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Safavid predecessors yet with a more contemporary decorative sensibility. On the rare occasions, as here, when the arabesque is rendered in silk on an ivory ground, its even flow and elegance are a guarantee of success. The fine weave allows an exceptionally precise execution of the pattern, which is enhanced by the rug’s immaculate condition. Note the relationship between the border design and that seen on the Schürmann ‘Shiraz’ carpet sold at Nagel on 8 November2005. Pieces of this quality seldom appear at auction, so it is no surprise that in a market ready to paya premium for ‘best of type’, it sold well.

| Heriz Carpet Late 19th century 5.04 x 7.01m (16'6" x 23'0") Christie’s London 13 October 2005, lot 225 Est: £25-35,000 Sold for: £54,000 ($94,500) Attributed by Christie’s to Karaja, this is an oversize Heriz of the ‘Serapi’ type with just about every attribute that one desires in such a carpet: a bold, well-spaced, yellow medallion, which contrasts well with the smaller shield-like devices that surround it on the madder red ground, light blue spandrels, and a broad sky-blue border. In recent years, we have not seen many such ‘power’ carpets fetch sums at this level at auction, where generally more understated decorative pieces have been favoured. But given its great size as well as its very good condition, the high price should not be a surprise.

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soft indigo, and the ivory background. Good condition, excellent proportions and good provenance all contributed to selling this Tabriz for five times its conservative estimate.

| Bakhshaish Rug Second half 19th century 1.91 x 2.11m (6'3" x 6'11") Bonhams Knightsbridge 11 October 2005, lot 59 Est: £600-800 Sold for: £11,400 ($19,950) Miscatalogued as Farahan and hugely underestimated, this small, almost square, carpet belongs to a rare group of northwest Persian Bakhshaish weavings with ivory fields decorated with large scale angular arabesques,framed by widely spaced ivory-ground cloudband and palmette borders. Until now, only larger format pieces were known, such as Herrmann, SOT V, pl.52. Carpets of this desirable design type are not common at auction and are usually keenly contested.

| Sehna Saddle Cover Dated 1287 AH (1870 AD ) 0.99 x 0.95m (3'3" x 3'1") Nagel, Stuttgart 8 November 2005, lot 129 Est: €1,000 Sold for: €3,192 ($3,865) A fine, if rather worn, west Persian Kurdish saddle cover, with largely illegible inscription panels above and below in which the word ‘Sanandaj’ (Sehna) can be read. A lovingly rendered group of mother and two children holding hands appear at the centre of the plain indigo upper field. Not expensive for a genuine collector’s piece.

| Tabriz Carpet (detail) Circa 1880 4.52 x 6.38m (14'10" x 20'11") Sotheby”s New York, Safra Collection 3 November 2005, lot 418 Est: $30-40,000 Sold for: $192,000 The filigree effect of the small scale, allover herati pattern on this oversize Tabriz carpet, which also graced the inside cover of the sale catalogue, gave a feeling of subtle tranquility quite unlike the sensation of congestion we usually associate with this pattern. Here, there is a very delicate colour contrast between the pattern, which is punctuated by a very

| Petag Tabriz Carpet First quarter 20th century 2.36 x 3.35m (7'9" x 11'0") Christie’s London 13 October 2005, lot 79 Est: £4-6,000 Sold for: £7,800 ($13,650) An early 20th century Tabriz almost identical to one sold in the same rooms in April 2002 for $15,595 (HALI 123, p.110). Both carpets, manufactured for export by the German firm Petag, are fairly faithful copies of a well-known late classical Caucasian/ Armenian carpet from the

Habsburg Collection, now in the MAK, Vienna (Or294), which was first published in 1892 by the KK Österreichisches Handelsmuseum, then by F.R. Martin in 1908, and by Sarre & Trenkwald in the 1920s.

| Afshar Rug Second half 19th century 1.14 x 1.47m (3'9" x 4'10") Christie’s London 13 October 2005, lot 55 Est: £7-9,000 Sold for: £8,400 ($14,700) Not a bargain, but nevertheless a fair price for a very good quality and nicely coloured Kerman region blue-ground Afshar rug, in excellent condition, including the flatwoven ends. The geometricised repeatof flowering plants is particularlynicely rendered, and the colours are excellent.

| ‘Mohtashem’ Kashan Carpet (detail) Circa 1900 5.26 x 8.30m (17'3" x 27'3") Sotheby’s New York, Safra Collection 3 November 2005, lot 436 Est: $60-80,000 Sold for: $192,000 So-called ‘Mohtashem’ Kashans are a market phenomenon that operates on its own internal logic. Irrespectiveof trends in colour and design, Mohtashems have such a profoundly sensuous quality with their fine, velvety kurkwool that buyersare irresistibly drawn to them. Although

relatively dark in palette, with a busy allover design of spiralling branches with palmettes, the excellent condition of the present lot, coupled with its large dimensions, were winning factors that carried it far above estimate to the second highest price for the type at auction we have on record. The most expensive was a carpet with an allover floral repeat design at CNY in December 2003, which fetched a massive $287,500 (HALI 133, p.124). In addition, since 1999, a total of six Mohtashems, including the present and previous lots in the Safra sale, have passed the $100,000 mark at auction in New York. Of those, two have medallion and four have allover repeat designs.

CENTRAL ASIA

| Ersari Turkmen Chuval First half 19th century 1.50 x 1.00m (4'11" x 3'3") Sotheby’s, London 12 October 2005, lot 6 Est: £3-5,000 Sold for: £22,800 ($39,900) Heightened appreciation of Middle Amu Darya weavings recently has resulted in sharply increased prices for ‘A’ pieces, but while this ‘ikat’-design “Ersari” chuval is arguably a ‘best of type’, it set an auction record for the group by a huge margin. It is quite similar to one from the Mark Whiting Collection offered for sale by Richard Purdon in Burford at an asking price of £14,500 (HALI 111, p.112). Other closely related examples include a fragment in the Sienknecht Collection (Collection HCS, pl.40); RB, 15 May 1999, lot 48, $5,210 (HALI 106, p.139); Skinner, 29 April 2000, lot 28; Pinner & Eiland, Between the Black Desert and the Red, pl.63, in the Wieder
sperg Collection at the de Young Museum (see pp.8891 for a discussion of ikatinspired Ersari pieces) and two examples offered online by Galerie Arabesque on 8 December 2002 ($6,500) and 28 June 2005 (€7,000).

NORTH AFRICA

CHINA & XINJIANG

| Silk Embroidered Star Roundel Late 18th century Sotheby’s London 12 October 2005, lot 1 Est: £3,500-5,000 Sold for: £8,460 ($14,805) Putting a good piece at the start of an auction can be a bit of a gamble – buyers are held up in traffic, mix up the sale time, or are just not warmed up to the buying mood. But on this occasion it worked! Not only is this a fine example of the complex, Hispanicinfluenced, Islamic interlace found on this group of embroideries, but it doubtless also benefited from its appearance in Oriental Rugs from Atlantic Collections, p.271. It comes from a larger embroidery, a hanging (arid), or perhaps a bolster cover. Complete pieces are rather rare, and command high prices today, with well-to-do collectors from Morocco itself now entering the fray. A complete and magnificent example, with three star-shaped medallions alternating with two hexagonal lozenges, caused a great stir at CSK four years ago, when the price soared from an estimate of £5,000-8,000, to sell for a grand total of £39,550 ($43,685) to a telephone buyer, much to the chagrin of the many attending underbidding dealers (4 May 2001, lot 206; HALI 117, p.119).

| Ming Carpet Fragment First half 17th century 2.24 x 3.24m (7'4" x 10'8") Sotheby’s London 12 October 2005, lot 66 Est: £25-35,000 Sold for: £78,000 ($136,500) While the Ming Imperial Palace carpets might not be the ‘mother’ of all Chinese carpets (it is more likely that earlier production took place in the Ningxia region), they are interesting survivors. Three complete examples plus some teasing fragments were included in ‘Classical Chinese Carpets 1400-1750’ which recently ended at the Museum of East Asian Art in Cologne (see features). Such ‘palace’ carpets do appear at auction very occasionally – two of the Cologne pieces, a rhomboidal throne carpet and a shaped audience carpet, both on loan from Swiss private collections (König, Franses et al., Glanz der Himmelssöhne, 2005, nos.2 & 3), were consigned by the Frank Michaelian Collection as a single lot to Edelmann in New York in October 1982 (HALI 5/2, p.204). More recently a complete Imperial Dragon carpet and a large field fragment sold for $68,500 and $18,400 respectively at SNY on 22 September 1993 (HALI 72, pp.129-130), while another complete throne carpet fetched just $11,500 at Christie’s East in December 1993 (HALI 72, p.135, HALI 73, p.138). There have been a few other fragments which share colours and structureand are thought, according to

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Friedrich Spuhler (Carpets and Textiles in the ThyssenBornemisza Collection, 1998,p.209), to have come from a group of fourteen large carpets made for the Palace. Ming carpets differ substantially from later Kangxi pieces, displaying a wider palette with no evidentfading, more fluid drawing and a coarse ‘nomadic’ pile structure using irregular‚ methods of knotting, plain and diagonal packing, insertion of ‘fat’ knots between wefts, and so on. The results are visually pleasing, and this is true of SLO’s lot, which is clearly a large fragment from perhaps a monumental carpet with a lotus blossom design, albeit one that probably comes from an imperial workshop at the end of the Ming dynasty – it has cotton rather than silk in the foundation. Two smaller fragments from the same carpet were sold in the same sale (lots 67 and 68), and a similar object is in a public collection in Frankfurt (HALI 5/2, 1982, p.136, fig.6). The pieced border, of similar structure and colours, might be from another Ming carpet; it does not detract from the overall beauty of the object. Recent market developments and the Cologne exhibition might make this soon look like a bargain.

| Kashgar Silk Carpet (detail) Late 17th century 1.77 x 3.10m (5'10" x 10'2") Christie's London 13 October 2005, lot 150 Est: £25-35,000 Sold for: £31,200 ($54,600) Kashgar is the most westerly of the East Turkestan oases along the silk route, and has there

fore always been involved in the exchange of goods and cultural influences with India and Afghanistan. In the 17th century, production began there of silk carpets strongly influenced by Indian examples, at first adapting familiar designs and colour ranges from the Mughal repertoire (see M. Franses, ‘Silk Pile Covers from Western China’, in First under Heaven, The Fourth Hali Annual, 1997, pp.103-104). These were then the basis for the development of later Xinjiang carpets with floral patterns, first those with curvilinear heraticompositions, which became ever more angular with time. The present lot belongs to a limited group with the heratipattern (a later silk fragment of similar design was offered in the Bernheimer sale at CLO on 14 February 1996, lot 183), and additionally displays two unusual features: the presence of a wide border with a tight lattice design, and the apparent fading of the red silk used as the ground colour. What the cataloguer called the “soft colouring” of the carpet is the result of a fugitive red. This feature is most often found in Kangxi and later Ningxia woollen carpets, originally woven in bright colours that faded rapidly on exposure to light. The dyeing skills prevalent in Gansu and Xinjiang were evidently of a higher standard, as can be seen in the large number of 18th and early 19th century carpets from the area still with vivid pile colours. The border design of this elegantcarpet resembles the so-called pulodesign, which is often associated with textiles from northern Tibet (a near contemporaneous Kashgar carpet with a wide puloborder is published by Eskenazi, Il Tappeto Orientale, 1987, p. 427). Despite some uneven wear and corroded colours, the present lot clearly appealed to several bidders and sold easily.

| Xinjiang Silk Carpet Circa 1800 1.72 x 3.41m (5'8" x 11'2") Sotheby’s London 12 October 2005, lot 122 Est: £30-50,000 Sold for: £36,000 ($63,000) This lot displays a later angular rendering of a floral design that perhaps developed out of the Persianate herati motif. This allover design, called five-flower, is quite common in woollen carpets from the area. However, is much rarer in silk, although there is a white-ground silk fiveflower carpet in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection (Spuhler. 1998, pp.202-205). While the catalogue illustration suggested that the present lot was rather vividly coloured, in reality the tones were much more gentle. Generally in acceptable condition and quite appealing, it easily found a buyer at a price which is in line with current market trends.

Comments in Auction Price Guideare without prejudice and wherever possible take account of first-hand colour and condition reports. Prices includepremiums but not taxes. US$ conversions are an average for the week of the sale. Our thanks to the international salerooms for pictures and to our team of contributing editors, whose expert comments make this section possible.

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