Upholstery, cushions, headboards, heavy drapery

Cotton Linen

A fine, even linen-cotton weave. Colour prints cleanly while the woven surface remains visible, keeping solid grounds from going flat without softening fine linework. Light in the hand, it falls in narrow, supple folds and filters light rather than blocking it.

  • Composition: 55% linen, 45% cotton
  • Width: 54 in printable
  • Weight: 250 gsm
  • For: Upholstery, curtains, table linens, pillows

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