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Sotheby's Important Carpets from the William A. Clark Collection,
Corcoran Gallery of Art
New York | 05 Jun 2013, 10:00 AM | N09012
LOT 12
THE CLARK SICKLE-LEAF CARPET
A SICKLE-LEAF, VINE SCROLL AND
PALMETTE 'VASE'-TECHNIQUE
CARPET, PROBABLY KIRMAN, SOUTHEAST PERSIA
approximately 8ft. 9in. by 6ft. 5in. (2.67 by 1.96m.)
First Half 17th
century
ESTIMATE 5,000,000-7,000,000 USD
Lot Sold: 33,765,000 USD
PROVENANCE: Bacri
Frères, Paris
EXHIBITED
Washington, D.C., Corcoran Gallery of Art, Carpets for the Great Shah,
October 3 - November 16, 1948
Washington, D.C., The Textile Museum,
From Persia's Ancient Looms, January 23 - September 30, 1972
New York,
Asia House Gallery, Shah 'Abbas & the Arts of Isfahan, October 11 -
December 2, 1973
Cambridge, Massachusetts, Fogg Art Museum, Harvard
University, Shah 'Abbas & the Arts of Isfahan, January 19 -
February
24, 1974
Sheffield, Mappin Art Gallery, Carpets of Central Persia,
1976; also travelled to Birmingham; City Museum and Art
Gallery
Washington, D.C., The Corcoran Gallery of Art, The William A. Clark
Collection, April 26 - July 16, 1978
London, Hayward Gallery, The
Eastern Carpet in the Western World, May 20 - July 10, 1983
Washington
D.C., Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, The World at our Feet. A Selection of
Carpets from the Corcoran Gallery
of Art, April 4 - July 6, 2003
Washington, D.C., Corcoran Gallery of Art, Masterpieces: European Arts
from the Collection, August 25, 2007 -
January 6, 2008
LITERATURE
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
"Carpets for the Great Shah: The
Near-Eastern Carpets from the W. A. Clark Collection," The Corcoran
Gallery of Art
Bulletin, Washington, D.C., Vol. 2, No. 1, October 1948,
pp. 6 and 23, illustrated p. 8
Pope, Arthur Upham and Ackerman,
Phyllis, A Survey of Persian Art, London and New York, 1939, pl. 1234
Erdmann, Kurt, ' "The Art of Carpet Making," A Survey of Persian Art.
Rezension,' Ars Islamica, vol. 8, Ann Arbor,
1941, pp. 174-188 (cited)
Erdmann, Kurt, Oriental Carpets, An Account of their History, London 1960,
fig. 85
Schlosser, Ignaz, European and Oriental Rugs and Carpets,
London, 1963, no. 53
Ellis, Charles Grant, 'Kirman's Heritage in
Washington: Vase Rugs in the Textile Museum,' Textile Museum Journal II:
3, December 1968, p. 19, fig. 2
Ettinghausen, Richard, From Persia's
Ancient Looms, Washington, D.C.: The Textile Museum, 1972, fig. 6
Dimand, M.S. and Mailey, Jean, Oriental Rugs in the Metropolitan Museum of
Art, New York, 1973, p. 77, fig. 107
Welch, Anthony, Shah 'Abbas & the
Arts of Isfahan, New York: The Asia Society, 1973, no. 30, p. 17
Beattie, May H., Carpets of Central Persia, Sheffield: World of Islam
Publishing Company, 1976, pl. 6, cat. no. 15
Ettinghausen, Richard,
"Oriental Carpets in the Clark Collection," The William A. Clark
Collection, Washington, D.C.:
The Corcoran Gallery of Art, 1978, pp.
84-86, fig. 71
Yetkin, Serare, Early Caucasian Carpets in Turkey, vol.
II, London: Oguz Press, 1978, p. 91, fig. 217
Eskenazi, J., et al, Il
Tappeto Orientale dal XV al XVIII Secolo, Milan, 1982, fig. 1, p. 44
King, Donald and David Sylvester, eds., The Eastern Carpet in the Western
World, London, 1983, no. 80, pp. 46, 100-
101
Coyle, Laura and Dare
Myers Hartwell, Antiquities to Impressionism: The William A. Clark
Collection, Corcoran
Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 2001, pp. 74-75
"The Senator's Carpets, Hali, issue 127, p. 41, fig. 4
Franses,
Michael, "Classical Context," Hali, issue 129, pp. 68-69, fig. 4 (detail)
CATALOGUE NOTE
The visual impact of the Clark sickle-leaf carpet is so potent that it
has impressed carpet scholars for decades,
beginning with its first
publication, where the author writes, “ The Clark-Corcoran carpet is
definitely the finest of the
group, and is surely one of the
outstanding examples of Persian carpet weaving,” Arthur Upham Pope, A
Survey of
Persian Art, vol. VI, 1939, pp. 2385-2386.
The
tremendous vitality of this carpet’s design is achieved through its highly
complex network of swirling vines, which
intertwine and overlap each
other and flowering or fruit-laden branches. All of these are in planes
overlaid by the
curling, split and serrated lancet or ‘sickle’-leaves
which encircle the horizontal and angled palmettes. Also on the
highest
plane are the bold palmettes along the central vertical axis and the
half-motifs along edges of the field. The
two elegant cypress trees,
while overlaid by leaves and branches, pierce the pattern vertically. All
of these elements
are depicted in a rich array of vivid color and
executed with a crispness of drawing that demonstrate the superiority of
the carpet’s weavers and designers.
While the horizontal palmettes
are in symmetrical pairs, the overall pattern is asymmetric with one end
of the field
having three split medallions and the other end featuring
two large half-palmettes and quarter rosette medallions at
the corners.
It is very likely that this is one half of a design that would have been
mirrored, creating a carpet of more
typical long and narrow Safavid
proportions, see Arthur Upham Pope, A Survey of Persian Art, p. 2385. Pope
further
proposes that the format of this carpet shows that it was woven
for a throne dais or takht and that the throne, and
carpet, would have
been placed against a wall at one end such it would appear that the Shah
were sitting in the
middle of a great carpet, Pope, ibid. This proposed
function for the carpet stuck over the years, and in the 1976
exhibition Carpets of Central Persia, this carpet was labeled “The
Corcoran Throne Rug,” see May H. Beattie, Carpets
of Central Persia,
Sheffield, 1976, pl. 6, cat. no. 15. Beattie also notes how the carpet can
be viewed from either end,
as the vines and leaves are directed
“alternately medially and laterally,” although she prefers viewing with
the cypress
trees upright rather than “balancing on their tips,” and
illustrates the carpet with this orientation, see Beattie, ibid, p.
50.
Whether or not this carpet was woven for a dais, its scale adds to its
dramatic impact as the design elements are
barely contained within its
boundries.
The sickle-leaf design is the most rare of ‘vase’
technique carpet patterns and of the extant pieces known, the Clark
carpet appears to be the only one having a red ground. The sickle-leaf
motif itself is undoubtedly a Safavid rendition
of the Ottoman saz, or
curling, feathered leaf motif, such as those seen on the Cairene carpets
in this catalogue, lots 1
and 2. The saz appears around 1550 in an
album of design elements that would be appropriate in many media
including ceramics, textiles, metalwork, book bindings, and carpets, that
was produced by the imperial studio of the
Ottoman Sultan Mehmet the
Conqueror, see Michael Franses, "The Influences of Safavid Persian Art
Upon An
Ancient Tribal Culture," in Heinrich Kirchheim, et al., Orient
Stars, Stuttgart and London, 1993, p.108. Curling,
serrated lancet or
sickle leaves became a popular motif in carpets, appearing not only in
Safavid and Ottoman court
carpets but also in works from the Caucasus,
(see C. G. Ellis, Early Caucasian Rugs, Washington, D.C., 1975, pl. 22,
the Caucasian 'vase' carpet from the collection of Harold Keshishian), and
Mughal India, see Dimand and Mailey,
Oriental Rugs in the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, New York, 1973, pp. 148-9, fig. 129, cat. no. 55. Not only
found in
Safavid 'vase'-technique weaving, the curling leaf also
appears in carpets from other Persian workshops such as
those
attributed to Isphahan, with one example being lot 19 in this catalogue,
the Lafões carpet.
Most closely related to the Clark carpet
design-wise is the sickle-leaf 'vase'-technique carpet in the Gulbenkian
Museum, Lisbon, see Richard Ettinghausen, Persian Art: Calouste Gulbenkian
Foundation, Lisbon, 1985, pl. 30. The
Gulbenkian carpet shares a
similar design scheme although on a deep blue ground and the design is
mirrored from
the central horizontal axis such that its dimensions are
those more typical for Safavid weavings, more than twice as
long as it
is wide. The Clark and Gulbenkian carpets also share a similar narrow
border with simple band guard
stripes. These narrow borders have led
some to speculate that they are the inner guard borders to a wide major
border that would more comfortably complement the large design elements of
the field, see Steven Cohen, “Safavid
and Mughal Carpets in the
Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon,” Hali, issue 114, p. 85.
Yet, a narrow
border is a feature of so many ‘vase’ technique carpets that Spuhler
stated, “The borders of all Vase
carpets are exceptionally narrow, and,
as in this fragment, they often lack guard stripes,” when writing about
the Sarre
fragment in Berlin, see Friedrich Spuhler, Oriental Carpets
in the Museum of Islamic Art, Berlin, Berlin, 1987, pl. 86, p.
227.
Other related ‘vase-technique carpets with narrow borders include the
Béhague ‘vase’ carpet, see Christie’s
London, 15 April 2010, lot 100
and Pope, op.cit., pl. 1232; the Wagner Garden carpet in the Burrell
Collection,
Glasgow, see Beattie, op.cit., pl. I; and sickle-leaf
design ‘vase’ carpet fragments in the Textile Museum, see Charles
Grant
Ellis, “Kirman’s Heritage in Washington, Vase Rugs in the Textile Museum,”
Textile Museum Journal, vol. II, no.
3, December 1968, figs. 1, 3, 4,
5, 8, 10a, 16.
The border design of palmettes, rosettes and
scrolling, flowering vines on the present carpet is most similar to that
on
the ‘vase’-technique carpet with fragments in the Textile Museum,
Berlin and Cairo, see respectively Ellis, ibid, fig. 1
and Spuhler,
op.cit., pl. 86, and Gaston Wiet, Exposition d’Art Persan, Cairo, 1935.
While the basic elements of this
border pattern are found in many
‘vase’ carpets including fragments in the Textile Museum, Ellis, op.cit,
figs. 3, 4, 58,
10a, the motifs are usually more stylized and regular,
as most distinctly seen on the Béhague carpet. Ellis sees these
changes
as an evolution over time and one aspect in setting a chronology of ‘vase’
carpets with the earliest examples
being the Berlin, Textile Museum and
Cairo carpet and the Clark carpet offered here, see Ellis, ibid., p. 19.
In comparing the Clark carpet with the other sickle-leaf design ‘vase’
technique carpets there are differences in the
designs that suggest a
rough chronology. The Gulbenkian carpet features a layer of red vines that
are thicker than
the underlying floral vinery, while the branches and
vines on the Clark carpet are all quite fine. On the Clark carpet
the
sickle-leaves are also more attenuated than the robust, highly serrated
foliage on the Gulbenkian carpet. Sickle
leaves on the Jekyll carpet
fragments appear to have characteristics similar to both carpets with some
leaves being
elongated like the Clark and others being more thick and
feathered as in the Gulbenkian carpet, see Kirchheim, op.cit.
, pl. 72,
pp. 138-9 and Roland Gilles, et al, Tapis present de l’Orient a
l’Occident, Paris, 1989, pp. 148-9. In the
Béhague carpet and the
sickle-leaf carpet once with Miss E. T. Brown, see Pope, op.cit., pl.
1236, the leaves have
become more uniform in their drawing and
placement across the field, suggesting that these are the latest pieces in
the chronology. Ellis, op.cit., p. 19 believes the Clark carpet to be the
oldest of the sickle-leaf 'vase'- technique group,
dating it to the
late 16th century. Scholars since have come to consider the Gulbenkian as
the earliest with the Clark
and Jekyll examples following closely
thereafter in the early 17th century, see Dimand and Mailey, op.cit., p.
77 and
Beattie, op.cit. p. 50.
All of the sickle leaves in these
carpets are internally decorated with a variety of flowering vines and in
many cases
they are split in two colors along the vein of the leaf. In
the Clark carpet the sickle leaves are split, with a smaller leaf
of a
different color sprouting from the long leaf and curling in the opposite
direction. The Brown and Gulbenkian carpet
have some of these extra
leaves, however not to the extent of the Clark carpet. Other distinctive
features of the Clark
carpet are the pair of cypress trees and the pair
of shield-like light blue palmettes at right angles to the trees, the
fanlike
blossoms at the base of the trees and the pair of coiled,
stylized blue and white cloudbands which also demark a
slight shift in
the design to the central vertical axis of the carpet. These bold, rotund
cloudbands are found in other
‘vase’-technique carpets, for examples
the Sarre/Berlin fragment and two fragments in the Musée des Tissus, Lyon,
see Roland Gilles, et al., Le Ciel dans un Tapis, Paris, 2004, pls. 50 and
51, pp. 184-187.
The pair of tall, elegant cypress trees in the Clark
carpet are more uncommon on sickle design ‘vase’ technique
carpets,
appearing on two fragments from the same carpet now split between The
Burrell collection, Glasgow Art
Gallery and the Victoria and Albert
Museum, London, see Beattie, op.cit., nos. 18 and 19, pp. 52-53. Similar
pairs of
cypress trees appear in other important Safavid carpets such
as the Schwarzenberg ‘Paradise Park’ carpet, now in
the Museum of
Islamic Art, Doha, Qatar as well as the 'Coronation' carpet, in the Los
Angeles County Museum of Art,
see respectively Michael Franses,
“Persian Classical Carpets,” Hali, no. 155, p. 10 and Linda Kamaroff, "The
Coronation Carpet," Hali, no. 162, fig. 2, p. 47. Cypress trees have long
been revered by the Persians. They are
indigenous to the area and have
longevity, leading to them becoming a symbol of immortality, and to their
choice as
a symbol for the Zoroastrian god Mithra, see Susan Day, “The
Tree of Life: A Universal Symbol,” Oriental Carpet and
Textile Studies
VI, Milan, 1999, p. 11.
Trees have been used by man as symbols of
life, paradise and the cosmic universe from earliest times to the present,
see Day, ibid, pp. 1-13. Since Cyrus the Great built the large garden he
called his ‘Paradise Park’ around 540 B.C.,
Persian artists and authors
have been depicting and writing about gardens as a paradise ever since,
see Franses,
op.cit., p. 7. A favored composition for carpets therefore
became the paradise garden with its depiction taking various
forms from
the ‘Paradise Park’ carpets, to the bird’s eye view ‘Garden’ carpets, to
the ‘vase’-technique carpets filled
with stylized floral motifs and
flowering shrubs. The Clark carpet with its abundance of trees and
branches issuing
ripe fruits and a myriad of flowering blossoms is the
essence of a garden paradise.
A distinct characteristic of the ‘vase’
technique group of carpets is their vivid color range and the highly
sophisticated
juxtaposition of these colors. In the earliest ‘vase’
carpets, including the Clark carpet, the design is also resplendent in
its variety of floral elements and in their differing sizes. Here, the
dynamic combination of design and color keep the
eye moving over the
surface of the carpet . The Clark sickle-leaf carpet also engages our
imagination and we are
invited into a world of great splendor and
abundance by a tour de force of Safavid weaving.
Please note that a
license may be required to export textiles, rugs and carpets of Iranian
origin from the United States.
Clients should enquire with the U.S.
Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) regarding export requirements.
Please
check with the Carpet department if you are uncertain as to
whether a lot is subject to this restriction or if you need
assistance.
Watch video: The Clark Sickle-Leaf Carpet's Dramatic Details: Mary Jo
Otsea discusses the complex design and vibrant history of this red carpet,
which has entranced scholars and collectors for decades. Garnering $33.8
million, the Clark Sickle-Leaf Carpet was one of the 25 Middle Eastern and
Asian carpets from Sotheby's June 2013 auction Important Carpets from the
William A. Clark Collection, which achieved a total of $43.8 million.
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