A silk and metal-thread embroidered and quilted floor spread, India, Gujarat, 18th century

This exceptionally fine floor spread or coverlet belongs to a group of embroideries produced in the port of Cambay in Gujarat. Gujarati embroideries of this quality were used within the Mughal court or exported to Europe from the sixteenth century onwards. Mughal miniatures often depict courtiers seated on silk embroidered textiles that were used during the summer months as a cooler alternative to the carpet. An early-eighteenth-century Mughal miniature by Dalchand in the Cynthia Polsky collection (see Topsfield 2004 p.326, no.144) depicts two ladies on a terrace seated on a similar embroidered summer carpet. 

A floor spread of similar quality and design is in the Victoria & Albert Museum (IS.34-1985, see Guy and Swallow 1990, p.105, no.86). Alexander Hamilton in the eighteenth century observed that the people of Cambay "embroider the best of any people in India, perhaps the world" (Barnes, Cohen & Crill 2002, p.100). These professional embroiders from Cambay are said to have been from the Mochi community.

The Portuguese were initially responsible for introducing these fine embroidered textiles to Europe with the trade continuing into the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries under the supervision of the East India Company. Company records indicate that factors were given instructions to source "quilts and carpets of all sorts made about Cambaya and other places" (I.O. Archives, Factory Records Miscellaneous, vol.25, p.19). Materials were recorded as "callicoe embroidered with sundrie silks."

It is likely that this beautiful embroidery was commissioned by George Matcham, an East India Company officer resident in Baroche, Gujarat from 1771-85 and has remained with the same family ever since. It is rare to find a floorspread of such quality, provenance and condition.

Floor spreads with similar designs are found in the Louvre (see Labrusse, 2007, p.206, no.222) and published in HALI (see Synge 2001, p.89).