Panel c. 19th century

This panel was created by an anonymous maker, and we don't know exactly when, or where. But its formal qualities offer a good starting point. The repeating, spiraling motifs suggest a possible origin in the Islamic world, where the denial of figuration led to abstraction and the exploration of geometry in architecture and decoration. But such patterns also appear in late-Renaissance Europe, where the rediscovery of classical texts led to a fascination with scrolling tendrils and leafy forms. The fact that the maker is anonymous suggests this was a functional object, perhaps for a domestic interior. Textiles are notoriously difficult to preserve. To understand the meaning of this panel, we might look at the history of interior decoration, the trade routes that carried goods and ideas between cultures, and even domestic inventories that would tell us about the people who lived with it. These kinds of historical resources help us understand how the social lives of objects give them meaning.