PROBABLY KARABAGH REGION, MID-18TH CENTURY

There has long been a fascination with the symbolism of the dragon and its depiction in carpet weaving. The design of ‘Dragon’ carpets consists of a field pattern composed of different coloured overlaid lattices formed of pointed, serrated leaves creating intersecting lozenges, which alternately contain palmettes and are flanked by confronting stylised dragons, birds or animal figures. The most archaic of the ‘Dragon’ carpets include dragon motifs with birds and running animals, relatively naturalistically drawn, which stand either alone or in confronting pairs facing a tree. The Graf carpet, originally found in a Damascene mosque, now in the Islamiches Museum, Berlin, is considered to be the oldest example of this type, see Serare Yetkin, Early Caucasian Carpets in Turkey, Vol. II, London, 1978, p.8, fig.118.
Animal combat groups were popular motifs in the late 16th and early 17th century, appearing in Persian paintings, bookcovers and of course within the magnificent carpets of the Safavid court, on which it is probable that Caucasian ‘Dragon’ carpets were modelled (Duncan Haldane, Islamic Book bindings in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 1983, no.106, pp.110-111, for example). Many of the classical Caucasian carpets of the 17th and early 18th centuries can be traced back to the Persian 17th century Kirman 'Vase' carpets from which lattice of the present carpet stems (C.G. Ellis, Early Caucasian Rugs, Washington D.C, pp.12-13).
In his discussion of 'Dragon' carpets, Ellis provides a useful key to the various animals which inhabit the lattice design (Ellis, op.cit., p.14). Animals such as leaping deer, peacocks, pheasant and of course dragons, appear in varying degrees of stylisation. The present carpet displays heavily stylised inverted, paired dragons within the red field, arranged in rows enclosed by the sky-blue and terracotta serrated branches. The blue serrated trellis leaves contain small bird-like motifs that once appeared more prominently as pheasants, otherwise all suggestion of the more ornate depictions found in the earlier group are absent. The weaver has instead included scattered minor stick-like animals that pepper the field.
Yetkin defines four types of 'Dragon' carpet: 'Archaic', ‘Four-Dragon’, ‘Dragon-and-Phoenix’ and as a further combined development of the latter, the ‘Two-Dragon’ style, into which the present carpet falls. It has been suggested that the earliest examples of the Caucasian 'Dragon' carpets have a greater number of repeats across the width of the weaving than in later pieces. An example of a 'Four-Dragon' carpet, from the collection of Charles Deering, was sold in Sotheby's, New York, 27 September 2000, lot 35. This striking 'Dragon' carpet is a superb example of the 'Two-Dragon' type carpet (Serare Yetkin, Early Caucasian Carpets, Vol.II, London, 1978, p.25), in which the expansive multi-lozenge lattice of the earliest 'Dragon' carpets is narrowed to a 'loom-width' field design with a two lozenge lattice that places an emphasis on the palmettes of the central axis. A very close comparable but with slightly wider field design is in the collection of the Iparmüvészeti Museum, Budapest (Serare Yetkin, op.cit, fig.144, p.28). Two other carpets in the Textile Museum, dated by Charles Grant Ellis to the early 18th century, have similarly bold drawing and spacing, (Charles Grant Ellis, Early Caucasian Rugs, Washington, 1975, pls. 6 and 7).
The flower and single-bud border that is employed at each end of the present carpet is a variant of a border design originally seen on 'Vase' technique carpets, as seen on a fragment in the Staatliches Museum für Völkerkunde, Munich, Inv. no.32-50-18, (Yetkin, op.cit., p.84, fig.218). It appears on numerous 'Dragon' carpets, including the Graf carpet and an important early 'Archaic Dragon' carpet with a more unusual brown field in a private collection in Genoa, Italy, (Yetkin, op.cit. pl.122, p.13), but is also found on carpets of other designs including those of floral decoration. The design of the side borders is less common and does not appear in Yetkin's listing of this group. The angular vine traverses the border but the former curved bud now terminates with 5 barbed stems and appears somewhat zoomorphic in form. An 18th century carpet that displays a similar combination of differing end and side borders, that are increasingly more angular in their drawing, was formerly with the Anglo-Persian Carpet Co, London (Yetkin, op.cit. p.32, pl.151), which sold at Sotheby's London, 20 September 2006, lot 115. While the field design of the present lot represents a relatively abstracted version of the Graf carpet, it is interesting to see that the border pattern has also undergone a similar and consistent abstraction process.