WEST ANATOLIA, 17TH CENTURY

Perhaps the grandest of Ottoman carpet designs, the many variations which exist of the medallion Ushak carpet reflect the design’s enduring appeal. Woven from the mid-15^th century, the design continued to evolve well into the 18th century. The corpus of medallion Ushak carpets had a red ground with indigo tracery, enclosing a hexagonal central medallion and part-medallions at the edges to give a sense of infinite space. Another red-ground example is published by Alberto Boralevi (Geometrie d’Oriente: Stefano Bardini e il tappeto antico, Livorno, 1999, no. 18, p. 66). A fragment with similar colouration to the present lot was sold as part of the Jim Dixon Collection by Bonhams Skinner, Marlborough, 19 October 2022, lot 5, while the angular central medallion can also be seen on a carpet offered in these Rooms, 16 October 2003, lot 123.

The longevity of the medallion Ushak design was driven in part by European demand. The impressive scale and exotic aura of these carpets meant that they were prized by royalty, particularly the Tudor dynasty in England. An inventory of the possessions of Henry VIII at the time of his death revealed that he owned nearly 400 carpets 'of Turkey making'. Though many were subsequently sold, through paintings we know that many of them were medallion Ushak carpets. A 1570 painting by Lucas de Heere shows Henry VIII and his children standing on one (Donald King and David Sylvester, The Eastern Carpet in the Western World from the 15th to the 17th Century, London, 1983, p.19). The taste was also picked up by the aristocracy: an early seventeenth century painting of Elizabeth Home, Countess of Suffolk, which has been attributed to Daniel Mytens the Elder, depicts her standing on a large medallion Ushak (see illustration).