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Lot Essay
The design of this striking PETAG carpet is a direct copy of one of the most magnificent Safavid Kirman 'vase' carpet designs woven. A Safavid fragment of this design, now in the Museum fur angewandte Kunst, Vienna, and which very likely this carpet copied as its design source, was first published in colour by E. Sarre and H. Trenkwald, Alt-Orientalische Teppiche, Vienna, 1926-28, Vol.II, pl.8, vol.I, pl.31. Another well documented fragment of an original 'vase' carpet, displaying the same sky-blue ground with scrolling interlaced split palmette arabesques, was formerly in The Bernheimer Family Collection, sold in these Rooms, 14 October 1996, lot 150.
The PETAG workshop (Persische Teppiche A.G.), was a German initiative founded in Berlin in 1911. Guided by Heinrich Jacoby, author of “Eine Sammlung Orientalischer Teppiche”, Berlin, 1923, amongst other works, a large workshop was opened in Tabriz. The carpets are identified by the use of a particularly high quality, lustrous wool, the natural vegetal dyes and their distinctive 'signature' formed of three çintamani roundels generally located in the corner of the field or border pattern. At the end of the 19th century/early 20th century, there were a number of highly important publications on the history of Oriental carpets which included large-scale black and white, and more importantly, some colour illustrations, of magnificent Safavid and Ottoman carpets. Publications such as A History of Oriental Carpets before 1800, by F.R. Martin, Stockholm, 1908; Friedrich Sarre's, Orientalische Teppiche, Vienna, 1892, and Alt-Orientalische Teppiche, by F. Sarre and Herrman Trenkwald, Vienna, 1926, gave the workshop access, for the first time, to the great 16th and 17th century carpet designs.
A slightly larger carpet woven with an identical design from the same workshop sold in these Rooms, 27 October 2022, lot 246. A PETAG carpet displaying the same light blue coloured field, but with an elegant single-plane 'shrub' lattice design sourced from a fragment in the personal collection of Friedrich Sarre, (Friedrich Sarre and Hermann Trenkwald, Altorientaliche Teppiche, Vienna and Leipzig, 1928, pl.8) sold in these Rooms for a record price at the time, 28 October 2021, lot 167.