XVIII century Eastern Anatolian Kars animal carpet

AN EAST ANATOLIAN RUG
PROBABLY KARS, LATE 17TH OR EARLY 18TH CENTURY

Price Realized £21,250 ($35,296)

Sale Information
Christies SALE 1519 —
ORIENTAL RUGS & CARPETS
8 April 2014
London, King Street

LOT NOTES
Lot Description
AN EAST ANATOLIAN RUG
PROBABLY KARS, LATE 17TH OR EARLY 18TH CENTURY
Good pile, corroded brown, scattered repairs, some loss to all four sides
6ft.6in. x 4ft.5in. (198cm. x 135cm.)

Lot Notes
This unusual rug bears similarities to a group of carpets that appear to have been woven between the mid 17th century and the first quarter of the 19th and are associated by no one overriding feature but a number of varying elements whether it be structure, design or individual motifs and are discussed at length by Ian Bennett in his article, 'Animal and Tree Carpets an Amorphous Group', Hali, 73, February/March 1994, pp.91-99.

At the time, the group consisted of nineteen rugs and was subsequently divided into sub groups based on similarity of design and further individual motifs. Of the sub groups ours is most similar to group B which includes such pieces as The Berlin fragmentary carpet, East Anatolia, mid 17th century, in the Museum für Islamishce Kunst, Berlin, and The Milan carpet, North West Persia, possibly 18th century, in the Freiberger Collection, Munich, (Bennett, op.cit. p.93). The whereabouts of the other three examples in that subgroup are unfortunately now unknown. The present rug, woven on brown wool wefts and natural/brown wool warps is different in construction to the Berlin fragment which is woven on red silk warps and mixed cotton and red silk wefts and is thought to have been woven in east Anatolia in the mid 17th century. Our lot whilst more tribal in its design and cruder in its execution contains a number of the same design elements, namely the elongated animal forms, the small octagonal medallions filled with stellar medallions and a number of the very small geometric motifs which suggests that is was probably woven at the end of the 17th century or the beginning of the 18th.

The most obvious difference in the present lot from the ‘animal and tree’ carpets however is the inclusion of the large central cruciform medallion. Dominating the central field and filled with the same animal and geometric motifs, this striking form of crossed beams is used on a number of early Anatolian runners from eastern Konya such as in lot 7 of the present sale, and on two examples in the Kirchheim Collection, (E. Heinrich Kirchheim et al., Orient Stars, a Carpet Collection, Stuttgart and London, 1993, pl.139 & 140, pp.214-215).