XINJIANG PROVINCE, WEST CHINA, 18TH CENTURY

This historically important carpet has in its field the earliest known rendering of the coffered gul, which clearly shows how the design originated. An example of the more frequently found later version, also woven in Kashgar, is published by Bidder and dated by him to the 17th/18th century (Bidder, Hans: Carpets from Eastern Turkestan, Tbingen, 1979, pl.XIII). This repeating gul emblem is composed of four confronting bats at its centre; it is seen here in its coffered form surrounded by stylised curvilinear dragons. A number of carpets survive with un-coffered guls floating on a plain field. They are usually stylised and the bats take on the form of a rosette. A silk Kashgar mat dateable to circa 1700 has the bats very clearly visible in the twelve guls which surround the central panel, itself formed of a gul of dragon-like scrolls (Herrmann, Eberhart: Seltene Orietteppiche X, Munich, 1988, no.110, pp.232-3). By the beginning of the nineteenth century this coffered gul was in use in Khotan, whose carpets are identified by their woollen wefts, and on certain silk carpets from Yarkand, identified by their depressed structure and blue cotton wefts (The Bernheimer Family Collection of Carpets, Christie's auction catalogue, 14 February 1996, lot 49).

The pu-lo border design of this rug is traced by Bidder to tie-dye textiles (op.cit., pp.94-8). He shows that it was used as a field design on carpets made in the Gansu province of China as well as those from Khotan.