PROBABLY KARABAGH, SOUTH CAUCASUS, LATE 18TH CENTURY

The present carpet relates to two 'dragonless' Dragon carpets illustrated by Charles Grant Ellis in Oriental Carpets in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, 1988, pl.44 and fig.44a, pp.141-142. In our carpet and these examples one can see an intermediary phase in the amalgamation of dragon and blossom carpet designs. The dominant bicoloured lattice of the Dragon carpet is still clearly visible but the dragons have been replaced with flowering shrubs. In the two Philadelphia carpets the shrubs are long flowering rods but in the present carpet the rod has been transformed into short individual shrubs that bring to mind the shrub lattice of the Bernheimer white ground Caucasian runner, sold in these Rooms, 23 April 2013, lot 124. The addition of secondary lobed and stepped medallions that flank the central axis of large palmettes is a very unusual feature for this group. There is a related carpet illustrated in Heinrich Jacoby, Eine Sammlung Orientalischer Teppiche, Leipzig, 1923, pl.29, that has very similar medallions.