AN OTTOMAN SILK AND METAL THREAD SERASER PANELOTTOMAN TURKEY, 18TH CENTURYAN OTTOMAN SILK AND METAL THREAD SERASER PANELOTTOMAN TURKEY, 18TH CENTURYGold and silver thread on a silk satin ground, decorated with a large central stylised flower within an ogival lattice joined by a crown intersecting another ogival lattice with rosettes and issuing stylised tulips, comprising several fragments couched to a light grey cotton backing42 1/8 x 26 1/2in. (107 x 67cm.)This sumptuous fragment was created using the seraser technique and would have originally been part of a kaftan or robes of honour, likely have been given as gifts to courtiers and foreign ambassadors. Used in the Ottoman Empire to produce silver- or gold-coloured silk fabrics by wrapping white or yellow silk yarns with very thin strips of silver or gold foil, the seraser technique was practiced by a relatively limited number of weavers. The earliest surviving examples show small-scale designs adorning narrow stripes (see examples in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. nos. 15.125.7 and 2003.519). By the mid-seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the scale of the designs had grown even larger, but the quality of the fabric had started to decline. The periodic enforcement of legal restrictions on the use of gold and silver in luxury fabrics had an undue impact on seraser production and ultimately led to its decline (Nurhan Atasoy and Walter B. Denny, Louise W. Mackie and Hülya Tezcan, Ipek. The Crescent and the Rose. Imperial Ottoman Velvets, London, pp. 220–22, 260–63). The most remarkable surviving Ottoman seraser fabric, with designs depicting Christ Enthroned, was sent from Istanbul as a gift to a sixteenth-century Orthodox Metropolitan of Moscow (Atasoy et al., op. cit., pp. 48-49, pl. 10). A fragment of a 16th century kaftan woven in gold using the seraser technique was sold in these Rooms, 26 April 2012, lot 235.细节 AN OTTOMAN SILK AND METAL THREAD SERASER PANELOTTOMAN TURKEY, 18TH CENTURYGold and silver thread on a silk satin ground, decorated with a large central stylised flower within an ogival lattice joined by a crown intersecting another ogival lattice with rosettes and issuing stylised tulips, comprising several fragments couched to a light grey cotton backing42 1/8 x 26 1/2in. (107 x 67cm.)