Page 111 - 2021 April 1, ART OF THE ISLAMIC AND Indian Worlds Including Oriental Rugs, Christie's London

■*101
A CENTRAL ANATOLIAN RUG
18TH CENTURY
Finely woven, evenly worn, corroded
brown, scattered repiling and repairs
9ft.3in. x 4ft.7in. (284cm. x 144cm.)
£12,000-18,000 US$17,000-25,000
€14,000-21,000
PROVENANCE:
Ahern Collection, Sweden
The field design of this rug is comparable
to another published in Antique Oriental
Carpets from Austrian Collections, 1986,
Vienna, no.29. Unlike the ivory spandrels
in that example, the present rug displays
two further repeats of the square
medallions. While half of the upper
border of that example was abandoned
in favour of the proportions of the rug,
the golden yellow hibiscus borders here
are complete contributing to the overall
balance of the design.
Earlier eastern Anatolian rugs display
a similar layout to the 4:1:4 formation
with central star medallion. These
include several examples ranging from
the fifteenth-seventeenth centuries
which were part of a group found at
the Divrigi mosque in Sivas, and now
housed in the Vakiflar Museum, Istanbul
(inv. nos. A-119, A-84, Belkis Balpinar
and Udo Hirsch, Carpets of the Vakiflar
Museum, Istanbul, Istanbul,1988, pp.198-
199, 202-205, pls. 11, 13 and 14). The
same formation continued into later
eastern Anatolian examples, as well as
Karachopf Kazak rugs of the nineteenth
century (see, for example, Balpinar and
Hirsch, op. cit., pp.340-341, pl. 82, for
a 19th century eastern Anatolian rug of
comparable design).

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