18TH CENTURY

The piece offered here is a fragment from a carpet in the Berlin Kunstgewerbemuseum, acquired from Wilhelm von Bode in 1882, and now housed in the Museum of Islamic Art (Spuhler, Friedrich: Oriental Carpets in the Museum of Islamic Art, Berlin, London, 1988, no.107, pp.98 and 247). It represents a later, more simplified version of the seventeenth century Safavid Garden carpet design. The watercourses which would originally have contained fish are minimised into stylised floral meander. Bode and Kühnel, in Antique Rugs of the Near East,(New York, 1984) consider these to be "narrow footpaths"and the field simply contains "a severely stylised tree motif" which emphasises the later more standardised design details.