KAZAK REGION, SOUTH CAUCASUS, CIRCA 1870

Rugs of this type were woven in the Moghan region, on the borders of Iran in present-day Azerbaijan. The field is covered in an overall repeat pattern of ‘Memling’ guls, so called because they often appeared on Anatolian carpets depicted by the Flemish artist Hans Memling in the sixteenth century. Though these guls are believed to find their origins in the Central Asian steppes before the age of Turkish migrations, by the nineteenth century much of their original significance had been forgotten and they had become more of a design motif than a symbol of tribal identity.

Published examples, narrower in width with only two columns of guls, include two others published by Peter Bausback, one in 1976 (Antike Orientalische Knupfkunst, Mannheim, 1976, p. 112) and another in 1983 (The Old and Antique Oriental Art of Weaving, Mannheim, 1983, p.71). Of these, the former has a similar hooked motif in the border to the present lot. A further example – square in proportion – also exhibits similar polychrome chequered minor motifs between the columns (Eberhart Hermann, Asiatische Teppich- und Textilkunst, Munich, 1991, p.33, fig.12).