拍品专文
The carpet being offered here was woven for a specific commission; the indentation in the lower right hand corner is original. It was also originally of larger size; it has been cut inside the right hand border where at least two vertical rows of prayer arches have been removed. This removed section must have been the source of the three small fragments which are are published as in the literature above.
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 Franses, M.: 'The Caucasus or North East Persia, A Question of Attribution', in Kirchheim, H.: Orient Stars, 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 13 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 has 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 (Eskenazi: Il Tappeto Orientale dal XV al XVIII Secolo, 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.
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 Franses, M.: 'The Caucasus or North East Persia, A Question of Attribution', in Kirchheim, H.: Orient Stars, 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 13 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 has 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 (Eskenazi: Il Tappeto Orientale dal XV al XVIII Secolo, 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.