CENTRAL ASIA, CIRCA 1800

This most unusual rug has few parallels in the published literature. There is a rug formerly in the Werner Loges Collection, dated in the catalogue to the first half of the nineteenth century, which has a field containing two columns of four medallions similar to those here, but our example feels considerably more archaic than the Loges one (Loges, Werner: Turkoman Tribal Rugs, Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey, 1980, no.114). A similar palette and some details are shown by a rug in the Ethnographic Museum, Moscow that is ascribed to the Khirgiz, but again the design here shows numerous elements which are not found in the other example (Dodds, Dennis R. and Eiland, Murray L. Jr.: Oriental Rugs from Atlantic Collections, exhibition catalogue, Philadelphia, 1996, no.165, p.149; Tsareva, Elena: Rugs and Carpes from Central Asia, no.139, p.195 before restoration). The carpet is woven with two wefts of natural light brown wool per row of knots which would indicate an Uzbek origin being more probable than Khirgiz, but at this stage its precise attribution within the central Asian area remains difficult.