Joined Tunic Bands: Dancers and Flowering Urns
4th-5th century CE
Description
This pair of tapestry-woven monochrome bands consists of a pattern of repeating kantharoi containing a pair of large grape vines. The left band has a nude female dancer between the urns, while the right band has a nude male dancer in the same position. Both are identifiable as dancers by their pose: one leg in front of the other, twisted torsos, bent arms with one hand raised high and the other dropped. The female dancer has a long curving object below her raised arm and a small area of color below her lower hand, perhaps these are the ends of the scarf used by Byzantine dancers to accentuate their movements. The male dancer has ivy shaped leaves around his legs and lower hand and below the elbow of his raised arm. Perhaps he is sprinkling these as he dances. The pair of tapestry bands with woolen light and dark woolen wefts would not have originally been combined in this way but would have been set within a field of undyed, plain-woven linen. Such fabric is visible on the outer edge of each band. Undyed linen warps run perpendicular to the length of the bands. The warps are not continuous in the area where the two bands have been positioned next to one another, demonstrating that this was not their original arrangement. Supplementary wefts in a light colored thread define details of the urns, leaves, and dancers; this is an example of the flying shuttle technique of supplementary weft wrapping.
Dimensions
4.45 x 40.64 cm (1 3/4 x 16 in.)
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