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Lot Essay
The ‘niche and millefleurs’ design of these prayer rugs takes its cue from Mughal pashmina carpets, such as the examples in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and in the Österreichisches Museum fur Angewandte Kunst, Vienna (Daniel Walker, Flowers Underfoot: Indian carpets of the Mughal era, New York, 1997, pp.131-2). A pair of cypress trees and spandrels in the top half create a niche which frames a vase overflowing with flowers. Likely woven in Kashmir in the eighteenth century, those carpets were in turn inspired by the ‘niche-and-flower’ carpets which date from the reign of Shah Jahan (r.1628-58). The present lot attests to the transmission of this design from India to Persia, to be taken up by weavers from the semi-nomadic Qashqa’i confederation in Fars province.
As well as being unusual as an almost-perfectly matched pair, almost certainly woven contemporaneously in the same atelier, these carpets have a well-documented provenance. They were owned by Amir Lashgar Mahmoud Ayrom (1881-1933, see illustrations). The maternal grandfather of the present consignor, he was a decorated general in the Cossack Brigade and a close ally of Reza Shah (r. 1925-41). He was married to Ozra Ayromlu, cousin of Tajelmolouk Ayromlou, Queen of Persia 1921-1945 through her marriage to Reza Shah. The pair of rugs then passed by descent to the present owner. A Qashqa’i prayer rug woven to a similar design and dated AH 1309/ 1891-92 AD was sold in these Rooms, 10th April 2008, lot 98. A further comparable rug is published by Eberhart Herrman, Von Konya bis Kokand, Seltene Orientteppiche, III, Munich, n.d., p.151, no.90. For a further example of a nineteenth-century interpretation of this classic design, see lot 199 of the present sale.
As well as being unusual as an almost-perfectly matched pair, almost certainly woven contemporaneously in the same atelier, these carpets have a well-documented provenance. They were owned by Amir Lashgar Mahmoud Ayrom (1881-1933, see illustrations). The maternal grandfather of the present consignor, he was a decorated general in the Cossack Brigade and a close ally of Reza Shah (r. 1925-41). He was married to Ozra Ayromlu, cousin of Tajelmolouk Ayromlou, Queen of Persia 1921-1945 through her marriage to Reza Shah. The pair of rugs then passed by descent to the present owner. A Qashqa’i prayer rug woven to a similar design and dated AH 1309/ 1891-92 AD was sold in these Rooms, 10th April 2008, lot 98. A further comparable rug is published by Eberhart Herrman, Von Konya bis Kokand, Seltene Orientteppiche, III, Munich, n.d., p.151, no.90. For a further example of a nineteenth-century interpretation of this classic design, see lot 199 of the present sale.