A ‘Two-Dragon’ ‘Dragon and Pheonix’ carpet, South Caucasus, 18th century

Animals and birds, both real and mythical, were popular motifs in 16th and 17th courtly Safavid carpets, and these carpets probably provided the refined prototypes for the ‘Dragon’ carpets, normally assigned to the Caucasus.  Charles Grant Ellis  (Early Caucasian Rugs, Washington D.C., 1975) proposed that they were more specifically based on a lost group of Kirman carpets represented by a fragment of a Kirman carpet in the Staatliches Museum für Völkerkunde, Munich, 23-50-18, illustrated in Thompson, Jon, Milestones in the History of Carpets,  Moshe Tabibnia, Milan, 2006, fig. 196, p. 251, which has a narrow border and a field of strapwork with large motifs enclosing animals. For examples of Persian weavings utilising related design elements see: with ascending animal combats and dragons, Pope, A.U., A Survey of Persian Art, London and New York, 1939, Vol.VI, pls.1182, an incomplete Northwest Persian Animal Carpet, then in the collection of John D. Rockefeller, Jr. and ibid., pl.1268a, the Figdor silk kilim; for a ‘Vase’ carpet with serrated leaf trellis,  Yetkin, Serare, Early Caucasian Carpets in Turkey, Vol. II, London, 1978, fig. 201.

Yetkin defined four types of 'Dragon' carpet: 'Archaic,' ‘Four-Dragon’, ‘Dragon and Phoenix’ and as a further combined development of the latter, the ‘Two-Dragon’ style. The most archaic of the ‘Dragon’ carpets include dragon motifs with birds and running animals relatively naturalistically drawn and either alone or in confronting pairs facing a tree. The Graf carpet, originally found in a Damascene mosque, now in the Islamisches Museum, Berlin, is thought to be the oldest example of this type, see Yetkin, op. cit., p. 8, fig. 118. This example can be categorised as part of the ‘Two-Dragon’ subset of the ‘Dragon and Phoenix’ style, in which there are two dragons on the horizontal axes and in which the ‘expansive multi lozenge lattice of the earliest dragon carpets is narrowed to a loom-width field design with a two-lozenge lattice that places an emphasis on the palmettes of the central axis’. The majority of extant ‘Dragon’ carpets are on a red ground; blue is less frequently seen. Examples of ‘Dragon’ carpets with a blue ground include that in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, once in the James F Ballard Collection, Acc. No. 22.100. 119, one in The Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Acc. No. 062362, a ‘Dragon’ carpet fragment once belonging to E M Remarque (see Hali, Issue 192, p. 1 and Hali, Issue 207, p. 36, advertisement Max Lerch, dated to the mid 17th century),and the carpet from the collection of Howard T Hallowell III illustrated Ellis, Charles Grant, Early Caucasian Rugs, Washington 1975, pl. 10.  These cited examples are earlier than the lot offered here - the drawing is more refined and the birds within the serrated leaves and the spotted dragons are more recognisably drawn, but they provide useful comparisons for the development of the design in this colourway. The mythical and the real are given new life in the present lot, with the unusual addition of a male figure adjacent to the lower left hand dragon, infill of a variety of animals including goats, and heavily laden camels or horses in the bodies of the two lower dragons.

Naim Attallah CBE (1931 – 1921), was born in the British Mandate of Palestine, and came to London in 1949, initially to study engineering, but in his long career moved from currency dealer to company director, racehorse-owner, film and theatre impresario (producing ‘The Slipper and the Rose in 1976), parfumier and chocolate-maker, and (for which he is perhaps best remembered) publisher and magazine proprietor, and as described in the Guardian in 2000 a "legendary adorer of beautiful women". In the early 1970’s he met John Asprey, and became joint managing director and ultimately chief executive of the eponymous luxury goods group, vastly expanding its turnover. He also acquired Quartet Books (1976), The Women’s Press (1977) and several magazines, including the Wire, the Oldie and the Literary Review; he was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2017 New Year Honours List for services to literature and the arts. 

Amongst Attallah’s many collecting passions, rugs was one of the most dear to him, covering the walls, beds and floors of his Mayfair apartment. His son recollects visits with his father to see Jean Lefevre, in Knightsbridge  during the early 1970’s, remembering them as very good friends, and the source for most of the pieces his father bought. Attallah was known for wearing vivid coloured odd socks and iridescent silk linings to his jackets; his son recalls it was the love of colour in the carpets that his father had most enjoyed about living with them, over the intervening four decades since his collection was formed.