Sotheby's Textiles, Rugs and Carpets from the Collections of Bergi Andonian and Joseph W. Fell New York | 19 May 2011, 02:00 PM | N08756 LOT 48 A WEST ANATOLIAN RUG approximately 7ft. 1in. by 5ft. 6in. (2.16 by 1.68m.) second half 18th century ESTIMATE 40,000-60,000 USD Lot Sold: 110,500 USD PROVENANCE Sotheby's New York, 11 December 1991, lot 136 CATALOGUE NOTE The present lot has almost the same field and border decoration as a rug in the Ballard Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, except for the latter's missing outer guard border, see M. S. Dimand and Jean Mailey, Oriental Rugs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1973, pp. 245-46, n. 137. A number of comparable seventeenth-century prayer rugs from West Anatolia with similar decorative elements resembling serrated leaves or cloudbands above the arches and with hexagon-cartouche borders are now in the Museum of Applied Arts, Budapest, see Emese Pásztor, Ottoman Turkish Carpets, Budapest, 2007, pp. 138-147. These earlier prayer rugs depict arches supported by actual columns, which can be viewed as predecessors of the field-dividers of the lot offered here. The small ornaments in the arches of this lot resemble hanging lanterns, or stylized carnations as in the Budapest pieces, which further suggest that this lot is a variation on the six-column prayer rug design.