Object of the Month #6: A Made Up Monogram
A Made Up Monogram
Ottoman
Wrapping Cloth (Bohça) (2013.01.152)
March 2015
This month we have what on first glance appears to be simply
a scarf. It’s quite pretty, if faded and stained, with ornate off-white floral
embroidery outlined in dark brown, on a tan ground. The cloth and embroidery are stable, with only minor
fraying. It certainly looks old, but what else is there really to say
about it?
And then you realize that the embroidery was done by hand. And
that the brown outlines were executed in now-tarnished metallic thread, possibly
real gold or silver. And that the elaborate designs in the corners aren’t
curlicues, but highly stylized Arabic script (called a tughra, more on that below). What was once only a monochromatic
scarf has become something intriguing that raises several questions.
The scarf is square with hand-sewn rolled hems,
approximately 66 cm (26”) on a side. The base fabric is undyed Z-spun
linen in a balanced plain weave with occasional slubs. The off-white
embroidery thread is probably silk. When examined with a microscope, you
can see the construction of the metallic thread. It has a pale silk core
wrapped with a very narrow strip of metal, only a fraction of a millimeter
wide. Today the metal is tarnished, but in some places the original
brightness shines through. Gold doesn’t tarnish, and there are none of
the green highlights you might expect from copper, so it’s most likely silver.
The embroidery is all chain stitched. Chain stitching is a
non-reversible stitch, meaning that the scarf has a distinct front and back.
The
tughras are so abstract that it took some
time before I recognized them as writing. Essentially a very ornate Arabic
monogram, tughras were used by the sultans
of the Ottoman Empire. For example, 16th century Sultan Suleiman the
Magnificent’s tughra reads,
“Suleiman, son of Selim Khan, ever victorious.” This formula, more or less, was
used in all sultanic tughras. I had
hoped to translate the NMH tughras to
get a handle on the date of the scarf, only to discover they might not mean
anything at all.
While
I could identify a few individual letters and numbers (including “0125,” ٠١٢٥, at the center right, to
which I still haven’t been able to assign any significance), I needed an expert to make sense of the whole thing. I
contacted a modern tughra design company, and was surprised to learn that although
the word for victorious (“muzaffer,” مظفر)
might be present, the rest is probably decorative gibberish.
It’s also not really a scarf. It’s likely something called a bohça, a piece of fabric used as a wrapper to protect linens and clothing, and a common part of an Ottoman woman’s trousseau. This helps explain the elaborate decoration, because bohças, “exhibited the wealth of the bride and her family and her skill as en embroiderer.”[1] The metallic thread, as discussed above, as well as the tughras (even though only decorative) would have also implied wealth and status.
It’s also not really a scarf. It’s likely something called a bohça, a piece of fabric used as a wrapper to protect linens and clothing, and a common part of an Ottoman woman’s trousseau. This helps explain the elaborate decoration, because bohças, “exhibited the wealth of the bride and her family and her skill as en embroiderer.”[1] The metallic thread, as discussed above, as well as the tughras (even though only decorative) would have also implied wealth and status.
Wrapped in the bohça was a yellowed piece of index card reading, “Shawl over 100
years old, from / Near East, not China.” Assuming this is accurate, and
conservatively guessing the card is from no later than 1980, the bohça
would have a terminus
ante quem of 1880 (i.e., made no
later than 1880). My suspicion is that it may be several decades older. Unfortunately,
we have no additional information about its origin or donor.
It’s
very tempting to try to link the bohça to an alumnus/a, especially one
living in Turkey in the mid-20th century. There are even a few reasonable
candidates. However, the vagueness of the accompanying card is problematic. If
you believe the donor personally procured the object at its place of origin,
you would expect narrower identification than just “Near East, not China.” However,
it is plausible to imagine the child of an alumnus/a knowing little of its
origin, and donating it after his or her death, thus erasing previously known
context.
These gaps in our knowledge aside, that’s not a bad account for
a scarf that didn’t initially seem like it had much to say. If you’re
interested in learning more about the NMH bohça, or hearing a more speculative hypothesis
about the tughras, I hope you will
come visit the Archives.
Sara Karz Reid
Assistant Archivist
***
[1] Krody, S. B. (2000). Flowers
of Silk and Gold: Four Centuries of Ottoman Embroidery. London, Merrel: in
association with the Textile Museum, Washington DC, p. 72.
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