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Man's Coat (India)

Man's coat or choga, probably from India, first half 19th century. Man's coat or choga, probably from India, first half 19th century. Copyright Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, acc. no. 24.123.

The collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York includes a man's coat, a choga, which probably dates to the first half of the nineteenth century and may derive from Kashmir in the northwest of the Indian subcontinent. It is 133 cm long and 75 cm wide at the bottom. It is made of wool and is decorated with metal thread embroidery and applied braids.

The decoration of the coat is dominated by the well-known ambi or buteh, droplet-shaped motif that in the West was imitated as the Paisley motif.

The coat, because of its specific tapestry weave (kanni), which is characteristic for Kashmir, likely has a northwest Indian origin, but in the course of time it ended up into the wardrobe of Said bin Sultan, who was the sultan of Zanzibar and imam of Muscat, Oman, and who lived from 1797 to 1856.

Compare TRC Needles entries on comparable coats: the Kashmir coat now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, and the Indian choga with embroidery, now in the Textile Museum of Canada.

Metropolitan Museum of Art online catalogue (retrieved 11th December 2016).

WV

Last modified on Saturday, 20 May 2017 16:32