Karapinar Tulip Rug from the Philadelphia Museum of Art

This magnificent carpet is Plate 36 in the late Charles Grant Ellis's, Oriental Carpets in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988. Ellis catalogues this carpet as Kilim-Style Rug, Central Anatolia, Eighteenth-Nineteenth Century. At this point I tend to suspect that this rug is older but I hate to disagree with Charlie Ellis casually so I will think about it for a while.

Divrigi Ulu Mosque North entrance
Photo by Dick Osseman

Ellis notes the lack of dark outlining typical in Turkish rugs and suggests that this gives the carpet a effect like we see in kilim and tile. He compares this carpet to a kilim found in the Great Mosque at Divrigi (left) in terms of color and the lack of outlining and to a number of other kilims in terms of the lack of outlining.

Thanks and best wishes,

J. Barry O'Connell Jr.

Persian Rugs the O'Connell Guides