CENTRAL ANATOLIA, 18TH CENTURY

In an important 2003 article on Konya rugs, Ralph Kaffel memorably described them as 'the heart and soul of Turkish village pile weavings' (Ralph Kaffel, 'Heart and Soul: the yellow-ground rugs of Konya", HALI, 128, p.97). The article opened with a large image of a rug from his own collection belonging to the same sub-group as the present example, featuring two rows of three large-scale Memling guls. Kaffel identifies this as a small group, numbering a few dozen known examples, of which the oldest is that formerly in the Orient Stars collection. The Orient Stars example, also with a yellow ground, was catalogued as 17th or 18th century when the collection was sold (Heinrich Kirchheim et al., Orient Stars: a Carpet Collection, Stuttgart, 1993, p.199, no.123).
The interconnected rhombuses in the border of Kaffel's example are more similar in style to our rug than the Orient Stars example. His rug was sold by Grogan and Company, Boston, 21 January 2024, lot 15.

The orange ground on our example differs from those mentioned above, though other Konya rugs from this period do also have an orange ground. This includes the border of an example sold Rippon Boswell, Weisbaden, 12 March 2016, lot 100, and a fragment which was also part of the Kaffel Collection sold Grogan and Company, Boston, 21 January 2024, lot 31.