PROBABLY DECCAN, FIRST HALF 18TH CENTURY

The drawing of the border of this carpet is spectacular. It is difficult however to find any parallel for this exuberance. It recalls the printed cotton worked in Goolconda or Burhanpour; Steven Cohen; 'Textiles', in George Michell (ed.), Islamic Heritage of the Deccan, Bombay, 1986, pls.11-13, p.123. One carpet now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, attributed to Warangal and dated 18th century has a much stiffer rendition of a very similar design, also on a yellow ground, Steven Cohen, op.cit., pls.9 and 10, p.122). There is also a bit more than an echo in the drawing and the colour of the border of one of the most magnificent carpets ever woven, the Mughal pashmina carpet dating from around 1650, of which a large fragment is now in the Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon, Hali, vol 97, front cover and p.4.

The delicate floral lozenge lattice field design of the present carpet is very similar to the field of an Indian carpet sold in the Davide Halevim sale in these Rooms, 14 February 2001, lot 45 which at the time was catalogued as having been woven in Agra. The structure of the present carpet is very different from that of other carpets attributed to Agra or Warangal, so the most probable option is another large centre in the Deccan.

There is one other published carpet that is clearly from the same workshop which was sold in these Rooms, 15 October, 1998, lot 230. The field design of that large carpet weaving of 'in and out palmettes' is the same in both but it is the scale of the flowering vine in the border set against the rich yellow ground that immediately links the two.