A RARE LAMPAS FRAGMENT, INDIA, 15TH-16TH CENTURY. Photo Sotheby's

woven with a lattice of petalled ogees alternating in offset rows, each containing paired confronting makaras and yalis arranged symmetically round floral rosettes and roundels;59 by 35.2cm. Lot Sold: 8,500 GBP

NOTE: This fragment belongs to a rare group of early silks from India, that are woven with a distinctive palette and technique of lac red main warps, pink or red binding warps, red ground wefts, and yellow, white, and either blue, green or turquoise pattern wefts (Steven Cohen 1995 p.29). The complex designs are produced on a drawloom. When exactly the lampas technique was introduced into India is still unknown. There is evidence that supports the use of the drawloom in India before the establishment of Mughal rule in the mid-sixteenth century. The origin of lampas lies inthe proto-lampas weaves produced in Persia at the end of the tenth century. Workshops in Southern Spain began producing lampas during the eleventh and twelth centuries and by the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, Lucca in Italy, had become a centre for lampas silks. During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, lampas was being woven primarily in the Near and Middle East and areas of Asia. A group of rare Chinese fragments originating from Central Tibet monastries are dated to the early fifteenth century (Riboud 1998, p. 17).
The stylisation of the makaras and yalis relate closely to Deccani manuscript illumination, metalwork and architecture of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; the Nujum al Ulum manuscript fol. 191r, Bijapur, 1570-1, shows rows of felines with upraised paws a motif typical to the Deccan. Similar creatures appear in late fifteenth-century Deccani bronze incense burners and also on stone and stucco decoration at Bidar (Zebrowski 1997, p.107, pl.106,108-113). 
Almost identical fragments are found in the collection of the AEDTA (Riboud 1998, pp.70-79, pls.7-9) and The David Collection (von Folsach 2001, no.675).

Sotheby's. Arts of The Islamic World. London | 06 Apr 2011 - www.sothebys.com