IMAGE DETAILS

Star-variant Ushak carpet (detail), late 15th or early 16th century, lot 50. Estimate: £50-80,000

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08 April 2010

For serious buyers and mere enthusiasts alike, Christie’s London Islamic Week sale of Oriental Rugs and Carpets, to be held in two sessions in their King Street rooms on Thursday 15 April 2010 is the main event of the week. The sale includes a number of outstanding pieces, both classical and later, as well as a wide ranging offering of decoratives, mostly at the kind of well-judged market-aware estimates that play such an important part in making such an important sale a success, especially in difficult times.

It’s probably a matter of taste as to which of two premier museum-quality classical period carpets on offer is the greater star. For Turkophiles, it must be lot 50, a very handsome previously unrecorded star-variant Ushak carpet of the late 15th or early 16th century. Although rewoven at one end it is in generally excellent condition, and the estimate of £50-80,000 should easily be surpassed for such a rare early piece.

On the other hand, Persophiles should bid for the catalogue cover piece, lot 100, a mid-17th century Kerman vase technique carpet formerly in the collection of Martine Marie Pol, Comtesse de Béhague. It was not among the carpets dispersed at auction after her death in the late 1920s, but passed instead to her family, who are thought to have sold it privately sometime between the 1930s and 1950s. With a beautifully rendered curving serrated leaf and blossom lattice on a mid-blue ground, this too is in superb condition, and should find a buyer, whether private or institutional, at a sum well over the £200-300,000 estimate.

There are several other high quality Persian carpets of somewhat later vintage. Foremost among them is lot 103, an exemplary 19th century Farahan ‘millefleurs’ prayer rug, seen at one of the later HALI Fairs at Olympia, that closely follows the 18th century Mughal model (£35-50,000), while lot 136, a classic format yellow-ground Qashqa’i medallion and corners carpet, is estimated at £25-35,000.

Other fairly randomly chosen items potentially of interest to collectors (and decorators too if they have any eye for quality) include lot 102, a very formal and Persianate medallion design Azerbaijan silk embroidery (on a typical chequered cotton ground), more likely 19th century than 18th as catalogued (estimate £15-20,000), and lot 99, a blue-ground large-palmette design Caucasian runner, catalogued as Lenkoran (£10-15,000).