Festive Dress from Qalamun
An early 20th-century festive dress from Syria's Qalamun region: off-white cotton with a red embroidered front panel that rises to a peak like a roof. Full commentary ↓
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Festive Dress from Qalamun is a textile by an unknown maker (probably early 20th century) in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. It measures 144.8 cm.
In the pictureA long dress of off-white cotton is shown on a mannequin. An embroidered panel that starts below the chest and runs to the hem converges at the top into a pointed triangle, worked with lattice and floral patterns in red, green and metal thread. The same embroidered band appears at the cuffs, and the front has a narrow opening.
BackgroundQalamun is a mountainous region between Damascus and Homs, and festive dress from this area is distinguished by finishing the front embroidered panel in a peak like a roof. Comparing it with a Qutayfah dress from the same part of Syria shows how ground color and the placement of embroidery distinguished villages. The use of metal thread was an early 20th-century fashion.
Puzzle tipFit the pointed top of the embroidered panel and the cuff band pieces first to set the structure of the dress. Join the embroidered pieces along the direction of the lattice, and place the off-white pieces by the mannequin's outline and the folds of the dress. 100 pieces is about right.
- Classification
- Main dress-Womenswear
- Medium
- Cotton, silk, metal wrapped thread; plain weave, embroidered
- Dimensions
- 144.8 cm
- Credit line
- Gift of Clara Sobernheim, 1952
Source: The Metropolitan Museum of Art ↗
Stories about this work
- Syrian Festive Dresses and Albanian Wedding Ensembles Whose Embroidery Names the Village
Festive dresses from Quteife, north of Damascus, and the mountainous Qalamun region are told apart by their embroidery. Add two gold-thread wedding ensembles from Albanian towns, and we assemble five garments from the Met's Islamic Art department as puzzles.
