A 'BIRD' CARPET
A 'BIRD' CARPET
A 'BIRD' CARPET
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A 'BIRD' CARPET
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This lot will be removed to Christie’s Park Royal.… Read more PROPERTY FROM A CANADIAN COLLECTOR
A 'BIRD' CARPET

PROBABLY SELENDI, WEST ANATOLIA, LATE 16TH / EARLY 17TH CENTURY

Details
A 'BIRD' CARPET
PROBABLY SELENDI, WEST ANATOLIA, LATE 16TH / EARLY 17TH CENTURY
Scattered restoration and repiling, uneven areas of wear, reduced in length
11ft.7in. x 7ft.3in. (352cm. x 221cm.)
Provenance
The Christopher Alexander Collection, Christie's London, 15 October 1998, lot 204
Literature
HALI, Issue 56, April 1991, p.119, as part of the 1990 display of the Alexander Collection in the M H de Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco.
Christopher Alexander, A Foreshadowing of 21st Century Art, the Color and Geometry of Very Early Turkish Carpets, New York and Oxford, 1993, pp.206 (b/w detail), 268-270 and 349.
Special notice
This lot will be removed to Christie’s Park Royal. Christie’s will inform you if the lot has been sent offsite. Our removal and storage of the lot is subject to the terms and conditions of storage which can be found at Christies.com/storage and our fees for storage are set out in the table below - these will apply whether the lot remains with Christie’s or is removed elsewhere. Please call Christie’s Client Service 24 hours in advance to book a collection time at Christie’s Park Royal. All collections from Christie’s Park Royal will be by pre-booked appointment only. Tel: +44 (0)20 7839 9060 Email: cscollectionsuk@christies.com. If the lot remains at Christie’s it will be available for collection on any working day 9.00 am to 5.00 pm. Lots are not available for collection at weekends. This lot has been imported from outside of the UK for sale and placed under the Temporary Admission regime. Import VAT is payable at 5% on the hammer price. VAT at 20% will be added to the buyer’s premium but will not be shown separately on our invoice.

Brought to you by

Behnaz Atighi Moghaddam
Behnaz Atighi Moghaddam Head of Sale

Lot Essay


The 'bird' rugs are so called from the angular motifs which form a lattice within the field but which in reality are more likely to derive from floral or arabesque motifs. Iznik tiles from the mosque of Rustem Pasha of 1559 are noted by Ferenc Batari as showing a similar development of the design from a cintamani original ('White ground Carpets in Budapest', in R. Pinner and W. Denny, (ed.): Oriental Carpet and Textile Studies, II, Carpets of the Mediterranean Countries 1400-1600, London, 1986, pp.197-199). In his discussion of the large 'bird' carpet in the Ufizzi, Carlo Suriano notes however that the earliest painting of a 'bird' rug, showing the fully developed design with a part-medallion border, is dated to 1557 (Portrait, by Hans Mielich, about 1557, Collection of Mrs Rush H. Kress, New York, reproduced in M.S Dimand and J Mailey, Oriental Rugs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York, 1983, p.192). This shows the two to be contemporaneous at the least, assuming that the rug was new when depicted (Carlo Maria Suriano, 'Patterns of Patronage, Classical carpets in the Bargello Museum, Florence', HALI 83, October/November 1995, pp.84-86). A further 16th century depiction, again with this border, is seen in Portrait of a Man, attributed to François Clouet or Corneille de Lyon, c.1560-70. (Museo Lazaro Galdiano, Madrid; see K. Erdmann, Seven Hundred Years of Oriental Carpets, Faber and Faber, London, 1970, p. 22, fig. 10;Jon Thompson & Moshe Tabibnia, Milestones in the History of Carpets, Milan, 2006, p. 242).

While small format 'bird' rugs are relatively common, appearing on the market with fair frequency, such as the example formerly in the Paul Deeg Collection sold in these Rooms, 31 March 2022, lot 196, very few have survived on the scale of the present rug. All either have a white cloudband border or the part medallion border seen here (which is also the border just discernable in the 1557 painting mentioned above). Other rugs with three to four repeats across the width of the field are in the Philadelphia Museum of Art (Charles Grant Ellis, Oriental Rugs in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, 1988, no.16, pp.48-50; two in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Dimand and Mailey, op. cit., figs 172 and 173, p.191), one formerly in the Toms Collection (Sotheby's, London, 7 June 1995, lot 137), and one in Vienna (A. Volker, 'Berlegungen zur Neuaufstellung der Orientteppichsammlung des sterreichischen Museums fr angewandte Kunst in Wien', HALI, Vol.II, no.1, Spring 1979, fig.4, p.14). An extraordinary three examples were in the Paulette Goddard Remarque sale (Sotheby's London 18 November 1976, lots 9, 12 and 22). Even larger examples with between four and five repeats are in the Uffizi, Florence (Suriano, op. cit., pl.6); the Turk ve Islam Museum, Istanbul (N. Oler, (intro. by): Turkish Carpets from the 13th-18th Centuries, Istanbul, 1996, pl.113, p.155) and the Zander-Cassirer carpet in a private collection, (Stadt-Museum, Munich, Ausstellung München 1910. Ausstellung von Meisterwerken Muhammedanischer Kunst; Amtlicher Katalog, exhibition catalogue, Munich, 1910, p.32, no.146).

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