NORTH INDIA, MID 19TH CENTURY

This Agra carpet belongs to a group of Indian carpets, distinguished by their bold scale of drawing in both the field and border, their fine weave, achieved through the use of silk wefting and, in particular, the shimmering hues and variety of colour that become harder and less varied in later production. What further unites this group is their predilection for the 16th and 17th century saz leaf and palmette designs of the Safavid, Mughal and early Ottoman traditions. The design of the present carpet is sourced from the Ottoman Cairene floral carpets which display a counterposed design of polychrome palmettes, part-palmettes and scrolling vine issuing flowerheads and cusped serrated leaves, an example of which was formerly in the William A. Clark Collection, (see The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Illustrated Handbook of The W. A. Clark Collection, The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.: W. F. Roberts Company, 1928, p. 74).

The renaissance in Indian production was buoyed by the weavers' exposure to these designs through the carpets of the Maharaja of Jaipur and the collection in Bijapur, and later, the publication of lavish carpet reference books with hand-coloured plates (Ian Bennett, Jail Birds, London, 1987, no.5). While somewhat faded on the face the palette of the present carpet, when viewed from the reverse, reveals a delicate array of colours including, rose-pink, plum-red and lilac, set upon a delicately abrashed silver-grey and ice-blue ground set within a delicate pale yellow border. A carpet of comparable size and field design but with a different border pattern sold in these Rooms, 2 April 2020, lot 185. That example retained a stronger azure-blue in the field which was enhanced further by the lustrous quality of the wool. A third example with the same field and border as that example, but woven on a red ground, is displayed in the Tehran Carpet Museum, Iran, inv. no.430. exhibited as Herat, 17th century.

A common feature that all of the carpets in this group share is their mirrored design which creates an attractive balance, but also allowed the weavers to scale their designs to almost any size. A significantly larger example from the same group with a linked arabesque border, formerly in the Toms Collection, was offered the these Rooms, 24 October, 2019, lot 266, and another sold in these Rooms, 25 April 2002, lot 100. Two slightly smaller examples that have manipulated this field design to produce a square format sold in these Rooms, 13 October 2005, lot 65 and 7 October 2014, lot 47.

Unlike the afore-mentioned examples, the design of the present carpet incorporates a small inscription. The inscription consists of four pairs of Devanagari letters, which may correspond with the initials of weavers or the initial letters of words from a mantra