Lot Essay
As Ellis notes in his discussion of a later version of the same design in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the design of this rug is a variant that has only survived in very few examples. Another good example is that formerly in the Ballard Collection and now in St. Louis Art Museum (Ellis, C.G.: op.cit., pl.35a, p.106) which is larger and repeats the pattern more often. A third, the property of the Vatican, is in the Museum Pogliaghi, Sante Monte Varese (Pinner, R. and Franses, M.: 'Turkish Carpets in the Victoria and Albert Museum', HALI, Vol.6, no.4, 1984, note 73, p.79). A number of carpets show a half-way stage between the present design and the normal medallion Ushak. These have blue fields, major medallions similar to the present carpet but with a flame surround, and secondary medallions in light blue which are the same proportions as those in the more normally encountered type. A good example of this half-way type is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Dimand, M.S. and Mailey, J.: Oriental Rugs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1973, fig.167, p.188).