NORTH INDIA, LATE 17TH OR EARLY 18TH CENTURY

Despite the relatively small size of this rug, it retains the classic features of one of the better known groups of Mughal rugs, with its poppy flowers contained within a lozenge lattice formed by serrated leaves. Its cotton warp and weft are completely consistent with the group of lattice carpets. Rugs woven with blue fields are however extremely unusual; only one or two have been published. The drawing is also more stylised and with less of the generous spacing associated with most of the lattice group; it is more reminiscent in these respects, although not in delicacy of drawing, with the eighteenth century pashmina group of rugs such as that in the Museum fr Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg (Walker, D.: Flowers Underfoot, exhibition catalogue, Metropolitan Museum, New York, 1997, fig.124, p.127). There is one rug with a very similar field composition, the lattice panels all containing the same poppy plant, but with a more normal colouring and with one of the classic seventeenth century red ground floral borders, which must surely be a close relative of the present piece (Sotheby's London, 14 October 1977, lot 24 , re-offered 28 April 1982, lot 106). One other Indian blue ground lattice rug has been published (Schurrmann, U.: Les Tapis d'Orient, Luxembourg, 1979, p.235). That rug however appears to be a slightly later example and probably not from the Mughal workshops, the drawing appearing to show more of a direct Persian influence, possibly indicating a Deccani origin.