Angels and elephants: Rosemary Crill examines two remarkable embroidered Indian textiles at Hardwick Hall, Derbyshire, a Gujarati floorspread, probably dating from the early eighteenth century, and a rare Bengali quilt that may have been made in the late sixteenth century

Apollo, Nov, 2004 by Rosemary Crill

Amongst the hundreds of important historic textiles that survive at Hardwick Hall in Derbyshire are two important Indian trade embroideries; one from the Gujarat region, the other from Bengal. Unique in the collection, they are the only pieces from the sub-continent. The builder of Hardwick, Elizabeth, Countess of Shrewsbury (c. 1527-1608), or 'Bess of Hardwick', married four times each successive husband wealthier than the last--and, as the owner of great estates in northern England, became one of the richest and most formidable women of the Elizabethan age. It is not known how the two embroideries entered the Hardwick collections, but Bess, who evidently had an interest in textiles, not least in embroideries, would surely have appreciated the beauty and craftsmanship of Indian pieces such as these.

It has been suggested, notably by the textile historian John Irwin, that at least one of these pieces can be associated with the embroideries described in the 1601 inventory of the contents of Hardwick Hall, taken to accompany Bess's will. (1) Neither one, however, corresponds very closely to the two candidate entries: '[In the wardrobe] a quilt of yellow stuff embroidered with birds and beasts' and, in the Little Chamber within the best Bedchamber, 'a quilt of India stuff embroidered with beastes'. (2)

Convincing himself that the Gujarati floorspread (Fig. 1) must be one of the 'quilts' described above, Irwin argued that: 'it is necessary to consider a sixteenth-century dating [for it] in light of the Hardwick inventory' (which he mistakenly believed had been taken in 1603). (3) While acknowledging that the descriptions were not sufficiently detailed to identify any piece absolutely, he went on to say: 'it is nevertheless not improbable that it was among those listed'. Irwin was rarely wrong in his assumptions about Indian textiles, but in this case he was also mistaken in believing that very few items had entered the Hardwick collection after the 1601 inventory was drawn up (a situation that would certainly have strengthened his case if it were true). We now know that many of Bess's successors were, in fact, almost as avid collectors of textiles as she was, and that the process of enlarging the textile collections at Hardwick continued over three centuries. (4)

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Leaving aside any supposed connection with the 1601 inventory, how can these embroideries be placed in the history of the Indian trade in embroideries with Britain?

The Gujarati floorspread

The floorspread has a classic Mughal arrangement, with a central, lobed medallion and corner elements, surrounded by a wide borden. It is of white cotton, embroidered in typically Gujarati chain stitch in brilliantly coloured silk. The field is patterned with flowering trees and Mughal-style angels or peris and there is a wide border with a scrolling design of flowers and birds. There is no particular reason to think that it was made for export to the West, although this format tended to cross over into both the domestic and foreign markets, and could be used as a summer carpet or floorspread in India or a wall-hanging or bed-cover in the West. (It is referred to as a bed-cover at Hardwick.)

Just as the layout of the piece is completely conventional, its very competent decoration would be typical of a rather standard piece were it not for the addition to the design of trees and, even more unusually, winged angels (Fig. 4), and it was very probably these elements that persuaded Irwin to assign it a late sixteenth-century date. This type of upright flowering tree, usually with a flanking pair of animals or human figures, was a popular one in Mughal decorative arts during and following the reign of Akbar, the third Mughal emperor of India (1556-1605), and can be seen in many different media.

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Perhaps its closest parallel in western India are the designs on the inlaid woodwork of Gujarat and Sindh, dating mostly from the seventeenth century, many examples of which were made for export to the West. Fig. 2 shows an inlaid altar frontal (now in the form of a table top) for a Christian church, decorated with similar trees and flanking elephants and human figures. The angels, or peris, on the floorspread, very distinctive in style, ark unusual motifs to find on an embroidery; more often they are used in miniatures and wall paintings, or on painted boxes, as in Fig. 3. Peris like these are derived from a mixture of Islamic (especially Iranian) and Western imagery in a way that typifies the Mughal tendency to amalgamate decorative elements from a variety of sources.

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The angels' multicoloured wings can also be paralleled in Mughal paintings of the late sixteenth century: angels with wings of coloured feathers can be seen, for example, in three separate illustrations of the story of Tobias and the angel. (5) The depiction of the angels in all three cases is ultimately derived from Western manuscript painting, as are other aspects of the iconography of all these images, including the 'Tobias and the Angel' story itself. This manuscript convention of angels with multicoloured wings has been carried over into the embroidery, where the effect is achieved by the use of brilliantly coloured stripes and concentric rings of colour.