WEST TURKEY, CIRCA 1910

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

Both this and the following lot are signed with two pairs of identical square kufic signatures in one corner of the carpet. The first of these gives the place of weaving, Hereke, while the other is an as-yet unintelligible word, avam, in a square cartouche adjacent to it. Struck by the resemblance between this enigmatic word and the square kufic signature used by Zareh Penyamin on his Koum Kapi rugs, Farrow believed that this signature was used by Zareh while he was working at Hereke, before setting up his own workshop. To support this, Farrow pointed to a set of cartoons in his collection which had been acquired from the widow of Zareh Penyamin, which all had this intriguing signature on them, and which were published by Pamela Bensoussan in her seminal article, “The Masterweavers of Istanbul”, HALI 26, 1985, p.37. Farrow’s findings were published as an addendum to Bensoussan’s article, HALI 46, 1989, p.11. Based on the fact that Zareh set up his own independent workshop after the war, Farrow concludes that these carpets date from around 1916 when he would have still been at Hereke.

The design of this carpet is unmistakably Mughal in influence, with the field organised by an overall floral lattice. The design is directly taken from a fragmentary silk carpet, attributed to the late 17^th or early 18th century, part of which is in the Dar al-Athar al-Islamiyya, Kuwait (acc.no. LNS 20R; published Daniel Walker, Flowers Underfoot: Indian Carpets of the Mughal Era, New York, 1998, fig. 143, p.148). While this carpet does not appear in Sarre and Trenkwald’s book, it was published when it was with Julius Orendi (Das Gesamtwissen uber Antike und Neue Teppiche des Orients, Vienna, 1930, vol.2, fig.894). Orendi himself was a buyer of Koum Kapi rugs, having purchased the ‘Salting’-type carpet displayed in the Paris Exposition Universelle which was also in the George Farrow Collection, sold in these Rooms 25 April 2024, lot 178. It is possible that these carpets were commissioned by him, scaling up a fragment which he owned into a full-size carpet.

A rug of the same design which was even larger than the present examples although it had been reduced in size and width, and which also had the same square kufic double signature, was sold in these Rooms, 28 April 1994, lot 419.