A VARIANT LARGE PATTERN HOLBEIN RUG
POSSIBLY BERGAMA, WEST ANATOLIA, LATE 16TH CENTURY

Price Realized £43,250 ($69,633)

Sale Information
Christie's SALE 7960 —
ORIENTAL RUGS AND CARPETS INCLUDING TURKMEN WEAVINGS FROM THE COLLECTION OF ERIK RISMAN
5 April 2011
London, King Street

LOT NOTES
Lot Description
A VARIANT LARGE PATTERN HOLBEIN RUG
POSSIBLY BERGAMA, WEST ANATOLIA, LATE 16TH CENTURY
Some areas of even wear and repiling, partly corroded brown, some repairs, selvages replaced, each end rebuilt
6ft.9in. x 5ft.8in. (206cm. x 173cm.)

Lot Notes
The field design of the present lot stems from the 16th century large-pattern Holbein carpets of Central Anatolia. The two octagonal medallions framed within stepped corner segments appear on numerous early Anatolian rugs.
It is the border design however that links the present rug to a group of small rugs which all share the same distinctive design in their borders. With angular rosettes surrounded by four foliate curved leaves the motifs appear to rotate much like the swastika or cark-i felek motif. The larger rotating motifs are separated by minor whirling polychrome motifs lending even more movement to the design. Two such rugs with this design and the same ivory border and guard stripes were sold in these Rooms one of which on 17 October 2002, lot 100, the other, a large fragment on 10 October 2008, lot 32.

The design can also be found employed within the field of a small number of rugs. It appears in a slightly debased version as a field design on a 17th century rug in the Museum of Applied Arts, Budapest, drawn on an orange ground (Ferenc Batári, Ottoman Turkish Carpets, Budapest, 1994, no.23, p.118). It also forms the main field design on ivory of a large 16th century carpet sold in these Rooms Régence to Fabergé. An Apartment by Jed Johnson, 20 May 2010, lot 19).
Christopher Alexander and Ferenc Batári demonstrate the relationship of the design to court design of the period through the similarity of the pattern to that of two different panels of tiles in the Rustam Pasha mosque in Istanbul dating from 1565 (Christopher Alexander, A Foreshadowing of the 21st Century Art, New York and Oxford, 1993, p.202-207); Ferenc: White Ground Carpets in Budapest, in Oriental Carpet and Textile Studies, II, London, 1986, pp.198 and 199). It is however possibly a considerably older design in origin, deriving from the same root that also provided the well-known "bird" rugs and carpets of the 16th and 17th centuries. Whatever its origin, and in contrast to most of the bird rugs, it is always, as here, very vibrantly coloured, with each flailing leaf made of three different blocks of strong colour.