Early Karabagh or Shirvan carpet, 18th century, Khanate Period, Azerbaijan. Victoria and Albert Museum

Place of origin: Caucasus (made)

Date: 17th-18th century (made)

Museum number: CIRC.379-1923

Gallery location: In store

Physical description: Carpet fragment; upper left hand corner

WARP: cream, light brown wool sometimes plied together; Z2S; 17 threads per inch (67 per dm); depressed.

WEFT: light brown wool; Z2S; 2 shoots after each row of knots; 7 knots per inch (28 per dm).

PILE: wool; 8 colours: red, yellow, light yellow, green, blue, dark purple, light purple, cream; symmetrical knot tied around 2 threads; 60 knots per sq. inch (938 per sq. dm).

SIDE FINISH: missing

END FINISH: missing

DESIGN: red ground with evidence of very large lattice formed by angular dark purple or blue leaves with a central yellow barbed line. The main design element is a red diamond; within it a multi-hooked device in yellow contains a similar, smaller one in blue. The whole has blue horned decoration at the four points and light yellow stylised tulips on the sides and lies on a cream medallion. Within the left hand portions of the lattice are two halves of a stepped concentric lozenge, an animal and S-motifs.

Main border: cream ground with leaf and wine glass pattern.

Inner border: blue ground with joined single-colour flowerheads.

Outer border: incomplete, but with evidence of a yellow ground with flowerheads like the inner border.

Museum number: CIRC.379-1923

URL: http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O117934/carpet/