'Chintamani Imperial' begins in a fragment of early Ottoman brocaded velvet, woven in an imperial workshop at Bursa. Held in the Cleveland Museum of Art, with a second example at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, each jewel was carefully redrawn by hand — a ring inside a ring, three dots at its centre — to retain the character of the original.
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The Source
The cloth was made to be the most expensive thing in the room, and it succeeded.
Bursa was the Ottoman Empire's first capital and the centre of its silk trade — Iranian silk and domestic both, moving through the city and onto looms that turned it into the costliest cloth the empire produced. This piece came off a loom in an imperial workshop. The crimson pile is almost twice as dense as later monochrome velvets: density was the luxury, the part you could see from the doorway before you were close enough to see the pattern.
Woven into it, the çintamani — Sanskrit for a jewel that grants what you wish for. In Ottoman hands it became three discs, a ring inside a ring with three dots at the centre, and two wavy bands beneath. It turns up so often in Ottoman art that Cleveland's own record calls it a favoured motif and possibly an unofficial imperial emblem. Possibly, because no sultan ever decreed it. It was never law. The court simply kept choosing it.
Then the cloth came apart. What survives are fragments in two American cities — one in Cleveland, one in New York, the Met's piece twenty-eight inches by eleven and a half. That one was sold to the museum in 1915 by Indjoudjian Frères, dealers in Paris, and it went on show that same winter in the Special Exhibition of Textiles. Bought in one season, hung in the next. Four thousand miles from Bursa.
The velvet was cut down and the empire is gone. The emblem it carried was never granted by anyone and never taken away.
The Specifications
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Source: Brocaded silk velvet, Bursa, Turkey. The Cleveland Museum of Art, accession 1943.313
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Second example: Silk Velvet Fragment with Tiger-Stripe and 'Cintamani' Design, 16th century, Turkey. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, accession 15.125.6, Gallery 460
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Repeat: 8 in horizontal, 10 in vertical, half-drop
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References: Louise W. Mackie, Symbols of Power: Luxury Textiles from Islamic Lands, 7th–21st Century (Cleveland Museum of Art / Yale, 2015), p. 291, fig. 8.10
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.
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Composition: 100% polyester
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Width: 56 in printable (57 in full)
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Weight: 400 gsm
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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.
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Composition: 55% linen, 45% cotton
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Width: 54 in printable
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Weight: 250 gsm
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For: Upholstery, curtains, table linens, pillows
