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Lot Essay
This large incomplete prayer carpet is the companion piece to an example sold in these Rooms 27 April 1995, lot 574, which reappeared recently from the estate of Harold M. Keshishian at Sotheby's New York, 7 December 2010, lot 90, reported in Hali 167, Spring 2011, p.159. A few further fragments of the same carpet are known, but all are far smaller than the two main carpets. These are a lower right hand border corner fragment, (Christie's London 27 April 1995, lot 575); a field fragment with corners of six niches (Eberhart Herrmann, Asiatische Teppich und Textilkunst, vol.1, 1989, no.72, pp.152-3), a further fragment centred around one incomplete niche (Textile Gallery advertisement, Hali , vol.1, no.4, p.7) and a very small field fragment (B.W.Robinson et.al, Islamic Art in the Keir Collection, London, 1988, no.T30, p.82).
Both the two large carpets were clearly woven to fit into a specific interior. In the present carpet the inner guard stripe just turns a corner in the top right hand corner, while the lower edge clearly continues straight, demonstrating that it originally had some sort of indentation in that corner. In the other carpet the indentation was in the lower right hand corner. Each of the large carpets is reduced in size so it is difficult to determine the dimensions or shape of the original. Each is four niches deep in the larger section, and is almost identical in the vertical dimension.
This carpet has been woven using extensive jufti knotting (knotting over four warps, invariably assymmetric). Recently there has been renewed attention paid to carpets woven with this feature (most recently and fully by Michael Franses, 'The Caucasus or North East Persia, A Question of Attribution', in E. Heinrich Kirchheim et al., Orient Stars, A Carpet Collection, Stuttgart, 1993, pp.94-100). Using the basic premise that all carpets using the jufti knot were made in the same region, a corpus of carpets has been put together. Exactly the same principle was used by May Beattie to group together the disparate designs woven in the vase technique and make the now accepted attribution of Kirman origin for all.
While there are a large number of different designs that appear from this collation (Franses notes thirteen different design groups), certain other features appear to unite the carpets. A gloriously strong palette is typical with fully saturated bottle-green and brilliant scarlet (insect and slightly corrosive) red amongst other colours. Also typical are strong and frequent diagonal lines within the design. This is facilitated by the jufti knot being woven on alternating warps rather than in the usual vertical lines.
The present carpet and its companion piece have what appears to be a unique design. The field does not closely compare with any other multiple prayer rugs made in the 16th or 17th century, its niches floating freely on the red floral ground. While the border shares a common origin with the classic contemporaneous Isfahan border its angularity is only precisely mirrored in a carpet exhibited in Milan in 1981 (Michael Franses, Il tappeto orientale dal XV al XVIII secolo, Eskenazi Milan, London, 1981, no.31). That carpet also shares the same inner border with the present example, and, more importantly, the jufti knotting. Its field, a variety of shrub motifs on an indigo ground, is a slightly stiff version of one of the better represented groups within the jufti knotted group.
Both the two large carpets were clearly woven to fit into a specific interior. In the present carpet the inner guard stripe just turns a corner in the top right hand corner, while the lower edge clearly continues straight, demonstrating that it originally had some sort of indentation in that corner. In the other carpet the indentation was in the lower right hand corner. Each of the large carpets is reduced in size so it is difficult to determine the dimensions or shape of the original. Each is four niches deep in the larger section, and is almost identical in the vertical dimension.
This carpet has been woven using extensive jufti knotting (knotting over four warps, invariably assymmetric). Recently there has been renewed attention paid to carpets woven with this feature (most recently and fully by Michael Franses, 'The Caucasus or North East Persia, A Question of Attribution', in E. Heinrich Kirchheim et al., Orient Stars, A Carpet Collection, Stuttgart, 1993, pp.94-100). Using the basic premise that all carpets using the jufti knot were made in the same region, a corpus of carpets has been put together. Exactly the same principle was used by May Beattie to group together the disparate designs woven in the vase technique and make the now accepted attribution of Kirman origin for all.
While there are a large number of different designs that appear from this collation (Franses notes thirteen different design groups), certain other features appear to unite the carpets. A gloriously strong palette is typical with fully saturated bottle-green and brilliant scarlet (insect and slightly corrosive) red amongst other colours. Also typical are strong and frequent diagonal lines within the design. This is facilitated by the jufti knot being woven on alternating warps rather than in the usual vertical lines.
The present carpet and its companion piece have what appears to be a unique design. The field does not closely compare with any other multiple prayer rugs made in the 16th or 17th century, its niches floating freely on the red floral ground. While the border shares a common origin with the classic contemporaneous Isfahan border its angularity is only precisely mirrored in a carpet exhibited in Milan in 1981 (Michael Franses, Il tappeto orientale dal XV al XVIII secolo, Eskenazi Milan, London, 1981, no.31). That carpet also shares the same inner border with the present example, and, more importantly, the jufti knotting. Its field, a variety of shrub motifs on an indigo ground, is a slightly stiff version of one of the better represented groups within the jufti knotted group.