Lot Essay
The catalogue entry for the Bernheimer carpet gives a full listing of comparable carpets. Most notable among them is a pair, one in the Museum fr Angewandte Kunst, Vienna (Sarre, F. and Trenkwald, H.: Altoreintalische Teppiche, Vienna and Leipzig, 1928, vol.1, pl.24), the other in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. It was Sarre and Trenkwald who first suggested the Khorassani origin for the group, followed by Pope and Erdmann. While the drawing is far more curvilinear, the wool more fleecy, and the colours more subtle than in the recently proposed seventeenth century Khorassan group (Franses, M.: 'The Caucasus or North East Persia, A Question of Attribution' in Kirchheim, H.: Orient Stars, Stuttgart, 1993, pp.94-100), all are very similar to those of generally accepted Khorassan carpets of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.