A Mughal carpet, North India,

Hagop Kevorkian

A Collection of Highly Important Oriental Carpets, Part II, Sold by order of the Kevorkian Foundation, Sotheby & Co. London, 11 December 1970, lot 10

The Kevorkian Foundation Collection of Rare and Magnificent Oriental Carpets, travelling exhibition, 1966 exhibited at:

The University of Pennsylvania Museum, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
The Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, New York
The Cleveland Musem of Art, Cleveland, Ohio
The de Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco, California
The Kansas City Museum, Kansas
Dallas Museum, Dallas, Texas

Dimand, Maurice S., The Kevorkian Foundation Collection of Rare and Magnificent Oriental Carpets, Special Loan Exhibition catalogue, New York, 1966, no. 29.

Bennett, Ian, ed., Rugs and Carpets of the World, New York, 1977, p. 130

The crimson field with a lattice enclosing flowering shrubs on this carpet epitomizes the 'flower style'  of design that became dominant in the Mughal court during the reign of Shah Jahan (1628-58); see Walker, Daniel, Flowers Underfoot, Indian Carpets of the Mughal Era, New York 1997, pp. 86-88.  This taste for floral decoration evolved from their use as supporting motifs during the earlier reigns of Akbar and Jahangir.  Jahangir was so impressed by the flora he observed on a trip to Kashmir in 1620 that he commissioned one of his most meticulous artists of natural subjects, Mansur, to paint more than a hundred different flowers.  The formal style in which Mansur depicted these flowers shows the influence of European herbal prints combined with an Indian attention to detail, see Walker ibid, pp. 86-87 and Welch, Stuart Cary, India, New York 1985, fig. 145, p. 220 for a reproduction of Mansur's watercolor of the Western Asiatic Tulip.  During the reign of Shah Jahan these flowering plants would be incorporated into all aspects of Indian art including architectural details, such as the a panel in the Red Fort, Delhi, circa 1639-48, illustrated as fig. 84, Walker, op.cit. as well as becoming a distinctly Mughal carpet design.  It is the flowering shrub that over time has become the decorative element virtually synonymous with the arts of Mughal India. 

17th century Mughal lattice and flowering shrub carpets are rare to the market with only two examples having appeared since this one was sold in 1970; Sotheby's New York, December 10, 1992 lot 15 and now in the Textile Museum, Washington, D.C., cat. no. 1994.12.1 gift of James D. Burns (see Bier, Carol, "Approaches to Understanding Oriental Carpets," Arts of Asia, vol. 26, no. 1, cover and fig. 28 and Hali, issue 88, p. 105, fig. 5);  and the carpet sold Christie's London, 24 April 1997, lot 425.  A fragment from a lattice carpet very similar to the Burns/Textile Museum carpet was sold Christie's London, 15 October 1998, lot 299.  A related lattice and floral carpet  in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London has a similar field pattern, however with a border of blossoms and flowering vines which anticpates those of the so-called "millefleurs" pashmina group, see Walker, Daniel, op.cit., fig. 108.  In the present carpet, the drawing of the trelliswork and the floral motifs is more angular and stylized than in the three cited works, which would indicate that it follows somewhat later in the 17th century.  The narrow border in the present carpet, with the same crimson ground color as that of the field, is very similar to that of a carpet depicted in a miniature painting dated circa 1660, see Walker, ibid., fig. 115.