1807 dated antique Azerbaijan carpet, Karabagh or Heriz

Sotheby's Carpets from the Estate of Vojtech Blau
New York | 14 Dec 2006, 10:00 AM | N08291

LOT 28
A NORTHWEST PERSIAN GALLERY CARPET,
illegible inscription
approximately 18ft. 8in. by 8ft. 9in. (5.69 by 2.67m.)
dated 1222 (1807)
ESTIMATE 100,000-150,000 USD
Lot Sold: 108,000 USD

LITERATURE: Martin, F.R. A History of Oriental Carpets before 1800, Vienna: The I. and R. State and Court Printing Office, 1908, pl.
23.

CATALOGUE NOTE
The present lot is an outstanding example of the small group of Heriz-like carpets woven in workshops in the
northwest Iranian province of east Azerbaijan throughout the 19th century. Such carpets could have been woven in
larger villages, such as Serab or Mehreban, probably on a horizontal loom, see Tschebull, Raoul E., “Heriz: A
Historical Perspective,” Hali, issue 90, pp. 64-74. These long gallery carpets were usually produced for local use, as
these weavings perfectly fit the elongated interiors of the contemporary Persian house. Even though these carpets
might seem to have been designed especially for such spaces in the 1800s, their grand scale and narrow proportions
also derive from earlier, sixteenth and seventeenth-century, traditions of Persian and Caucasian workshop weavings.
Besides their hallmark rosette-and-trellis pattern enriched with serrated leaves, which originate in seventeenth and
eighteenth-century northwest Persian prototypes, these carpets are also characterized by their highly lustrous wool.
The carpet offered here exhibits the customary colors used in other similar weavings of northwest Persia, such as
indigo, madder, and ivory. The field is richly decorated with large rosettes and stylized flowers that fill the trelliswork
frames in an exceptionally balanced way, rendering the field neither overly cluttered nor scattered with too few design
elements. As the border and field design motifs are similar in scale and design, the major border comfortably contains
the carpet with its contrasting deep blue creating a dynamic tension between field and border. The motifs throughout
the entire carpet are more finely detailed and set this lot apart from similar weavings, such as the Azerbaijan gallery
carpet sold at Sotheby’s, New York, April 10, 1997, lot 237 and at Christie’s, New York, December 13, 2000, lot 21.
Such detailed and balanced decoration further indicates the above theory that the present carpet was produced at a
large weaving center, where craftsmen would have had to meet higher standards.

Further information from John Taylor's rugtracker.com: "The above carpet was published by F.R Martin in 1908.At that time it lay in Stockholm`s Naesby House,as part of the Lamm Collection.It later surfaced with Blau in New York,and was shown at the CINOA in 1974.Subsequently auctioned at the Blau Sale on 14 December 2006(Sothebys NY,Lot 28)it brought $108,000.The carpet is illegibly inscribed but clearly dated 1807"