In a dining room in Boston…
The catalog for a Grogan Company rug auction on December 10, 2007, presents the rug below as Lot 65.
(Note: Images from the Grogan on-line catalog.)
The catalog description is:
65 Rare Persian Garden Carpet, dated 1221 (1806); 19 feet 5 inches x 7 feet
This exceedingly rare classical carpet was recently rediscovered in the Dining Room of the Back Bay townhouse of the late Byzantine Art scholar, Carroll Wales; the poetic inscriptions and early date make this carpet almost unique among early Garden Carpets. “As-is.”
$30,000-50,000
It is not that rugs like this are not seen with fair frequency on the international market. They are.
But it is somehow nice to consider that such a piece lay, until recently, in someone’s Back Bay Boston dining room. This was a dining room that deserved the capital letters of the description.
Regards,
R. John Howe
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December 2, 2007 at 4:07 pm
I sent the post above to a number of folks in the rug world.
One of them, Dennis Dodds, the Philadelphia, collector, and student of textiles who is the current president of The International Conference on Oriental Carpet sent me the comment below, identifying some similar rugs, and which I quote with his permission. (I may eventually modify this post to add images of some of the similar pieces to which Dennis refers.)
“The Wales-Grogan garden carpet can be compared to two in the Turk ve Islam Muzesi Eserleri in Istanbul and as you know both are published in the newly released TIEM Carpet Catalogue published for the 11th ICOC in Istanbul: “WEAVING HERITAGE OF ANATOLIA”, p. 128, pl. 106 and p. 129, pl.107. Another is in the McMullen Collection in NYC: ISLAMIC CARPETS, pp. 122-123 (fold-out plate 29). All three examples show a traditional blossoming tree/shrub motif in each of four medallions which appear at the intersections of water courses. A fourth ‘flowering shrub’ example from Berlin, is in HALI 128, May-June 2003,p. 88. That image accompanies a useful article by Emma Clark on the subject of Islamic gardens. The contents of the three medallions in the Wales-Grogan carpet differ with a central blossom radiating highly stylized serrated leaves and buds. This design has an interesting comparison to the McLaren Collection garden carpet, England; see Erdmann, 1976, fig. 123, which they date c. 1700. For another garden carpet, see ex-Kevorkian Foundation, New York, Bode/Kuhnel, 1970, p.144. fig. 105.”
My thanks to Dennis for this knowledgeable comment.
R. John Howe