Description: Cover of woven silk and metal thread backed with roller printed cotton and faced with plain weave cotton.
Dark blue satin ground woven with a closely-packed pattern of curving stems, leaves and flower heads all worked in metal thread with twill binding. The metal thread is silver strip close S-wound on a deep yellow silk core. The effect created is a series of short vertical bands of blue satin. Each band has a pair of small leaves and a large flowerhead to either side of it and a V-shaped stem with leaves and flowerheads below it and, inverted, above it. Small tendrils link these elements to form a series of faint diamonds across the ground.
In the upper 4.5 cm of this piece the patterned is 'squashed' and there is a line without any weft interlacing with the warp, so this may indicate the end of a loom piece.
Backing: white ground printed with stems which bear composite blossoms in red, blue and yellow with green leaves. The stems seem to go in random directions to fill the ground.
Facing: bias cut blue cotton.woven silk, 1800s, Persian; Flowers