KAZAK REGION, SOUTH CAUCASUS, LATE 18TH CENTURY

The composition of two stellar medallions is found on Anatolian rugs of the early 16th century, as seen on a 'Holbein' carpet in the Bayerisches National Museum, München, (K. Erdmann, The History of the Early Turkish Carpet, London, 1977, p.66, pl.63) and continues to be used through the 17th and 18th centuries in Anatolia but is successfully adopted across the silk road.

The spacious proportions of this double stellar medallion Caucasian Fachralo rug, with a light green field, together with a particularly fine weave with white wefts and slightly depressed warps, are characteristics associated with an earlier group of Kazak weavings of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Other directly comparable examples are in the L.A. Mayer Memorial Institute for Islamic Art, Jerusalem, (R. Ettinghausen, Ancient Carpets, Jerusalem 1977, no.11), and an example, formerly part of the Battilossi collection, sold Christie's London, 11 February 1998, lot 53. Ettinghausen likens the blue elongated hooked motifs within each of the red rectangles, which are directly comparable to ours, to zoomorphic forms of confronting dragons or other animals. Later examples have a tendency towards a narrower field and greater ornamentation, (see E. Herrmann, Seltene Orientteppiche V, Munich 1983, pp.74-5, pl.34).