George Farrow: the working-class London boy who fell in love with the carpets of the Silk Road

Crime writer Edgar Wallace, famous for penning the screenplay for King Kong, was the unusual inspiration for a fine collection of silk carpets. The British novelist had a knack for an outrageous hero — plucky and full of grit, with an earthy sense of mischief. However, it was the author’s eye for a nicely furnished room that appealed to a young, working-class boy from south-east London.

George Farrow (1916-2001) thrilled to Wallace’s descriptions of oxidised silver grates, thick Persian carpets and rosewood tables, which conjured up a world of Victorian chinoiserie and Orientalism. As a young boy, he determined to become a collector, haunting the Horniman Museum in south London and the Victoria and Albert Museum in Kensington. ‘I did have, from a very early age, a sincere and pure love of art,’ he wrote.

After training as a chartered surveyor, Farrow moved into the property business, and by the 1950s he had earned enough money to realise his dream. Early interests included French furniture and Chinese works of art, but he soon became fascinated by the history of the Silk Road.

Through detailed scholarship and determined collecting, Farrow assembled one of the world’s most extraordinary and significant collections of 19th- and 20th-century silk carpets by Armenian weavers. They tell a wondrous story of the culture of the Silk Road, and of Farrow’s spirit of adventure.

Prominent among the collection are magnificent carpets from the workshops of the master weavers Hagop Kapoudjian (c. 1870-1946) and Zareh Penyamin (c. 1890-1948), made at the turn of the 20th century, which dominated the floor and wall space of Farrow’s converted farmhouse in Jersey. ‘For sheer artistry, unbelievable skill, inventiveness and adaptation — call it what you will — they will never be surpassed,’ wrote the collector.

Carpets from Sultans of Silk: The George Farrow Collection will be offered on 24 October 2024 in the Art of the Islamic and Indian Worlds including Rugs and Carpets sale in London. Highlights include rugs by the ‘master weavers’ Hagop Kapoudjian and Zareh Penyamin, including examples of the iconic prayer rugs which depict the Sultan’s Head — not of human form, but one that echoed the architectural features of the mosque domes of Safavid Persia and Ottoman Turkey. Christie’s international director of Rugs and Carpets, Louise Broadhurst, says that on average it would have taken nearly a year to complete one of these rugs, so complicated are the designs.

The weavers came from the central Anatolian town of Kayseri. Hagop Kapoudjian escaped the town in 1895, during the Hamidian massacres, fleeing to Istanbul. There he established his workshop in the Kum Kapi (Sand Gate) neighbourhood, historically known as the Armenian Quarter, close to the Topkapi Palace. Early inspirations for his designs came from the Persian Safavid rugs found in the Imperial Treasury.

Zareh Penyamin, who founded his workshop later, had trained as a tapestry designer for the Ottoman court. According to Broadhurst, he was something of a perfectionist, studying the designs and techniques of previous master weavers, and even unravelling old rugs to understand their complex structures.

Distinguishing between the two workshops is relatively easy because the artisans incorporated their signatures into their designs: Hagop chose Armenian and Roman script while Zareh used kufic forms. After the First World War, Hagop left Istanbul for Paris where he became a renowned restorer of Persian carpets, working for the likes of Calouste Gulbenkian, whose collection is on display at the Gulbenkian museum in Lisbon. Zareh also moved to the French capital, to be treated for tuberculosis. Both men died soon after the end of the Second World War.

It is thanks to Farrow that we know so much about the lives of these master weavers. His enthusiasm for Koum Kapi rugs led him to document the craftsmen’s careers, tracking down their families and colleagues, seeking out letters, photographs and even original rug ‘cartoons’, some of which will be offered for sale.

Much of this information went into the monograph Farrow wrote with Leonard Harrow, Hagop Kapoudjian: The First and Greatest Master of the Kum Kapi School, published in 1993. The carpet expert Ian Bennett wrote that ‘were it not for the work of George Farrow… we would know almost as little about silk rugs from 1900 as we do about those from 1600’.

Explore the Art of the Islamic and Indian Worlds including Rugs and Carpets sale at Christie’s in London, on view 19-23 October 2024, prior to the auction on 24 October