Figural Silk in Safavid Iran
Nazanin Hedayat Munroe
Synopsis:
Figural silk is the term used by art historians to identify textiles woven with images of human figures. Primarily produced in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Safavid Iran, the design process involved skilled textile specialists who worked in organized workshops and sometimes included signatures on their silk fabrics. This talk explores the key iconographies featured in surviving silks, workshop organization for silk weaving, the meaning of the images depicted (especially in relation to coeval manuscript paintings), and the use of figural silks in diplomatic exchange.
Selected References:
Bier, Carol, ed. Woven from the Soul, Spun from the Heart. Washington, DC: The Textile Museum, 1987.
Brend, Barbara. “Akbar’s ‘Khamsah’ of Amīr Khusrau Dihlavī: A Reconstruction of the Cycle of Illustration,” Artibus Asiae 49/3-4 (1988): 281–315.
Canby, Sheila. Shah Abbas: The Remaking of Iran. London: British Museum Press, 2009.
Ekhtiar, Maryam et al. Masterpieces from the Department of Islamic Art in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York City: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2011.
Langer, Axel, ed. The Fascination of Persia. Zurich: Verlag Scheidegger & Speiss AG, 2013.
Lassikova, Galina. “Hushang the Dragon-Slayer: Fire and Firearms in Safavid Art and Diplomacy,” Iranian Studies 43/1 (2010): 29–51.
Munroe, Nazanin. Sufi Lovers, Safavid Silks and Early Modern Identity. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2023.
Nizami Ganjavi. The Story of Layla and Majnun, translated by Rudolph Gelpke. New Lebanon: Omega Publications, 1997.Thompson, Jon. “Safavid Carpets and Textiles.” In Hunt for Paradise: Court Arts in Safavid Iran 1501-1576, edited by Jon Thompson and Sheila Canby, 271–318. Milan: Skira, 2003.
Citation:
Nazanin Hedayat Munroe, “Figural Silk in Safavid Iran,” Khamseen: Islamic Art History Online, published 23 January 2025.
Nazanin Hedayat Munroe is Associate Professor and Director of Textiles in Business & Technology of Fashion at City University of New York. An artist and art historian, she specializes in silks and fashion from the early modern Persianate world. She is author of Sufi Lovers, Safavid Silks and Early Modern Identity (Amsterdam University Press, 2023), which received the Henry Wasser Award for Outstanding Research, as well as Skilled Immigrants in the Textile and Fashion Industries (Bloomsbury, 2024) and A Cultural History of Western Fashion (Bloomsbury, 2022). She has published her research in the Textile Museum Journal, Journal for Textile Design, Research and Practice, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, where she was an educator and textile specialist from 2011 to 2016.