SOUTH CAUCASUS, FIRST HALF 19TH CENTURY

While a few rugs of this design have been published, only one other comes up to the present one in terms of colouring and strength of drawing. It is very comparable to the present piece, and bears the date of 1253 (1837 AD) (Doyle's, New York, 20 May 1992, lot 618, reported in Hali 64, August 1992, auction price guide p.166). Both are also of approximately the same size; most of the others of this design are smaller. This size factor would also fit with their being earlier than the others; the design is an adaptation of the eighteenth century Caucasian design found on a small number of long format rugs (Yetkin, Serare: Early Caucasian Carpets in Turkey, London, 1978, vol.1, p.40; Kirchheim, E. Heinrich: Orient Stars, Stuttgart and London, 1993, no.108, p.43). The drawing of the earlier examples is more curvilinear and shows clearly how the design must originally have been taken from a Persian original. The present carpet, in contrast, with its powerful contours and brilliant colours demonstrates the ability of the weavers of the Southern Caucasus to abstract a very different sort of beauty from the weavings of their forebears.