IRAN, EARLY 17TH CENTURY

A number of related motifs of birds in rosebushes are known in Safavid silks of the 17th century. The rosebushes are always asymmetrical and almost always issue from a mound. Typically they are naturalistic in all but the scale where the floral spray is often enormous when compared to the diminutive animal - be it hare or deer - that looks up. Ackerman attributes the group to Isfahan and suggests that many of these patterns with combinations of floral and animal motifs in fact are drawn from a famous ode with sentimental or mystic associations (Arthur Upham Pope and Phyllis Ackerman, A Survey of Persian Art from Prehistoric Times to the Present, Vol. III, London, 1939, pp.2135-36). For another textile with a similar bird in rosebush design, see lot 236.