NORTH WEST PERSIA, CIRCA 1850

The knot count measures approximately 10V x 7H knots per cm. sq.

The source of the waq waq design, or 'talking tree', which completely fills the field of the present rug, stems from a legend of Alexander the Great and was a familiar subject of Persian and Indian miniature painting inspired by earlier manuscripts that circulated in regions across present-day Turkey to India in the fifteenth–seventeenth centuries, as seen in 'A Floral Fantasy', Mughal India, early 1600's, Cleveland Museum of Art, (acc. 2013.319). The plant produces life in myriad forms, with branches blossoming into the heads of animals or birds, including lions, tigers, rams, and dragons. Painted with naturalistic features, yet uncanny through their coexistence, their representation, in profile as well as through aerial views, lends a surreal quality to the work. George Farrow had a small number of pictorial rugs in his collection including, lot 198, a silk Heriz with an even more elaborate and fantastical waq-waq design.