Textile Fragment: Duck and Flowers
c. 500-599 CE
Description
Against a red background, a duck woven from undyed wool with red details walks along a slightly sloping, stylized ground line. The duck is framed by a thin square line of undyed wool. Blue, green, and yellow buds and rosettes form a wide border surrounding the duck and fill the remainder of the red background. The repeating block motif below the ground line echoes the dentil border surrounding the red square. A black line at top of the fragment hints at the textile's additional decoration that is now lost. The duck’s red feathers and eye are executed in the flying shuttle technique of supplementary weft wrapping. In the areas of the six colored rosettes, three supplementary weft floats are introduced to create the diagonal and vertical lines separating the petals. These wefts then form a tapestry weave of 10 picks making up the centers of the flowers, and then again become supplementary floats over the tapestry woven petals.
Dimensions
12 x 11.5 cm (4 3/4 x 4 1/2 in.)
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