LATE 16TH OR 17TH CENTURY

One of the joys of historical Turkish village rugs is their playing with wonderful rich colours, frequently, as here, of considerably greater variety than is found in the classical carpets which were exported to Europe. There are a great variety of tones used here that give the carpet a very happy overall impression. Many of the motifs are archaic, such as the colouring and placing of the spandrels which recalls those of 15th century and earlier carpets such as a fragment in the Kirchheim Collection (E. Heinrich Kirchheim et al., Orient Stars, A Carpet Collection, Stuttgart and London, 1993, no.213, p.335). The colouring also reminds one of the Sailer Anchor carpet in the same collection (Kirchheim, op.cit, no.198, pp.314-5), or even a medallion carpet attributed to 16th/17th century Konya, again in the Orient Stars Collection (Kirchheim, op.cit, no.178, pp.256-7). The border design is found in one other carpet, but with very different colouring and less curvilinear drawing (Suzan Bayraktaroglu and Serpil Özêlik, Carpet Museum & Kilim and Flatweaving Rugs Museum Catalogue, Ankara, 2007, no.39, pp.78-9). Each of the arms in the medallions in the present border are very finely drawn, thus very clearly defining the four black arrowheads pointing into the centre of each. This is a rug with no easy parallel in the literature - it is a tribute to the artistic sensitivities and innate eye of the weaver.