SOUTH CAUCASUS, MID 19TH CENTURY

The design of this Borjalu rug has a particularly archaic appearance and a freedom of expression that attests to its tribal origins. Between the abundance of idiosyncratic latchhooks, the weaver has inserted various decorative elements in a seemingly whimsical manner which include a pair of two-legged torsos at the upper end of the field. The proportions, the softer palette and the loosely knotted structure attest to its age in the corpus of Caucasian tribal weavings. These characteristics are shared with a rug of squarer proportions from the collection of Robert E. Miller published in the seminal book on these weavings, Raoul Tschebull, Kazak, New York, 1971, pl. 23, pp. 64-65, and another which first sold Sotheby's, NewYork, 1999 and more recently in Sotheby's New York, 1 October 2015, lot 27.