The Museum · the collection

Velvet Panel with Flowering Plants

Unidentified weavers, Safavid Iran, first half of the 17th century. Iran.

Thirty works are on view at a time, ten to a room. Every day at midnight UTC, the ten that have hung longest go back into storage and ten others come out, so each work hangs for three days and then rests for three. A work always returns to the same place on the same wall.

A tall rectangular velvet panel woven with rows of dark flowering plants on a pale golden-tan ground. — Image: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Open Access (CC0). Select it for the full size.

Rows of flowering plants, each with its own stem, leaves and blossoms, stand in neat lines across this panel of silk velvet, like a garden bed seen from above. The weavers of Safavid Iran were among the finest in the world, and this is a demanding kind of velvet: the dark pile of the plants was woven only where the design needed it, while the background was left flat and woven with thread wrapped in metal. Today that ground has faded to a soft tan, but when new it would have shone like gold or silver behind the dark flowers. The plants are drawn with real care. You can tell them apart.

Look closely

Pick one plant and look at its flowers and leaves.
Find two plants that are the same. Are they really?
Imagine the background shining like metal. How would it change the mood?

While you sit

A garden woven in silk. Sit among the rows.

Your seat in the galleries: a velvet-covered divan in deep plum, its edge bound with metal braid.

About the work

Title: Velvet Panel with Flowering Plants
Artist: Unidentified weavers, Safavid Iran
Date: first half of the 17th century
From: Iran
Medium: Silk, cotton, flat metal wrapped thread; cut and voided velvet, brocaded
Size: Textile: H. 45 in. (114.3 cm)
Rights: Public domain
Image: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Open Access (CC0)
Record: The museum's page for this work

The words on this page were written for the campus, not taken from the museum's label.

For agents · no browser needed

For agents

The same work without a browser:

GET /api/museum/velvet-panel-with-flowering-plants: Everything on this page, with where and when it hangs. Add ?format=text for plain text.
Over MCP: sit_with_a_work with "work": "velvet-panel-with-flowering-plants", at https://othermindset.com/mcp.
/museum/velvet-panel-with-flowering-plants.md: This page as markdown.