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

AUCTION PRICE GUIDE

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.

For more auction results see www.hali.com/apg.aspx I HALI 144 I 119