CENTRAL ANATOLIA, CIRCA 1880

The design of this rug has few comparables apart from a fragmentary central Anatolian runner, considered to have been woven pre 1800, that was formerly in The Orient Stars Collection of Heinrich Kircheim, (H. E. Kircheim, Orient Stars, A Carpet Collection, Stuttgart and London, 1993, no.158, p.229) and which later sold at Rippon Boswell, 2 October 1999, lot 67. At the time of the sale, its apparently unique design was noted and despite its fragmentary state, was of great interest. The present rug displays the same arrangement of three ascending totemic columns of primary-coloured blocks. Here the ground colour is no longer red, as in the Kirchiem example, but is now an abrashed light camel/yellow colour set within a broad walnut-brown border of distorted octagons containing colourful trefoils. The meaning behind these totemic columns of simplistic forms, which falls outside the Anatolian vernacular, remains unanswered but Freidrich Sphuler compared them to the Taoist yin and yang motif, suggesting that it carried meditative qualities which could have served a sufi or dervish (H. Kircheim, op.cit, p.229).