# Tomb Cover > Unidentified weaver, Iran or Iraq - 1640-1950 (radiocarbon date, 95 per cent probability). Acquired, published and exhibited as c. 945-1055 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/unknown-rayy-workshop-weaver/cleveland-buyid-tomb-cover/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-09-03 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Unidentified weaver, Iran or Iraq - **Date:** 1640-1950 (radiocarbon date, 95 per cent probability). Acquired, published and exhibited as c. 945-1055 - **Medium:** Silk, compound tabby - **Dimensions:** 210.2 x 102.5 cm - **Object type:** Textile - **Period:** Catalogued as in the style of the Buyid period (945-1055); dated by radiocarbon to 1640-1950 - **Current location:** Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio - **Attribution:** disputed ## Summary A complete loom-woven funeral pall, 210 by 102 centimetres, cut to the shape of a body with a circle for the head, its Kufic bands asking forgiveness for a named dead man and labelling which part of the corpse each band covers. Cleveland bought it in 1954 as a masterpiece of tenth-century Buyid weaving, reproduced it in four museum handbooks, and lent it to Paris in 1961, to the Hayward Gallery in 1976 and to a four-city American tour in 1982.An epigraphic study in 1989 raised such doubts about the whole group of so-called Buyid silks that sixteen were radiocarbon dated by accelerator mass spectrometry. This one came back at 1640 to 1950 with 95 per cent probability. The museum did not quietly withdraw it. It changed the date line on its own public catalogue record to the radiocarbon range and changed the culture line to read in the style of the Buyid period, and it did the same across roughly thirty accessions.Two of those objects, a tunic bought in 1982 and a caftan bought in 1985, date to after 1950, identifiable because they carry radioactive isotopes from atmospheric nuclear testing. One piece in the group, given to the museum in 1975 and reportedly from the same necropolis, tested at 899 to 1160 and keeps its medieval attribution. That single survivor is why this is a story about evidence rather than about a scandal. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **1640-1950-unknown** Unidentified weaver or workshop, Iran or Iraq `[disputed]` (manufacture) The radiocarbon range covers three centuries, but the documented behaviour of the market places the likely date in the decades after the 1925 Rayy finds, when high prices for genuine excavated silks produced a supply of larger and complete pieces. No workshop, weaver or town has been identified in the literature consulted. - **unknown-1954** Reportedly found at Bibi Shahr Banu, the necropolis near Rayy, Iran `[disputed]` (reported findspot) The museum's own provenance line is hedged: originally reported as having been found in Bibi Shahr Banu, near Rayy, Iran. No excavation record, permit, findspot photograph or export document has been published, and the same reported findspot appears on Cleveland silks bought from at least seven different firms in six countries between 1941 and 1988. A radiocarbon range beginning in 1640 makes a medieval burial deposit impossible; if the object was ever in that necropolis it was placed there recently. - **unknown-1954** Adolph Loewi (1888-1977), Los Angeles `[documented]` (dealer stock) The only named private holder in the chain. The museum's record gives no date for his acquisition and names no earlier owner. Loewi sold the pall to the Cleveland Museum of Art in 1954. - **1954-present** The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio `[documented]` (purchase) Bought in 1954 from the J. H. Wade Fund. Published as Buyid in the museum handbooks of 1958, 1966, 1969 and 1978, lent to Paris in 1961-62, to the Hayward Gallery in 1976 and to a four-city American tour in 1982-83. Recatalogued after the 1992 radiocarbon study as in the style of the Buyid period, with the radiocarbon range printed in the date field. Still in the collection; not deaccessioned. ## Auction results Hammer and buyer's premium are stated separately. Where a source conflates them this record says so. - **** , - This object has never been offered at auction, so there is no hammer price and no buyer's premium to separate. It was bought privately from a dealer in 1954 and the price has not been published; the only figure that could exist is an invoice. The relevant market fact is structural rather than particular: the few genuine textiles excavated at Rayy sold for relatively high prices in the 1930s, and the documented response of the forgers was to produce more pieces, and larger or complete ones, because completeness commands a premium in a category otherwise made of fragments. ## Exhibitions - Sept mille ans d'art en Iran (The Exhibition of Persian Art: 7000 Years of Art in Iran), Petit Palais, Musee des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris, 19 October 1961 to 31 January 1962, 1961-1962 - The Arts of Islam, Hayward Gallery, Arts Council of Great Britain, London, 8 April to 4 July 1976, 1976 - The Heritage of Islam, Houston, Pittsburgh, San Francisco and Washington, 10 March 1982 to 5 September 1983, 1982-1983 ## Literature - 1958, The Cleveland Museum of Art Handbook, cat. no. 676, mentioned and reproduced. - 1966, Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art, reproduced p. 215. - 1969, Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art, reproduced p. 215. - 1976, Dalu Jones and George Michell, The Arts of Islam: Hayward Gallery, 8 April-4 July 1976, Arts Council of Great Britain, no. 7, p. 76. - 1978, Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art, reproduced p. 272. - 1982, Nancy Thomson, The Heritage of Islam: Notes, London: PCET, no. 32, p. 50. - 1992, Sheila S. Blair, Jonathan M. Bloom and Anne E. Wardwell, 'Reevaluating the Date of the Buyid Silks by Epigraphic and Radiocarbon Analysis', Ars Orientalis 22, pp. 1-41; this object reproduced p. 35 and mentioned p. 15. - 2015, Louise W. Mackie, Symbols of Power: Luxury Textiles from Islamic Lands, 7th-21st Century, Cleveland Museum of Art and Yale University Press; this object reproduced p. 154 fig. 4c and discussed pp. 154-155. ## Open questions - Who wove it? No workshop, weaver or town has been identified in the literature consulted, and the forgers of the Rayy silks are not named. - Was the pall ever buried at Bibi Shahr Banu? A modern textile can be placed in an ancient necropolis, and doing so would be the efficient way to sell one. Nothing establishes the object was ever there. - Were the twentieth-century weavers copying genuine excavated fragments in front of them, or photographs? The question bears directly on how much technical information about medieval Iranian weaving these objects preserve. - What did Cleveland pay Adolph Loewi in 1954? No price has been published and there was no auction. - Where was the object between manufacture and 1954, and who held it before Adolph Loewi? The museum's record names nobody. - How many of the sixteen textiles radiocarbon dated in the 1992 study were Cleveland's? The paper is cited on numerous Cleveland records but the museum does not state which of its objects were among the sixteen. - Are the roughly thirty Cleveland objects now catalogued in the style of the Buyid period the work of one operation or several? Their acquisition dates span 1941 to 1988 and their dealers span six countries. ## Sources - [1] Cleveland Museum of Art, collection record 1954.780, Tomb Cover. Tombstone with the radiocarbon range in the date field, the culture line 'in the style of the Buyid period', the structure, measurements, the Kufic inscription and its translation, the museum's description of the object as a funeral pall, the three-line provenance and the full bibliography and exhibition history. - [2] Sheila S. Blair, 'FORGERIES iii. OF ISLAMIC ART', Encyclopaedia Iranica, vol. X, fasc. 1, pp. 95-100, published 15 December 1999, last updated 19 August 2015. Read in the in-app browser after the site returned HTTP 403 to both WebFetch and a browser-agent curl. The 1925 Rayy finds, the 1989 epigraphic study, the sixteen textiles, the post-1950 isotope marker, the price mechanism and the parallel forgeries in metal, ceramics, carpets, manuscripts and woodwork. - [3] Sheila S. Blair, Jonathan M. Bloom and Anne E. Wardwell, 'Reevaluating the Date of the "Buyid" Silks by Epigraphic and Radiocarbon Analysis', Ars Orientalis 22 (1992), pp. 1-41. NOT READ IN FULL: JSTOR returns HTTP 403 to automated requests. Cited here from the Cleveland Museum of Art's own bibliography for this object, which records the pages on which this pall is reproduced and discussed, and from Blair's summary of the study in the Encyclopaedia Iranica. Replace with the article itself. - [4] Cleveland Museum of Art, collection record 1975.45, Fragments with winged lions in roundels. The control: same reported findspot at Bibi Shahr Banu, radiocarbon 899-1160, attribution retained. - [5] Cleveland Museum of Art, collection record 1985.59, Caftan, radiocarbon date 'after 1950'. Image not released under a free licence. - [6] Cleveland Museum of Art, collection record 1982.23, Tunic fragment with lion killing khilin in octagons, radiocarbon date 'after 1950'. Image not released under a free licence. - [7] Cleveland Museum of Art, collection record 1996.2, A Child's Coat with Ducks in Pearl Medallions, whose bibliography carries Anne E. Wardwell's articles in the museum's own magazine and her co-authorship of When Silk Was Gold with the Metropolitan Museum of Art in cooperation with the Cleveland Museum. Used only to establish that Wardwell published as a Cleveland author. - [8] The Cleveland Museum of Art Handbook, 1958, in which this object is catalogue number 676. Digitised by the Internet Archive. - [9] Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art, 1978, in which this object is reproduced at page 272. Digitised by the Internet Archive. --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. No image on this site is generated or simulated. If you quote this record, quote the provenance grades with it.