EAST TURKESTAN, MID 18TH CENTURY

This rug belongs to a small group woven in the Tarim Basin in the 18th century, of which six other examples are known to survive. They share a number of common features: all are compact in size, with a border comprising three rows of interlocking fretwork motifs interspersed with bats, and all are woven in silk with a copper-pink ground. They display variations, however, in their field design. Two examples, one in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (acc.no. 08.248.8), the other in the Musée Historique des Tissus in Lyon – are decorated with rows of small abstract motifs. A unique example in the Wher collection has an overall lattice of peonies.

The present example has three known counterparts with matching fields: one is from the Akeret Collection in the Reitburg Museum in Zurich (Lennart Larsson jr., Carpets from China, Xinjiang, and Tibet, London, 1988, p.112, fig.146); another formerly in the collection of Yale University, (E. Herrmann, Seltene Orientteppiche, VIII, Munich 1986, no.114), was sold at Sotheby’s New York, 31 May 1986, lot 86, and is now in the Thyssen-Bornemisza collection (Friedrich Spuhler, The Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection: Carpets and Textiles, London, 1998, p.192, no.49). The third was noted by Sphuler, (op.cit. p.192), in his discussion of the last of these, which had been published in the ‘Asiatische Kunst’ exhibition in Berlin, 1929 when it was part of the F. Brandt Collection (cat. no.1114). Later in the Berlin art trade with Kunsthandel Venske, it was bought by Eberhart Herrmann, who sold it to the collector Heinrich Nolte in Delbrück, this was then sold at Van Ham Cologne, 5 December 2014, lot 72.

Two rugs considered part of this same group, which were most likely woven as a pair, are in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, (Dimand and Mailey, Oriental Rugs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1973, p.331, fig.309), and the Musée Historique des Tissus, Lyon, (inv. no.27.593) respectively. Each display the same border as the other three from the group, but are filled with horizontal rows of miniature dragons alternating with stylised cloudbands, a design loosely drawn from earlier Chinese seventeenth and eighteenth century satins.

A 1998 article by John Taylor and Peter Hoffmeister remains an important survey of what is known of rugs woven in East Turkestan, and they write that ‘the oldest surviving rugs are probably no earlier than the mid-18th century and are often in ruinous condition’ (John Taylor and Peter Hoffmeister, “Xinjiang Rugs”, HALI, 85, p.97). While this group is therefore exceptional for its age, this particular example also stands out for its excellent state of preservation.

The fusion of influences in this carpet were a result of the cosmopolitan setting in which they were woven. Kashgar was an important trading city, visited by merchants from Eastern China, South Asia, the Middle East, and beyond. The juxtaposition of a fret lattice and bat in the border of this carpet is comparable with the field of a kneeling mat woven during the reign of the Kangxi Emperor (r.1662-1722) which is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (acc.no. 49.6.1). Bats were considered auspicious animals for Chinese speakers since the word for a bat in Chinese, bianfu, sounds very similar to the word fu, which means blessings or happiness (Charles I Rostov and Jia Guanyan, Chinese Carpets, New York, 1965, p.92). Bats continued to be used in the borders of rugs woven in East Turkestan into the 19th century, but this group must be among their earliest appearance, at a time when the Qing Empire was consolidating its hold on the Tarim Basin following the conquests of Qianlong in the 18th century.

The field on the present example, however, is more elusive in origin. Michael Franses refers to them as lilies, which Spuhler connects to Mughal Indian carpets. Certainly, there is evidence of the weavers of the Tarim Basin taking inspiration from Mughal carpets, which are known to have been exported widely in the eighteenth century, a process which may have accelerated following the repeated sack of Delhi by Nader Shah and the Marathas in the mid eighteenth century, when much of the Mughal treasury was dispersed and its contents scattered across Central Asia. The article by Taylor and Hoffmeister includes images of a late 18th century Kashgar carpet woven with an overall floral lattice strikingly similar to Mughal carpets, which was then with John Eskenazi (Taylor and Hoffmeister, op.cit., p.95, fig.9)