NORTH WEST PERSIA, 18TH CENTURY

The origin of the design of the present lot, both the field and the border, is clearly linked to the Kirman ‘Vase’ carpets of Safavid Persia. The highly decorative border is seen in a 16th/17th century Southern Persian fragment published by F.R. Martin (A History of Oriental Carpets Before 1800, Vienna, 1908, pl. XX). A contemporaneous carpet is illustrated in Werner Grote Hasenbalg, Der Orientteppich - seine Geschichte und seine Kultur, Berlin 1922, vol. 3, pl. 62 and another was offered in Christie’s South Kensington, 10 November 2004, lot 435. The group is discussed in depth, and a number of comparable carpets illustrated, by T. D. Cook and S. Belger Krody, ‘A Persian Puzzle’, Hali, 131, November-December 2003, pp. 88-92. Following their research Cook and Krody point to a South Persia attribution, although their basis for this is not clear. The technical characteristics found in these weavings, along with the well-documented movement of ‘Vase’ designs to North West Persia, gives a more probable origin for this small and unusual group of carpets.