A 'BIRD' RUG, SELENDI, OUSHAK REGION, WEST ANATOLIA

Wher Collection

Northern German private collection

Rippon Boswell, Wiesbaden, 29 November, 2014, lot 52A

‘Bird’ rugs are most often dated to the 17^th century, but they begin to appear in European paintings from the mid-16^th century; the earliest depiction is in the ‘Portrait of Ladislaus von Fraunberg, Count of Haag (1505-1566) by Hans Mielich c.1548 in the Kress Collection New York, where the ‘Bird’ rug covers a table; another is shown beneath the feet of Henry Hastings (1586-1643), 5^th Earl of Huntingdon, in his portrait by Paulus van Somer I (attrib.), of 1601, in Queens College, Cambridge. The 1601 inventory of Bess of Hardwick’s property included, in her bedchamber, “three foote turkie Carpetes the grounds of them white, to laye about the bed.” 'Foote' carpets means here carpets for walking upon; if these were ‘bird’ rugs as seems very likely, they would have created a very dramatic effect with the scarlet wool hangings decorated with gold and silver lace with which her room was decorated. These rugs were also exported to Transylvania, as examples exist in the Lutheran churches there. A related rug is illustrated as Cat. 56, p. 107 in Ionescu, S., Antique Ottoman Rugs in Transylvania, Rome 2005, from St. Margaret's Church, Medias, inv. 503 and another in the Black Church, Brasov, inv. 146, Cat. 59, p. 108. As an endless repeat, the design may be cropped at any point, but those such as the rug here which include two linked sets of birds centrally placed are perhaps the most visually satisfying. The cloudbands are the typical border device of these rugs.

‘Bird’ rugs (called rugs with ‘crow design’) are mentioned in a price register from Edirne in 1640, as being made in Selendi (a town between Oushak, Kula and Ghiordes), see Pinner, R., and Franses, M., ‘The ‘Classical’ Carpets of the 15^th to 17^th Centuries’, Hali, Vol.6 , No. 4, Winter 1984, their survey of the Victoria & Albert Museum’s Turkish carpet collection, p. 373, hence the attribution.