NORTH PERSIA, LATE 19TH CENTURY

These small, square covers were woven in the nineteenth century in the ethnically diverse Veramin region in Northern Persia, either by Luri or Shahsavan tribe members. Highly practical and portable, they were used both as charcoal brazier covers, "ru-khorsi" around which the family would gather on colder days, or as table covers "sofreh". The plain woven camel-hair field of the present lot is embellished with a brightly coloured pile design of hooked diamonds and a large central cruciform motif that is similar to one in the collection of Eric Pride (Jenny Housego, Tribal Rugs, An Introduction to the Weavings of the Tribes of Iran, London, 1978, pl.141). A further example was illustrated by Eberhart Herrmann, (Seltene Orientteppiche IX), Munich 1987, no.51, and a less brightly coloured example was in the Arthur D. Jenkins Collection (Cathryn Cootner, The Arthur D. Jenkins Collections, Volume I, Flat-Woven Textiles, The Textile Museum, Washington, 1981, p.77. no.33).