A pair of silk embroidered fragments, Ottoman Epirus, probably Ioannina, Greece

probably from a bed valance, with pairs of parakeets and arabesque decorated beakers holding a bouquet of tulips and carnations (2)

Both panels have been professionally couched onto a modern textile covered stretcher. They are ready to hang. The printed catalogue image shows the fragments before they were mounted on stretchers. Measurements: LEFT HAND panel in the catalogue photograph: Mount measurements: natural coloured textile over a wooden mount: 57cm high, 50cm wide, 2cm deep; Panel measurements: 39.5cm at highest, by 46cm wide; with extra shaped complimentary cream coloured piece inset across the top, 2cm high and width of original panel. Fringe length: 12.5cm and shorter. This slightly smaller panel, has original selvedges on both sides. It has been cut across the top, in a slight curve, and has been couched against a section of later textile as backing. Lower end with formed from ground fabric, fringes approximately 12cm long fringing (some sections missing, as visible in the photograph). There is a small hole to the ground linen, in the top left hand corner to the ground underneath the tail feathers of the green parakeet. There is a small darned hole and 'nick' on the top left hand corner. Measurements: RIGHT HAND panel in the catalogue photograph: Mount measurements: natural coloured textile over a wooden mount: 57cm high, 50cm wide, 2cm deep; Panel measurements: 43.5cm at highest, by 46cm wide; with extra shaped complimentary cream coloured piece inset across the top, level with the top of the embroidered panel in left and right corners. Fringe length: 10cm and shorter. The larger panel, has original selvedges on both sides. Upper edge has been irregularly cut, and has been couched against a section of later textile as backing. The lower end has fringing formed from ground fabric, fringes approximately 10cm long. There are three small holes in the top right corner, on extreme right hand edge, and a small area of discolouration to the ground area near the beak of the parakeet in the top left corner. Overall in very good condition. Colour and embroidery in very good condition.
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The design of these embroideries is directly related to a motif found in a rare group of late 16th century Iznik tiles depicting two green parakeets flanking a fountain with its upper section planted with hyacinths and carnations, see for example an Iznik tile, circa 1575-1599, in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (Acc. No. C.139-1933), and another in the Benaki museum, Athens (Inv. 75).The emerald green was used for the first time in 1566/7 on the tiles of the mausoleum of Suleyman the Magnificent and was widely used in Iznik pottery in the 1570's onwards. In the embroideries illustrated here, the spray of carnations and tulips is in an arabesque decorated beaker or jug of a squat bulbous form associated with Timurid and Ottoman metalwork, and also seen in early Persian ceramics, as well as 16th century Iznik. The confronting lion motif was most likely appropriated from European armorials or velvets.    These motifs were integrated into the design repertoire of Ionninian and Ionian Island embroideries, where these and related motifs are used higgledy-piggledy across the field. The Benaki Museum, Athens, has two  fragments of Ionian Island embroidery from the 18th century: a bed valance, of which a grouping of similar motifs to those in the present panel is repeated three times within the main field, and the double handled vase is flanked by other motifs such as large cockerels, ships and people (72 by 353cm, Inv. 6308), and a smaller fragment with a single handed ewer with spout, showing a peacock to the right (37 by 48 cm, Inv. 1231).  

For a very similar textile fragment to that in the Benaki Museum cited above, with very similar motifs of carnations in a ewer flanked by parakeets, smaller birds, deer, and hints of the peacock tails at the edges, see an 18th century fragment, Ionian Islands or Epirus, silk on cotton, in the Metropolitan Museum, New York (170 by 38cm: Acc. No. 48.55.2 Rogers Fund, 1948).

For another comparable Ionian bed valance fragment, considered 17th century by Wace, with a stylised double headed eagle motif instead of the peacocks, similar dragon type motif, variation to the shapes and decoration to the vessels containing flowers depicted, perhaps to indicate some being metal and others being ceramic, and the similar combination of tulips and carnations in a container, see Wace, A. J. B., Mediterranean & Near Eastern Embroideries, Vol. II, 1935, (No.14) Plates XX, XXI (37 by 24 in.).