Lot Essay
Another fragment of the same carpet is published in Eskenazi, J. and Franses, M.: Il Tappeto Orientale dal XV al XVIII secolo, London, 1982, no.29, pp.47-48 and 90). It is one of the four carpets in that catalogue on which the claim for Khorassan is advanced, a claim which at the time was unorthodox but which has more recently been generally accepted. That fragment is a little bigger than ours and includes a part of the border which is particularly unusual, being of the same design as that on the bird Ushak offered here as lot 204. It is rare to find so obvious a Turkish design being included in a Persian carpet of this period.