These were gifted to the city by Sir William Burrell, a successful Scottish businessman and a generous patron of art and heritage. The Suzanis form part of the Burrell Collection, an extraordinary public museum in Glasgow housing Sir William’s internationally important collection of world art and antiquities.
The Burrell Suzanis are considered to be one of the three most important collections of its kind in the UK, with only the Victoria & Albert Museum in London rivalling it; the third is in the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester. These particular embroideries represent the golden age of domestic embroidery in the Emirate of Bukhara, made at a time before the introduction of machine-woven cotton fabrics and aniline dyed silken threads, and well before the commercialisation of the makers’ craft. Sir William Burrell (1861 – 1958) was a Glasgow merchant shipping owner.
You can learn more about the topic in the book-album “The Cultural Legacy of Uzbekistan in the Collections of Great Britain” (Volume XLVI) in the series "Сultural legacy of Uzbekistan in the world collections".
The main sponsor of the project is the oilfield services company Eriell-Group.