EAST TURKESTAN, LATE 18TH/EARLY 19TH CENTURY

This elegant silk Yarkand carpet has a fascinating design for which it has been hard to find an exact comparable. The ice-blue ground shimmers with tonal abrashes rippling through the field upon which are laid staggered rows of large rust-red medallions of octagonal form that are enclosed by angular branch-like stems. Each medallion contains a cruciform formation of radiating ivory hooked flowerheads.

East Turkestan was a conduit through which a number of the most sophisticated weavings passed in the course of their trade from different nations. From the seventeenth century, workshops in Kashgar started to produce designs that looked to the floral lattice designs of Mughal India, the tribal weavings of the Turkmen tribes and early Chinese silk and velvet textiles for their inspiration. One such silk Yarkand carpet, formerly with Friedrich Spuhler, Berlin, displays the ancient motif of a swastika that has been rotated and linked to form an overall lattice which is overlaid with five roundels (Jon Thompson, Silk, Carpets and the Silk Road, Tokyo, 1988, pp.36-37, pl.34). The same Chinese influence is present here where the ice-blue border is filled with bi-coloured swastika motifs enclosed between narrow guard stripes of a more traditional East Turkestan design.

The weavers in the oases villages within the Tarim Basin used similar weaving patterns and the use of ascending columns of large roundels or cusped medallions can be seen in Yarkand, Khotan, Kashgar and Samarkand. Usually round in form, signifying the ‘moon’ in their fullness, the medallions on the present carpet are of a clear octagonal form, closer to the geometric guls found on Turkoman carpets. The angular, hooked flowers within each of the medallions are seen on an impressive Khotan carpet formerly in the C. Meyer-Muller collection sold Christie’s New York, 22 January 1991, lot 105. The simplified arrangement and drawing of the flowers in the present carpet are not dissimilar to the angular formation of flowers in the Persianate Herati pattern which proved popular in the region, see (D. Halevim, Oasi, Memorie e fascino del Turkestan Orientale, p.2, pl.18).