FIRST QUARTER 20TH CENTURY

The field design of this carpet-a rich, deep magenta field elegantly filled with swirling arabesques, palmettes and animals-is a direct copy of a famous mid-16th-century Persian carpet at the Museum fr Angewandte Kunst in Vienna and is closely related to the design of the Emperor's Carpets, one in the same museum in Vienna and the other in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It is in the early Safavid style popular in the mid-16th-century court of Shah Tahmasp, who was a great patron of the arts and strongly encouraged the carpet-weaving industry during his reign.