EAST TURKESTAN, LATE 18TH CENTURY

The overall 'Herat' design of linked stems forming a floral lattice can be traced back to the 18th century workshops of Kashgar and ultimately the floral carpets of Mughal India. Herat had maintained a huge position of power up until the last decades of the 19th century where it had thrived as a crossroads of commerce: from Bukhara to Kirman,and China to Constantinople where Turkoman nomads, Uzbeks and Armenian craftsmen had mingled. The angular arrangement of small stems with five flowers with a triple flower tendril linked with leaf lozenges on the present carpet is clearly a Turkestan interpretation of these earlier sources and which appears on a silk carpet illustrated by Hans Bidder, (optimistically dated to the late 16th/17th century, Carpets from Eastern Turkestan, Tubingen, 1964, Ch.III, The Khotan Carpets, D, 1., pp.43-85, 3., ‘The ‘Herat’ and floral style of ‘endless rapport’, pp.74-77, pl.XVIII ). Two further comparables on madder grounds with differing borders see Bidder, op.cit. pls. XVI & XVII.