Summary
● Investigators aim to conduct characterisation analysis over more than 30 pieces of embroideries and tapestries fabricated with metallic thread kept across different global collections.
● Samples from these fragments will be sent to laboratory to conduct Proteomic, HPLC, C14 and SEM analysis on them.
● The research will crystallise into different outcomes, including a publication.
Dr Juan de Lara and Dr Ana Cabrera-Lafuente have launched Project Goldthread, a survey that aims to investigate and analyse the technique and history of a selection of embroideries and silk tapestries fabricated with gold thread, specifically the thread made of gilded membrane wrapped around a silk yarn. The production of these gold cloths is attested both in literary accounts and extant fragments dating consistently from the tenth to the twelfth century. Our objective is to systematically study, for first time, these textiles as a group, so to establish common and discordant characteristics. These extant fragments have been dated and attributed, rather vaguely, based on their findspot and ancient sources, to workshops in either Iraq, Iran, al-Andalus or Egypt. Despite their delicate beauty and expensive nature, this corpus has been understudied and their production centres remains open.
This project is a result of more than three years of preliminary research between archaeologist and Islamic art specialist Juan de Lara and archaeologist and textile specialist Ana Cabrera-Lafuente. In 2016, both investigators began researching these textiles during De Lara’s thesis at SOAS, London. Both researches mapped out a series of fragments, some of them lost, some of them not previously studied, and compared them, then they realised that 1) all fragments shared technical characteristics, 2) the production is circumscribed to a very specific period that goes from the tenth to the twelfth century and finally, 3) that the fragments can be paired with a multitude of literary accounts that list specific production centres (more than 190 accounts currently collated).
The project is kindly funded by the Barakat Trust and the Marie S.-Curie Fellowship project Interwoven (funded by European Commission no. 703711). The outcomes of the research include a well-illustrated and comprehensive publication, accompanied by a series of conferences and seminars, training workshops and published publications.
Co-directors
Dr Juan de Lara (KRC, Oxford)
Dr Ana Cabrera Lafuente (Spanish Institute of Tourism, Cultural Heritage Area, Madrid)
Published outcomes:
De Lara, J. and Cabrera Lafuente, A., 2025 (forthcoming). “The Pegasus Cloth: Unveiling an Islamic Masterpiece from the Abbasid Caliphate” The Textile Museum Journal 52: Special Edition - The Textile Museum Centennial.
Cabrera Lafuente, A. And De Lara, J., 2025 (forthcoming). “The Shroud of Lacarre: Exploring the biography of a monumental Islamic calligraphic gold cloth” in Alexandra Makin (ed.) The Entangled Worlds of Textiles from the 1st – 12th Centuries CE (Liverpool University Press).
De Lara, J. 2023. “Set the Gaze on Fire:” Gold-Cloth Furnishing and Sacred Propaganda in the Courts of Early Islam” (Published MA dissertation). Journal of Material Cultures in the Muslim World.
