Created by Penn Art History 501

Safavid Empire

The Safavids benefited from their geographical position at the centre of the trade routes used at their time..
Destination of silk exports not only included India and the Ottoman Empire, but also France, England, Venice and the Dutch in Europe.

Historical Figures

Describe the important historical figures related to this collection. Include what the collection of this material taught us about commerce and trade in this area. Consider using archival imagery, telegrams, field notes, field drawings, and letters from the Museum Archives. 
​The impossible could not have happened, therefore the impossible must be possible in spite of appearances.
~ Agatha Christie, Murder on the Orient Express
These blocks are only samples, please rearrange, remove, and add as you like!
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Penn Museum Collection
Shown silk textile was bought from H Kevorkian in 1992

Hagop Kevorkian (1872-1962)
  He carried out excavations in Iran, and assembled an outstanding collection of oriental art, especially Islamic and Persian (Wikipedia)
The Safavid Dynasty (1501-1722)

CHARACTERIZE THE SAFAVID DYNASTY.  CAPITAL CENTER, EXTENT OF CONTROL, POLITICAL/ECONOMIC/CULTURAL HIGHLIGHTS
FOCUSING ESPECIALLY ON TEXTILES AND TRADE

  Shah Isma il. In 1501 he led the capture of Tabriz and founded the Safavid Dynasty

  Shah Abbas 1 (r1587-1629). It is said that the Safavids achived their dynastic height under his leadership. He encouraged international relations and trade. He established royal workshops for textiles; silk production became a state priority. To facilitate trade, roads and bridges were build.

He was a contemporary of Elizabeth I of England, Philipp II of Spain Ivan the Terrible of Russia.
(Mackey, BBC)

Temporal/Cultural Context

Describe the historical/temporal setting for your material (listed in the document on the course Canvas site) and the major cultures that influenced trade and development at that time. Keep in mind that you should be providing as much context as a visitor would need to understand the other trade topics you will be covering on other pages.
The Safavid Empire (1501-1722)

Territorially, It covered all of what is today Iran, and parts of Turkey and Georgia
  • The Empire's economic strength came from its location on the trade routes
    Silk production and export was under state regulation and one of its main sources of income
  • The Safavid Empire was a theocracy
  • The Empire made Iran an important center of art, architecture and philosophy. During this period, painting, metalwork, textiles and carpets reached new heights.
  • The artistic achievements and the prosperity of the Safavid period are best represented by Isfahan, the capital of the empire after Shah Abbas.

     
     
    (BBC)
Silk consumption.
We can understand silk demand in at least two different dimensions:
Silk for internal consumption:
  Luxury textiles were used as a symbol of power and wealth by the Safavid elite. Numerous Europeans traveled to Iran; many were received at the court. They introduced European styles.


Silk as an export item:
  Silk was exported to the neighboring empires and Europe.

Sample Objects

Consider adding links to all your images that connect to pages for these objects on the museum's website OR internal links within our site to object pages.

Historical Context: Coronation 

Biography: Zelia Nuttall

Picture
​Born in San Francisco in 1857, Zelia Nuttall was a regarded scholar of Pre-Columbian Mexico in her time. She received her education in Europe and was appointed as “Honorary Assistant in Mexican Archaeology” at the Harvard Peabody Museum in 1886. That same year, she was contracted by the University Museum to establish academic relations and gather archaeological and ethnographic specimens in Russia.


​Best known for the discovery and publication of her namesake Codex Nuttall, a fourteenth-century Mixtec document now housed in the British Museum, Nuttall also worked in the Mexico National Museum and served as an advisor for the University of California Berkeley’s Anthropology department. Nuttall died in Coyoacan, Mexico in 1933.

The Ethnography of Nuttall

Ethnography is the systematic study and documentation of people and cultures.

​Nuttall’s ethnography consisted primarily of acquisition. Her correspondence with patroness Sara York Stevenson (pictured below) details a careful adherence to budget of 250 dollars. By the time Nuttall arrived in Russia, she lamented the drought of exceptional items, made either too expensive or rare by the recent, heavy uptick in ethnographic collecting activity by museums. Changes in cultural values, too, made her gathering difficult.  
Only the oldest women remembered what the national costume had been like -- all the gold embroidered caps had long since been carried to the churches , to be melted down for the gold on the threads! This and other experiences are convincing that it is the highest time to collect in Russia, if at all

The Journey of Zelia Nuttall
​From Dresden, Nuttall travelled first to Moscow. She then made her way through Kiev, Troitskoi (today Vologda), and Rostov, ending in Nijni-Novgorod via a steamer down the Volga river.

Temporal

Nuttal’s travels took lasted June through August. Her expedition coincided with the Coronation of Czar Nicholas II in Moscow and the Pan-Russian Industrial and Arts Exhibition in Nijni-Novgorod. The Czars’s reign was plagued by misguided and costly military engagements – the Russo-Japanese War and World War I, namely – which contributed to his growing unpopularity and fanned the flames of Bolshevik sentiment. That Nuttall’s travels begin with the Coronation and end with the Industrial Fair perhaps signals the changing times, a transitional period from traditional Czarist Absolutism to political movement in the working classes and the peasantry. If Nuttall was overtly unaware of this waning of an age, her ardent efforts in cataloging a disappearing world of tradition reflected the need to see it preserved before it changed forever.
While Nuttall noted that the lavish wears of the coronation were far too pricy, she procured commemorative lithographs of the event.