A rare Mughal carpet fragment with elephant mother and calf, North India, late 16th/17th century; another fragment with floral spray, 17th century

Acquired in London in the 1960s

Both fragmentary, losses to pile due to wear, the fragment featuring an elephant mother with her calf in particularly fragile condition with three vertical tears, both mounted, as viewed.
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Dr Steven Cohen has written on the much-disputed group of Mughal red-ground 'grotesque' carpet fragments attributing them to North India under Emperor Akbar's patronage (r.1556-1605), late-sixteenth/early-seventeenth century (see Cohen 1996, pp.104-135) and distinguishing them from the blue-ground fragments in the Musée des Arts Decoratifs, Paris (inv. no.A5212B) and MFA, Boston, formerly attributed to Lahore (London 1982, p.74, no.193; S. P. Verma, (ed.), Flora and Fauna in Mughal Art, Mumbai, 1999, p.135, fig.2) but now accepted to be Safavid because of the presence of jufti knotting (S.Cohen, Toby Falk Memorial Lecture, SOAS, 2014).

Cohen argues that the red-ground fragments may originally have come from a pair of large court carpets and quotes Cary Welch's observation that the grotesque zoomorphic designs evince "dynamic rhythms and animal force [which] match the other arts associated with Fatehpur-Sikri, one of the cities where, according to the Akbarnama, Akbar 'caused carpets to be made of wonderful varieties and charming textures.'" (Cohen op. cit., p.115). Whilst the present example lacks overtly 'grotesque' elements, it can be attributed to the same late Akbari period.

For a comprehensive structural analysis of the red-ground group, which are all wool pile on a cotton foundation, see ibid., pp.192-3. The group is dispersed across a wide range of institutional collections including: Musée du Louvre, Paris (inv. nos.7225a and b); Detroit Institute of Art (inv. no.31.64); Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (inv. no.04.1697); Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (inv. nos. Sachs 1952-33, 34 and 35); Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg (inv. no.YT 1017); Burrell Collection, Glasgow (inv. no.1934/9/1); David Collection, Copenhagen (inv. no.Tex.32); Textile Museum, Washington D.C. (inv. nos.R63.00.20A and 20B]; and, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (inv. no.1971.263.3). Another fragment was sold at Christie's, 18 October 1994, lot 569, and a further related fragment is in the Textile Museum, Washington (inv. no.R63.00.13), published in Walker 1997, p.45, fig.36, p.164, cat. no.5.