PROBABLY LAHORE, INDIA, LATE 17TH/EARLY 18TH CENTURY

This Mughal fragment was once part of a carpet allegedly commissioned for the Chihil Sutun at Isfahan, a palatial pavilion built by Shah Abbas II in 1611, which was transported there from India on the back of two elephants. Our fragment exhibits the width of one side border measuring almost four feet, which supports F. R. Martin’s assertion that the carpet was possibly the largest ever made (F. R. Martin, A History of Oriental Carpets before 1800, Vienna, 1906-8, p.97). The carpet was last seen in situ in 1887 by Sir Cecil Smith, although by this point it was already damaged and since then has been entirely dispersed as a great many fragments (Charles Grant Ellis, Oriental Carpets in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, London, 1988, p.229). Other fragments of the carpet are known in a number of institutions: the Philadelphia Museum of Art; the University of Pennsylvania Museum, Philadelphia; the Museum für Kunsthandwerk, Frankfurt, which originally sold in the Benguiat sale of 1925 (American Art Association, XV-XVIII Century Rugs, Paris & New York, 1925, pl.17); the Musée du Louvre, Paris; the Türk ve Islam Eserli Mueum, Istanbul; the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; the Staatliches Museum für Völkerkunde, Munich and the Cincinnati Art Museum. A further border section of nearly fifteen feet was also sold in the Benguiat sale (American Art Association, 1925, ibid, pl.1). A possible design influence on our carpet, although with a more naturalistic drawing, is a field fragment in the Keir Collection which was once part of a Mughal lattice carpet (Friedrich Spuhler, Islamic Carpets and Textiles in the Keir Collection, London, 1978, no.61, p.126). In 1922 A.F. Kendrick and C.E.C Tattersall produced a draft reconstruction of the carpet which shows the field design as a slightly larger version of the border (op.cit, Charles Grant Ellis, fig.64a, p.231).