Carpet Masterpieces from the Museum of Islamic Arts, Doha
A show at the Hong Kong Palace Museum, dedicated to carpets from Safavid Iran, Mughal India and Ottoman Turkey, loaned from the Museum of Islamic Arts in Doha, marks the first major Islamic art exhibition in the city.
Showcasing one hundred artworks spanning the 10th–19th centuries, ‘Wonders of Imperial Carpets: Masterpieces from the Museum of Islamic Art, Doha’ displays carpet masterpieces alongside ceramics, metalwork, manuscripts and jades reflective of each dynasty.
Carpets housed at the Museum of Islamic Arts in Doha have featured across various issues of HALI. When the institution opened to the public in 2008, Michael Franses, in an article of his series ‘A Museum of Masterpieces’ in HALI 155, examined select carpets from the museum’s collection, and notably the Rothschild Tabriz medallion carpet (image 1)—currently showing in the Hong Kong exhibition—stating that the fresh colours of ‘this supremely beautiful carpet’ are ‘little changed since the day it was made, and is the best-preserved classical Tabriz carpet extant.’ Franses notes the great rarity of this piece, with the entire surviving corpus of Tabriz carpets from this period amounting to not much more than seventy pieces (HALI 155, p.76).
The sixteen metre-long Kevorkian Hyderabad carpet and the Cintamani prayer rug are important exhibits in the Hong Kong show, alongside the Safavid animal carpet which appeared in HALI 155 and more recently on the cover of HALI 223 (image 3). Also, the Shah Sulayman ‘hunting’ carpet (image 2), which featured in a HALI 214 article by Nicoletta Fazio and by Michael Franses in HALI 155. Its design is typical of the repertoire of the workshops of Tabriz and Esfahan, and is best compared with the famous Seley medallion, cartouche and pendants carpet in the Metropolitan Museum, ‘which has a similar large medallion with cartouche and pendants at each end, and large secondary part-medallions in the corners’. Franses emphasises the exceptional significance of this carpet in the history of Iranian art, highlighting its vibrant colours, design and remarkable condition—’It is a masterpiece of carpet art’ (HALI 155, p.84).
In HALI 214, Nicoletta Fazio comments on the prominence given to the carpets from the MIA as context-setters for the other artefacts displayed. The Hong Kong show divides the carpets into four sections, beginning with an overview of cultural exchange between the Islamic world and China since the 7th century, followed by focused sectors on the Safavid, Mughal and Ottoman dynasties. Each investigates the cultural impact of imperial carpets, reflecting shared traditions as well as regional styles.
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