{"product_id":"chintamani-imperial-verdigris-honey-fabric","title":"Chintamani Imperial, Verdigris \/ Honey Fabric","description":"\u003ch2\u003eThe Design\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e'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.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003eThe Source\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe cloth was made to be the most expensive thing in the room, and it succeeded.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBursa 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWoven 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThen 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe velvet was cut down and the empire is gone. The emblem it carried was never granted by anyone and never taken away.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003eThe Specifications\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eSource:\u003c\/strong\u003e Brocaded silk velvet, Bursa, Turkey. The Cleveland Museum of Art, accession 1943.313\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eSecond example:\u003c\/strong\u003e Silk Velvet Fragment with Tiger-Stripe and 'Cintamani' Design, 16th century, Turkey. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, accession 15.125.6, Gallery 460\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eRepeat:\u003c\/strong\u003e 8 in horizontal, 10 in vertical, half-drop\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eReferences:\u003c\/strong\u003e Louise W. Mackie, \u003cem\u003eSymbols of Power: Luxury Textiles from Islamic Lands, 7th–21st Century\u003c\/em\u003e (Cleveland Museum of Art \/ Yale, 2015), p. 291, fig. 8.10\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"NeoTex.cloud-2","offers":[{"title":"Linen Cotton Blend \/ Yard","offer_id":46265835356296,"sku":"164639-NTX-018-232-STX","price":88.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Linen Cotton Blend \/ Sample","offer_id":46265835389064,"sku":"164639-NTX-018-827-STX","price":8.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Upholstery Chenille \/ Yard","offer_id":46265835421832,"sku":"164639-NTX-133-232-STX","price":105.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Upholstery Chenille \/ Sample","offer_id":46265835454600,"sku":"164639-NTX-133-827-STX","price":8.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0679\/2914\/5480\/files\/tiled_preview_square_20260724_012844_67109204-fc71-42f7-ac05-b5ae8176c646.png?v=1785691073","url":"https:\/\/vintagebotanica.com\/products\/chintamani-imperial-verdigris-honey-fabric","provider":"vintagebotanica","version":"1.0","type":"link"}