.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
This beautiful and wonderfully eccentric rug is an interesting hybrid of Persian, Anatolian and Caucasian design language. The motifs of the field, the large palmettes and cloud bands, derive from Safavid court carpet designs of the 16th and 17th century but they have been appropriated and reinvented in the hands of the Caucasian weaver. The Persian flavour of the rug starts and ends with the motifs in the field, as they are organised across the rug with the order and clarity of a Caucasian shield carpet such as the Brooklyn, Museé des Arts Decoratifs and Gulbenkian examples in Robert Pinner and Michael Franses, 'Caucasian Shield Carpets', Hali, vol. 1, no. 1, Spring 1978, figs 23, 24, and 25, pp.19-20).
The dynamic zig-zag border is a particularly attractive and unusual feature that appears to originate with the 'Gothic' borders of Ushak weavings such as the large white ground 'Bird' carpet formerly in the McMullan collection and now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (see M.S. Dimand and Jean Mailey, Oriental Rugs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1973, fig.173, p.191). This design like the field, has been made more angular and geometric and relates to the border of an 18th century Caucasian Dragon carpet in the Turk ve Islam Eserleri Museum, Istanbul, Inv. No. 948 (Serare Yetkin, Early Caucasian Carpets in Turkey, Vol. I, London, 1978, pl.23)
A related 18th-century Caucasian carpet with Persian design elements is published in Joseph V. McMullan, Islamic Carpets, New York, 1965, pl.44, pp.182-183 and for a similar example of an unusual adoption of foreign motifs in a Caucasian carpet, please see lot 124 in the current sale and the Seychour Dragon Soumac, sold in these Rooms, 24 April 2012, lot 72.
The dynamic zig-zag border is a particularly attractive and unusual feature that appears to originate with the 'Gothic' borders of Ushak weavings such as the large white ground 'Bird' carpet formerly in the McMullan collection and now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (see M.S. Dimand and Jean Mailey, Oriental Rugs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1973, fig.173, p.191). This design like the field, has been made more angular and geometric and relates to the border of an 18th century Caucasian Dragon carpet in the Turk ve Islam Eserleri Museum, Istanbul, Inv. No. 948 (Serare Yetkin, Early Caucasian Carpets in Turkey, Vol. I, London, 1978, pl.23)
A related 18th-century Caucasian carpet with Persian design elements is published in Joseph V. McMullan, Islamic Carpets, New York, 1965, pl.44, pp.182-183 and for a similar example of an unusual adoption of foreign motifs in a Caucasian carpet, please see lot 124 in the current sale and the Seychour Dragon Soumac, sold in these Rooms, 24 April 2012, lot 72.