PROBABLY BY JEAN-JOSEPH DUMONDS, BETWEEN 1740-50

This carpet is a French adaptation of the Ottoman Ushak medallion carpet design, an example of which appears in this sale as lot 260. One of the first knotted pile carpets woven at Aubusson was an adaptation of this design. It was woven in 1745, and incorporated the coat of arms of the bishop of Strasbourg, Armand-Gaston de Rohan Soubise (Sarah B. Sherrill, Carpets and Rugs of Europe and America, New York, 1995, p. 23, pl.108). At this time, the Aubusson workshop had only recently been established to relieve the pressure from the Royal manufactory at Savonnerie and weave carpets for the growing middle market. In 1746, a licence was granted to the workshop to weave ‘rugs […] and other works in the Turkish and Persian style’, and soon the designer Jean-Joseph Dumonds was set to work adapting Oriental carpet designs for a French taste.

The weaving of Eastern-inspired rugs reflected a growing fascination with ‘the Orient’ in eighteenth century Europe. It was also a reflection of the tastes of European royals in the previous centuries - particularly in Tudor and Elizabethan England, who had been avid collectors of Ottoman carpets. An emergent class of ambitious nobility sought to emulate them, if not with genuine Ottoman examples, then at least with similar designs. Sherill notes that from about 1756 the Aubusson workshop focused more on a typically French aesthetic in their carpets: this suggests that the present carpet was woven during a narrow window of only a few years in the 1740s.

Further examples of Aubusson carpets woven to Islamicate designs have appeared at auction in recent years. Pile rugs based on Mamluk designs were offered at Sotheby’s New York, 27 April 2000, lot 217, and at Christie’s London, 12 October 2000, lot 50. A fragment based on an Ottoman ‘Smyrna’ design was sold at Christie’s New York as part of the Yves Mikaeloff Collection, 21 May 1997, lot 395.