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Price Realized £5,288 ($7,588)
Sale Information
Christie's SALE 6435 —
ORIENTAL RUGS AND CARPETS
3 May 2001
London, King Street
Lot Description
A TABRIZ MEDALLION CARPET FRAGMENT
North West Iran, 16th Century
The burgundy field with an overall lattice formed of angular brightly
coloured interlaced spiralling tendrils issuing palmettes, split palmettes
and floral motifs, corroded black, some areas of wear, very slight repairs
6ft.8in. x 3ft.9in. (204cm. x 114cm.)
Lot Notes
In the second half of the sixteenth century medallion carpets following the
model of that offered as lot 150 in this sale continued to be made, but with
certain changes of scale. Tabriz by this stage was no longer the capital;
that had moved to Qazvin in 1548 as a result of the frequent Turkish
incursions into North West Persia. The court style had also changed; Timurid
influence is far less visible in painting of the period. The carpets made in
this period in Tabriz reflect this, lacking the monumentality of conception
of the early examples, and often becoming far more intimate in scale. The
present lot is the field from just such a carpet. It relates closely to
examples such as that in the Berlin Museum (Erdmann, Kurt: Seven Hundred
Years of Oriental Carpets, London, 1970, fig.155, p.128). Another similar
example in Berlin even does away with the medallion, thereby having a field
hardly larger than that of the present rug set within a cartouche and
roundel border (Sarre, Friedrich, and Trenkwald, Herrmann: Alt-Orientalische
Teppiche, Vienna and Leipzig, 1928, vol.II, pl.11). The pile on this example
is well preserved with minimal restoration, showing an intensity of colour,
particularly noticeable in the diagonal colour symmetries of the minor
motifs.
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