Portiere

Portiere – Oriental fabric with verses in Arabic, flat embroidery on silk, Middle East, 18th/19th century. Portiere is a curtain for a door or window made of heavy material to protect against the cold or for decorative purposes only. The mihrab portiere kept in the castle is rectangular, divided by the narrow stripe of borderline into four fields, in shades of beige and gold, with accents of dark brown. One of the stripes forms a kind of overdoor – the upper closure of the composition above the door. The other three vertical stripes decorate the entrance, the central, shorter one reveals the door recess. It is finished with a mihrab arch. Mihrab is a niche, usually semi-circular or polygonal in plan, located in the prayer hall of a mosque. This niche indicates the direction of Mecca – it marks the specific side of the world towards which the faithful should turn when praying. It is decorated with hand-made laid embroidery, half-flat, made with gold metallic thread on a half-silk background. Silk warp and silk-cotton weft. It is usually richly decorated. The borderline in dark brown, with a golden ornament in the background consisting of Arabic characters. The embroidered decoration consists of three types of medallions and a motif of scrolls, forming a moresque. Five medallions are incorporated into the field of the overdoor, of which the central one (the largest) contains the verse, while the others are spread on its sides. The inscription, written in Arabic, reads: Lord, who opens all doors, You, Lord of the entire world, grant us victory/open all doors and I did not create jinns and people agreed to worship Me alone. The inscription was intended to be read in a mirror – it is mirror writing. The semi-silk fabric which formed the background for the embroidery was reinforced with fine linen underneath. The whole is lined in pink. The fabric comes from the Middle East, from the 18th/19th century.