THE VOLKMANN BERGAMA RUG
WEST ANATOLIA, LATE 17TH OR EARLY 18TH CENTURY

Price Realized £40,000 ($66,440)

Sale Information
Christies SALE 1519 —
ORIENTAL RUGS & CARPETS
8 April 2014
London, King Street

Lot Description
THE VOLKMANN BERGAMA RUG
WEST ANATOLIA, LATE 17TH OR EARLY 18TH CENTURY
Uneven wear, corroded brown, areas of repair
7ft.2in. x 5ft.4in. (218cm. x 163cm.)

Literature
Friedrich Spuhler, Hans Konig and Martin Volkmann, Old Eastern Carpets: Masterpieces in German Private Collections, Munich, 1978, pl.21, pp.70-71.
Hali 161, Letters, p.19
Exhibited
Alte Orientteppiche, Staatliche Museum für Völkerkunde, Munich, 1978


Lot Notes
This beautiful village rug is a fascinating weaving that combines sophisticated court workshop design with archaic inherited motifs. The central octagonal medallion is taken almost directly from large pattern Holbein medallions while the bold stepped shield medallions and floral rosettes derive from the tradition of village weaving. It is one of a very small group of rare 17th or 18th century Anatolian weavings with unusually wide borders of dynamic alternating shield palmettes and narrow field panels of repeating rosettes.

Only two examples of the present design are known. Our carpet relates very closely to an example in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, formerly in the collection of Joseph V. McMullan, inv. no. 1974.149.37. Writing about his rug McMullan states ‘Occasionally a rug appears which is so exciting in design as to find a definite place in almost any rug collection.’ (Joseph V. McMullan, Islamic Carpets, New York, 1965, pl.114, pp.332-333). These two rugs must have been woven within close proximity due to the similarity of nearly every design element, from the scale of the shield palmettes right down to the idiosyncracies of the heart minor stripe. However, there are a number of weaving irregularities on the McMullan rug where the design appears interrupted. The drawing of our rug is more elegant, assured and better resolved by the weaver.

There are two other related rugs with central Holbein medallions, a rug sold at Rippon Boswell, Wiesbaden, 20 May 2006, lot 97 and the rug illustrated in Peter Bausback, Antike Orientteppiche, Brauschweig, 1978, p.83, which has the same charming heart stripe but with a more normal field to border ratio and lacks the bold shield medallions which make the present example and the McMullan rug so striking. The other branch of this small group have related shield medallions in their borders but they have jointed legs which give them a beetle-like quality. This group consists of the rug gifted by the estate of Colonel Michael Friedsam to the Brooklyn Museum, inv. no. 32.548 (Heinrich Jacoby, Eine Sammlung Orientalischer Teppiche, Leipzig, 1923, p.91, pl.25), a rug published by Eberhart Herrmann (Seltene Orientteppiche X, Munich, 1988, pl.16, p.44-45), and one sold in these Rooms, 5 April 2011, lot 217.

It is testimony to the beauty of this rug that it appears in the background of the photograph of Martin Volkmann accompanying Hans Konig’s memorial tribute to the great carpet enthusiast in Hali 161.