Cleveland Museum of Art

Fragment

Date

1200s–1300s

Medium

Block printing on plain weave cotton ground

Culture

Egypt, Mamluk sultanate (1250–1517)

Department

Textiles

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

The Indian technique of patterning a textile by printing with carved woodblocks came to the Mamluk world as a result of trade with India. At Fustat, outside of Cairo, numerous fragments of Indian and Mamluk printed textiles have been found. Fish, repeated to form the entire design of this textile, were an indigenous Egyptian motif. The break in the bodies of two of the fish reveals that two blocks were used to print each fish.

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