CENTRAL ANATOLIA, LATE 17TH/EARLY 18TH CENTURY

Anataolian weavers in the 17th and 18th centuries were expert at borrowing elements from earlier 15th and 16th century design prototypes. The octagonal medallion on the present rug surrounded by small roundels enclosed within opposing coloured hooked triangular spandrels, is easily traced back to the 'Large pattern Holbein' Anatolian carpets of the 16th century but can be traced back further still, to a fragmentary rug, now in the Turk ve Islam Eserleri Muzesi (TIEM) in Istanbul (inv.no.566), which had been collected from the Allaeddin Mosque in Konya - the same mosque in which F.R. Martin discovered the five famous Seljuk carpet fragments, also now in the TIEM, at the turn of the last century. Both Serare Yetkin (Historical Turkish Carpets, Istanbul 1981. plate 23 6c diagram 16) and Oktav Aslanapa (One Thousad Years of Turkish Carpets, Istanbul 1988. plate 39 6c, diagram I), plausibly date it to the 15th century.

The stately border design of stylised tulips alternating with rosettes on a golden yellow ground is one that can be found on a number of carpets in the 17th and 18th centuries including a 17th century rug of Ghirlandaio design in the Kirchheim collection (Heinrich E. Kirchheim et al., Orient Stars, A Carpet Collection, Stuttgart and London 1993, pp.240-1, pl.164) and a later 18th century example, gifted to the Textile Museum in 1913 by George Hewitt Myers, (Walter B Denny, The Classical Tradition in Anatolian Carpets, p.78, pl.18). The well-composed design of the present rug is elevated still further by the exubriant colour palette which has remained extremely well preserved.