Material Histories: Eastern Mediterranean Textiles at Auction
At Cypria Auctions’ Winter 2025 Sale, held on 10 December 2025 at Gallery K in Nicosia, Cyprus, three historic textiles from the Eastern Mediterranean demonstrated the enduring pull of cloth as both material witness and cultural document. Spanning courtly Ottoman luxury and deeply rooted Greek domestic traditions, the group drew strong interest from international collectors, reaffirming the status of historic textiles as works of art in their own right.
Leading the sale was a rare Ottoman brocade kemha panel from late 16th-century Turkey, which achieved €4,840. Woven in silk with metallic threads in tones of crimson, gold and pale blue, the panel represents the central section of an exceptionally scarce textile, once part of a cope and previously published by Patricia Frost. Kemha was among the most prized fabrics produced in Ottoman imperial workshops during the height of courtly textile production, its complexity of weave and architectural clarity of pattern signalling both wealth and power.
Rare Ottoman Silk Brocade Kemha Panel, Late 16th century
The design’s large ogival medallions, intricately decorated within, find close parallels in a 16th-century embroidered satin kerchief published by Walter Denny, pointing to the rich dialogue between weaving and embroidery across the Ottoman world. That a related fragment of the same textile appeared at the Turkophilia exhibition in Paris and later at Sotheby’s only deepens its significance, situating the panel within a well-documented lineage of connoisseurship and scholarship.
In contrast, two Greek embroideries offered a more intimate scale and context. An 18th-century cushion cover from Skyros, sold for €3,054, features the island’s celebrated “great cockerel” motif, stitched in vivid coloured silks onto linen. Upright and exuberant, the cockerel has long been understood as a symbol of fertility, pride and independence. As Roderick Taylor observed, it functioned during the Ottoman period as a discreet emblem of resistance — a powerful idea embedded within domestic textiles intended for everyday life.
Epirus Embroidered Panel, Epirus, late 18th / early 19th century. Silk on linen.
Completing the group was an embroidered panel from Epirus (above and detailed in the lead image), dating to the late 18th or early 19th century, which realised €1,457. Composed from the borders of a bedsheet, the panel displays rosettes and elongated compound leaves worked in herringbone, chain and outline stitches. Comparable examples published by A. J. B. Wace attest to the consistency and strength of Epirus embroidery traditions, where patterns were drawn directly onto the cloth, allowing for subtle improvisation within inherited forms.
Taken together, the results from Gallery K underscore a growing appreciation of Eastern Mediterranean textiles as layered objects: repositories of skill, identity and exchange, whose threads continue to speak across centuries and markets alike. In their survival — and in the care with which they are studied, collected and circulated — these works remind us that textiles are never static artefacts, but living carriers of knowledge, memory and touch, still capable of shaping how we understand the past in the present.
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Further Information:
Gallery K and Cypria K. Auctions
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Image Credits:
Lead: Epirus Embroidered Panel (Detail), Epirus, late 18th / early 19th century. Silk on linen.
All further images as credited in photo captions, and courtesy of Cypria K. Auctions Limited.