WEST TURKMENISTAN, EARLY 19TH CENTURY

The field of this carpet is decorated with 27 tauk nuska güls arranged in three columns, which alternate with cruciform motifs. The former in particular are typical of the nomadic Yomut tribe whose pasturage covered a broad band between the Caspian and Aral Seas. The spiralling border motifs are also an ancient design, appearing on a carpet which radio-carbon dating puts, with 90.2% certainty, to the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries (J. Rageth, Turkmen Carpets: a New Perspective, Basel, 2016, no.25, p.64). A later example with the same border motif is published by Werner Loges (Turkoman Tribal Rugs, Munich, 1980, no.36, p.70), while another was sold by Rippon Boswell, December 4, 2010, lot 18.