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Lot Essay
The knot count is approximately 14H x 14V per square inch.
There is a design feature found on this rug and a few others from Lahore at the same period, which take the basic Persian "in and out" palmette design, but make the focus down the center of the field to be a row of palmettes on their sides. The best known example is the white ground carpet in the Islamic Art Museum, Berlin (Walker, D., Flowers Underfoot, New York, 1997, fig. 39, pp. 48-9). The stunning blue ground example in a private collection does the same (ibid. fig. 45, p. 52). These two magnificent examples are considerably larger and contain animals in the field, and are assigned a slightly earlier date than the entirely floral examples such as the present rug.
The border on this carpet is found on a number of other Mughal carpets of the same period. A carpet in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and one in the Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon, both have very well-worked examples (ibid. figs. 54-55, pp. 60-63). It seems that the earlier examples, like the present rug and the Persian originals, tend to have small cloudband motifs filling the gaps between the cartouches, while those of a slightly later date replace these with small floral motifs (ibid. fig. 64, p. 70).
There is a design feature found on this rug and a few others from Lahore at the same period, which take the basic Persian "in and out" palmette design, but make the focus down the center of the field to be a row of palmettes on their sides. The best known example is the white ground carpet in the Islamic Art Museum, Berlin (Walker, D., Flowers Underfoot, New York, 1997, fig. 39, pp. 48-9). The stunning blue ground example in a private collection does the same (ibid. fig. 45, p. 52). These two magnificent examples are considerably larger and contain animals in the field, and are assigned a slightly earlier date than the entirely floral examples such as the present rug.
The border on this carpet is found on a number of other Mughal carpets of the same period. A carpet in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and one in the Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon, both have very well-worked examples (ibid. figs. 54-55, pp. 60-63). It seems that the earlier examples, like the present rug and the Persian originals, tend to have small cloudband motifs filling the gaps between the cartouches, while those of a slightly later date replace these with small floral motifs (ibid. fig. 64, p. 70).