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Carpets
Sale: L07870 | Location: London, New Bond Street
Auction Dates: Session 1: Tue, 17 Apr 07 2:00 PM
LOT 66
A KARAPINAR CARPET FRAGMENT, CENTRAL ANATOLIA,
35,000—45,000 GBP
MEASUREMENTS
approximately 218 by 144cm., 7ft. 2in. by 4ft.
9in.
DESCRIPTION
late 16th century
Condition Note: small repairs
LITERATURE AND REFERENCES
"The View from Above," Hali, issue 134,
May-June 2004, p. 45
CATALOGUE NOTE
An intriguing and striking feature of this carpet
fragment is the yellow punctuated half oval,
filled with red hooked motifs, that forms an arch
above the medallion. This is an unusual design
element that seems to be shared with only three
other published rugs; one in the Ballard
collection, see Hali, issue 124, p. 105, a rug
sold at Rippon-Boswell, Wiesbaden, 17 May 2003,
lot 71 and another sold at Skinner’s,
Bolton, 16 December 1986, lot 102. These three
examples are complete rugs with each having a
full yellow ovoid framing its medallion. It is
very likely that the half oval at the top in this
fragment would have been complemented by a
similar one beneath the medallion, forming a
truncated but more complete oval. In the three
cited pieces, the upper and lower elements of the
ogival form are cut off by the border, while in
the fragment here, the upper end is complete and
contained within the field. It is possible that
this oval design element is an adaptation of the
ogival repeat patterns found in Ottoman velvets
and brocades and this does appear to be the case
with the cited examples. The carpet offered here,
however, may also reflect an interpretation of a
court carpet design where an ovoid band
punctuated by palmettes surrounds a lobed
medallion such as that on the small silk Kashan
rug in the Bavarian National Museum, see Erdmann,
Kurt, Seven Hundred Years of Oriental Carpets,
London, 1970, fig. 61, p. 61.
The absence of outlines between colours and a
stylization in the rendering of floral elements,
all having a ribbon-like character to their
drawing, are characteristics of Karapinar pile
weavings as first identified by May Beattie in
her 1976 article, “Some Rugs of the Konya
Region,” Oriental Art, volume XXII, no. 1,
pp. 60-76. Found in this fragment, these elements
are shared with the examples cited above and two
Karapinar weavings more recently on the market
such as the Foy Casper carpet and Bernheimer-Wher
carpet fragment, see Thompson, Jon, Milestones in
the History of Carpets, Milan 2006, pl. 24 and
fig. 188, and Brunk Auctions, Asheville, NC, 31
May 2003, lot 57 and Sotheby’s New York, 16
December 2004, lot 55 respectively. The medallion
enclosing diagonally placed and attenuated tulips
in the fragment offered here is also found in two
Karapinar rugs in museum collections, that in the
Berlin Museum of Islamic Art, see Spuhler, F.,
Oriental Carpets in the Museum of Islamic Art,
Berlin, London 1987, pl. 24, p. 167 and the
‘Cantoni’ rug in the Rijksmuseum,
Amsterdam, see Hali, issue 29, p. 50. |
