A Cairene Medallion carpet, Ottoman Empire, Egypt, 16th century. Austrian Museum of Applied Art (MAK)

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TURKISH CARPET. COURT MANUFACTORY; 16th CENTURY
Length, 750 cm.; width, 430 cm.

Warp: wool, brownish, four-fold, left-twist. To 1 dm. 56 warp threads (= 14 to the inch).
Weft: wool, brownish. After every row of knots three shoots: two straight, the middle shoot wavy. Every shoot four-fold.

Knotting: sheep's-wool, two-fold. To 1 dm. 22 knots in the length, 28 knots in the width (= 5 and 7 to the inch). Knotted on two warp threads. Scheme III. To 1 square dm. about 600 knots (= 35 to the square inch). Pile strongly to the left and lying flat.

Colours: Ground-colours: red (inner field and middle stripe of the border), green (edgings of the border), blue (panels). Colours of the pattern: green, dark blue, light blue, yellow, white, red. The colours are much changed by time.

State of preservation: very much worn. In one place in the border a fragment not belonging has been inserted.

In the inner field is a close repeating pattern of all-over type. Exactly in the middle of the carpet a circular medallion of scalloped outline is placed over the pattern. As central motive of the medallion a large blossom. This is surrounded by a narrow zone with radiating pointed leaves. Then follows a wider zone with radiating flowers in groups of three — tulips between rose buds and carnations between open roses. Between each of these groups a hyacinth stem. In the corners quadrants of the central medallion. The ground pattern of the inner field consists of floral motives in ordered and balanced arrangement, resembling those of the Turkish carpet reproduced on Plate 57. The separate floral motives are of more luxuriant type, especially the palmette blossoms. The straight stems in the length of the carpet, which are clearly marked in the pattern of that on Plate 57, are here only partly traceable. In the middle line across the width of the carpet a portion of the repeating pattern is omitted, and in its place is inserted a rosette girdled by palmettes, and a new lozenge-figure formed by palmettes.

The border contains in the broad middle stripe a stem pattern of palmettes and lancet-leaves, disposed on the plan of an intermittent wavy stem. The two edgings show the same rosette-pattern as those of the carpet on Plate 57; their narrow border-strips contain counterchange cresting in blue and red.

Orientalische Teppiche, Vienna, 1892, Plate XL.

Text: Old Oriental Carpets, issued by the Austrian Museum for Art and Industy
with text by Friedrich Sarre and Hermann Trenkwald