17th Century Italian Wool and Silk Floral Scrollwork Pillow

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This exceptional antique pillow is fashioned from a 17th-century Italian Florentine wool and silk textile, presenting a richly decorative composition … Read more This exceptional antique pillow is fashioned from a 17th-century Italian Florentine wool and silk textile, presenting a richly decorative composition of stylized flowers, scrolling foliage, and sweeping ornamental forms. The design is arranged across the textile in a continuous botanical pattern, with prominent blossoms composed of layered petals in mustard gold, pale blue-gray, cream, and warm beige. These flowers are connected and surrounded by curling leaves, stems, and dramatic scrollwork, creating a rhythmic composition that moves naturally across the entire surface of the pillow. Dark brown outlining gives definition to the individual botanical elements, while strong teal borders emphasize the flowing contours of the larger decorative forms.

Handwoven in wool and silk, the textile combines substantial woven texture with finer detailing throughout the floral ornament. The surviving silk and wool passages create noticeable variations in texture and surface, particularly within the flowers, leaves, outlines, and patterned areas. The textile has an unmistakably historic character, with centuries of aging revealing portions of the underlying weave and construction while allowing much of the original ornamental design to remain clearly recognizable.

Its beautifully aged palette includes mustard yellow, antique gold, teal green, turquoise, dusty rose, muted raspberry, pale blue-gray, sage green, cream, ivory, beige, camel, taupe, warm brown, and dark chocolate brown. The combination of golden flowers, cool blue-green foliage, rose-colored scrolls, and warm neutral grounds gives the piece an especially distinctive appearance. Measuring approximately 16 x 10 inches, the rectangular format preserves a generous section of the original Florentine textile and makes this pillow a highly decorative example of early Italian wool-and-silk weaving. See less