Mid-18th century (?- perhaps early to mid 19th century in my opinion) Baku long rug fragment from Ian Bennett’s Oriental Rugs Volume I

Plate 308 This is the first of four carpets with versions of a very famouCaucasian design, called the Afshan pattern by Lyatif Kenmov, a description followed by most subsequent authors. The pattern consists of a series of vertical vine stems, with two pairs of split-palmettes bracketed back-to-back. Large rounded florettes are arranged on a diagonal system between rows of flame-like and starlike flowers, with smaller flower heads arranged on the stems. On some examples, such as 308, the rows are repeated exactly, while on the others, such as 309, there is considerable chromatic variation. As Charles Grant Ellis points out in his monograph Early Caucasian Carpets, a freer version of the design, with more realistic plants, can be seen on a fragment of an Indian carpet in the Textile Museum, Washington, attributed to the 17th century. This, in turn, probably derived from the all over repeat pattern of north-east Persian carpets from Khorasan, as well as from 16th and 17th century 'vase' carpets, probably from Kerman in central Persia. The clear and generous drawing of the flowers and the soft, muted colours all suggest that this is, indeed, one of the many comparatively early Caucasian examples to have survived, probably dating from the mid-18th century. It is, of course, only a fragment of a once much larger carpet.