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Lot Essay
Persian art is full of gardens. The word paradise itself comes from the Old Iranian pairidaezai meaning "enclosed garden," and this carpet gives us a paradise at the height of spring, its fruit trees bursting into bloom. It is organized as a stately, double four-part garden, an ancient form combining gardens and water, always a precious commodity in the arid Persian climate. In a four-part garden or Chahar Bagh, one famous example is that of the Ali Qapu Palace in Isfahan, a walled garden is divided into four quarters by longitudinal and latitudinal streams of water, represented in this example by a chevron pattern. The earliest surviving examples of garden carpets are few in number and date from the 17th century. Some use variations on the simple four-part structure, such as the Jaipur Chahar Bagh carpet from the early 17th century (now in the Central Museum, Jaipur, and illustrated in HaliI , Vol. 5, No. 1, p. 14, pl. 5) with a central ornamental lake enclosing a pleasure pavilion and two supporting aquatic reserves. The present example, in finely woven silk, faithfully continues the classic tradition.