EAST CAUCASUS, DATED AH 1248 / 1832 AD AND AH 1249 / 1834 AD

Striking in their simplicity, it is highly unusual to find a near pair of these Caucasian rugs and even more remarkable that both are dated. It is highly probable that both pieces were woven in the same village, a year apart, but have since remained together for nearly two hundred years. According to Raoul Tschebull, the design of this relatively small group of long format weavings with their undecorated fields could derive from the flatwoven sofreh used by nomadic tribes on which meals were served. The stepped polychrome crenellated intrusions that frame the field are also used in those slit-tapestry weaves which would support this idea. (R. Tschebull, Qarajeh to Quba, London, 2019, pp.204-5, pl.50). An example with a minimally adorned ink-blue ground, with the same crenellated decoration and the ubiquitous floral ‘crab’ motif border, is published by Herrmann (E. Herrmann, Seltene Orientteppiche VI, Munich 1984, pp.96-97, pl.33), and an early red ground example from the Burns Collection was exhibited at the VIth ICOC in San Francisco, (M. L. Eiland, Oriental Rugs from Pacific Collections, San Francisco, 1990, no.213).

Both rugs were originally in the collection of Paul Hirsch (1881-1951), a German industrialist who moved to England in 1936. A noted musician, bibliophile and musicologist, Hirsch assembled the largest private music library in Europe which is today housed at the British Library. Equally as interesting was Paul's wife, Olga. Born of a prominent Frankfurt family, she married Paul in 1911 and later trained as a bookbinder at the Buchbinderei Ludwig in Frankfurt. During her life time she assembled an important collection of decorative papers, which were also bequeathed to the British Library in 1968.