PROBABLY DAMASCUS, SYRIA, SECOND HALF 16TH CENTURY

The attribution of the 'compartment' rugs to Syria is one that dates back a considerable time. While the group has a clear homogeneity within itself, its combination of technical structure and design motifs make it very difficult to place. Egypt, Rhodes, the Adana plain and East Anatolia have all been proposed. The subject is discussed at length in various places, the fullest of which are R. Pinner and M.Franses, 'The Eastern Mediterranean Carpet Collection in the Victoria and Albert Museum', HALI vol.4, no.1, pp.37-52 and F. Spuhler, 'Chessboard Rugs', in Oriental Carpet & Textile Studies II, London, 1986, pp.261-269.

In his note on the present fragment, Martin Volkmann points out that a detail of another carpet was published by F. Sarre in the 1908 supplement to the "Wiener Werk". It is probable that that carpet, which is now in a private European collection was part of a larger but reduced carpet sold from the estate of Mrs. Harry H. Blum, Sotheby's New York, 1 May 1982, lot 295. Both have the same border design but are woven in a counterposed palette where the arabesques are woven in blue on a red ground and the related but more complex field design of different sizes of radiating roundels and quartered lozenges is on a camel-brown ground.
Despite the fragmentary state of the present carpet original parts of the ivory cintamani and ‘s’ motif outer guard stripe remain, which appears to be unique amongst this group.