NORTH EAST PERSIA, CIRCA 1800-25

In Iran from the middle of the eighteenth century and through the first half of the nineteenth carpets with overall designs were hugely popular, at the expense of centralised or more complex animal designs. This is very clearly shown in surviving paintings from the post-Safavid period where almost every carpet depicted is a kelleh with overall floral lattice of one sort or another (see for example Layla S.Diba and Maryam Ekhtiar, Royal Persian Paintings, the Qajar Epoch, New York, 1999, nos.26-28, 31, 47 and 57). Some of the designs in paintings are recognisable but most are generic, and must represent carpets of afshan, harshang, herati and related patterns. There is not enough visual information depicted to enable us to tie up surviving carpets with those in the paintings. For this reason a small number of Khorasan carpets with inscription cartouches containing verses almost hidden within the field, at least two of which have credible dates of 1218/1803-4 and 1223/1808-9 are very important to our understanding (The Bernheimer Family Collection of Carpets, Christie's London, 14 February 1996, lot 60; Arthur Upham Pope, A Survey of Persian Art, Oxford, 1938, pl.1272A). While each of those have a harshang design field, in most other respects they are very similar to the present carpet. The wool and colours are very similar both in the field and the border, while the guard stripes are virtually identical. A further example with identical herati field to ours but with the same border as the dated examples was also in the Bernheimer sale, lot 4. The condition of this carpet is remarkable. Khorasan wool is wonderfully lustrous but it is also, partly as a result, soft, and so wears thin quickly. Hung on a wall for many years, the present carpet is almost in full pile with wonderful drawing and intense colours.