Page 219 - ART OF THE ISLAMIC AND INDIAN WORLDS Carpets, Ceramics Objects, Christie's London Oct..27, 2022

FOOTNOTES
[1] We acknowledge the kind assistance of Rosemary Crill with the tentative two leaping antelopes have dark upper bodies and white bellies. These
identification of the flowers in the field. The flowers in the major and minor colours meet and are mixed in a narrow transitional zone of intermediate
borders have not been identified. tone and naturalistic appearance. See FUF p.23, fig.9, and p.55, fig.48.
[2] Two fragments come from the field of this carpet. The larger one belongs [13] See FUF, pp.95-105 for a discussion of this large and curious group.
to the City of Bristol Museum and Art Gallery, no. Or. 1977.09.01, Oriental [14] Victoria and Albert Museum, London (T – 403-1910), published FUF
section. The fragment was loaned in 1962 from the estate of Sir Herbert p.107, fig.105. For the piece(s) in the Kunstmuseum Dusseldorf, see Fredrik R.
Smith. It had belonged to his father, Sir Herbert Smith, first Baronet, who Martin, A History of Oriental Carpets before 1800, Vienna, 1908, p.92, fig.221.
was a prominent figure in the British carpet industry who died in 1940. [15] Keir Collection, England. Published Friedrich Spuhler, Islamic Carpets
The carpet was purchased by the museum in 1977. See The Eastern Carpet and Textiles in the Keir Collection, trans. George and Cornelia Wingfield
in the Western World from the 15th to the 17thcentury, London: Hayward Digby, London, 1978, cat. No.60.
Gallery, 1983, p.103, no.84. A glass negative of the Bristol fragment [16] The Jaipur pashmina carpet, illustrated in FUF, p.108, once part of the
was noted (personal communication) by Alberto Boralevi in the Bardini Maharaja’s collection, is one of a number of carpets donated to the Maharaja
Archive, suggesting that it once belonged to Stefano Bardini, the renowned Sawai Man Singh II Museum in Jaipur (Inv. No.C-15). The Metropolitan
Florentine antiquarian, between about 1875 and the early decades of the Museum fragments (Inv. No. 14.40.719) are published in FUF, pp.82-83.
20 century. The present whereabouts of the unpublished smaller field [17] The history and contents of the Campbell Report are reviewed in FUF,
th
fragment is unknown. The third known fragment comes from the main pp.12-14. The Report itself, including the images, are on file at the Victoria
border; see Angela Volker, Die Orientalischen Knupfteppiche im MAK, Vienna: and Albert Museum, London.
Osterreichisches Museum fur Angewandte Kunst, 2001, pp.320-21, no.117,
acquired in 1884. The approximate original length of the proposed carpet
was determined by Steven Cohen in accordance with his reconstruction of
the original.
[3] The Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri or Memoirs of Jahangir, trans. Alexander Rogers and
ed. Henry Beveridge, London, 1909, reprint Lahore, 1974, vol.2, pp.143-45.
[4] A western Asiatic tulip in the Maulana Azad Library of the Aligarh Muslim
University in Uttar Pradesh was published in Stuart Cary Welch, India: Art
and Culture 1300-1900, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, p.220,
no.145. An iris was published in Yedda Godard, “Un Album de portraits
des princes timurides de l’lnde,” Athar-e Iran 2 (1937) pp.273-74. The third
painting, of a narcissus, is unpublished.
[5] The subject is a Martagon lily. Both versions of the image were published
by Robert Skelton in “A Decorative Motif in Mughal Art,” ed. P. Pal, Aspects
of Indian Art, 1972, Leiden, p.151 and pl. XC and XCI. See also Vivian A. Rich,
“Mughal Floral Painting and Its European Sources,” in Oriental Art, n.s., 33,
no.2 (Summer 1987), pp. 183-89.
[6] For an extensive discussion of the flower style, see Daniel Walker, Flowers
Underfoot: Indian Carpets of the Mughal Era, New York: The Metropolitan
Museum of Art, 1997, pp. 86-113. Hereafter, this publication will be referred
to as FUF.
[7] The Persian style is described in detail in FUF, pp.29-85.
[8] See Abul Fazl, The Ain-I Akbari by Abu’l-Fazl Allami, trans. Henry
Blochmann and H. S. Jarrett, and ed. D.C. Phillott, Calcutta: Royal Asiatic
rd
Society of Bengal, 3 ed.,1977, vol.1, p.57. Royal workshops are discussed in
FUF, p.7.
[9] A more detailed discussion of pashmina is offered by Steven Cohen in
Border fragment from the original, at the MAK, image
“The Use of Fine Goat Hair for the production of Luxury Textiles,” in Jon courtesy of Museum of Applied Art, Vienna
Thompson, Daniel Shaffer, and Pirjetta Mildh, eds., Carpets and Textiles in the
Iranian World 1400-1700, Oxford and Genoa, The May Beattie Archive and the
Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford, and The Bruschettini Foundation
for Islamic and Asian Art, 2010, especially pp.125-31.
[10] Only three pashmina carpets approach or meet the unbelievable level
of 2,000 knots per inch. The finest of all is a heavily damaged rug in the
Textile Museum, Washington, D.C. (R63.00.22), published in FUF, p.22,
fig.7. A beautiful and complete example, still in private hands, shows a
large poppy within a niche. This is illustrated in FUF, p,91, fig.88. The third
example survives only in small fragments, the largest of which belongs to the
Metropolitan Museum (no.14.40.722). It is published in FUF, pp.24-25, fig.10.
[11] The connection of the multi-coloured fringe to imperial court furnishings
is made in a portrait of Shah Jahan dated 1627-28, in which the emperor
stands on a platform covered with small colourful fringed rugs. See Stuart
Cary Welch et al., The Emperors’ Album: Images of Mughal India, New York:
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1987, no,58, p.200.
[12] Shading and colour-mixing were occasionally utilized in carpets made
with sheeps wool pile, sometimes with impressive results. In an Indian animal Fragment from original, image courtesy of Bristol
Museum and Art Gallery
carpet in the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. (no. 1942.9.475),
216 Opposite: The Marble Hall, Elveden Hall, Norfolk, courtesy of Elveden Farms 217