Terracotta Suzani Cushion Cover with White Tulips

White tulips with blue hearts are held in a lattice of green vines across a terracotta ground, with small ringed circles marking the centre where four stems meet. The tulip is the commonest flower in Uzbek embroidery and this is a clear, unfussy reading of it.

Product details

• Product type: suzani cushion cover — cover only, insert not included
• Hand-embroidered in silk on a cotton ground: basma couching for the solid shapes, yurma chain stitch for the outlines and vines
• Size: 50 × 50 cm (20 × 20 in); fit a 55 cm insert for a full cushion
• Closure: concealed zip across the back
• Backing: plain handwoven ikat, usually beige, so the zip never crosses the embroidery
• Main colours: terracotta with white, blue and green
• Motif: white tulip forms held in a lattice of vines
• One of a kind: cut from a single suzani, so no two covers are the same
• Care: Remove the insert. Dry-clean by preference; a separate cool machine wash in a bag with no spin is allowed. Press on the reverse over a towel and keep it out of direct sun

Where it goes

Terracotta is the easiest of the warm grounds to place — it works against brown leather, cream linen and bare brick alike. See the rest of the suzani cushion covers, the whole suzani panels they are cut from, or a plain ikat cushion cover to sit beside it.

How this suzani is made

A suzani is a dowry cloth: cotton strips laid out, the design drawn on in ink, then embroidered in silk by several women of one household and joined up at the end. The filling is basma, a laid-and-couched stitch that lets the silk sit flat and catch the light; the outlines and vines are yurma chain stitch. A cushion is cut from such a cloth so that one whole motif sits square in the panel, and sewn up in our workshop in Bukhara.

Dispatched from Bukhara within 24 hours by Uzbekiston Pochtasi tracked airmail: USA 9–18 working days, Europe and the UK 8–16, elsewhere 10–20.