NORTH INDIA, CIRCA 1880

This Agra rug belongs to a group of Indian carpets, distinguished by their bold scale of drawing in both the field and border sourced from the sixteenth and seventeenth saz leaf and palmette designs of the Safavid, Mughal and early Ottoman traditions. The design of this Agra rug is sourced from the Ottoman Cairene floral carpets an example of which was formerly in the William A. Clark Collection, (see The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Illustrated Handbook of The W. A. Clark Collection, The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. W. F. Roberts Company, 1928, p. 74). The renaissance in Indian carpet weaving in the nineteenth century was buoyed by the weaver’s exposure to these designs through the carpets of the Maharaja of Jaipur and the collection in Bijapur, and later, the publication of lavish carpet reference books with hand-coloured plates (Ian Bennett, Jail Birds, London, 1987, no.5). A larger Agra carpet displaying a more complete version of the same design, with the same azure-blue field, is published by Armen E. Hangeldian, (Tappeti d'Oriente, Italy, 1964, p.36, pl.xl) and which sold in these Rooms, 25 June 2020, lot 185.