AN IMPORTANT MONGOL EMPIRE WOOL FLATWOVEN CARPET CENTRAL ASIA OR CHINA,
LATE 13TH OR FIRST HALF 14TH CENTURY
Price Realized $900,135
Estimate ($747,000 - $1,045,800)
Sale Information Christies SALE 10374 — ORIENTAL RUGS AND CARPETS
21 April 2015 London, King Street
FEATURES Lot Description AN IMPORTANT MONGOL EMPIRE WOOL FLATWOVEN
CARPET CENTRAL ASIA OR CHINA, LATE 13TH OR FIRST HALF 14TH CENTURY
Touches of wear, minor repair, slight loss to each selvage, original long
striped kilim at the top end, secured along the lower end Approximately
8ft.1in. x 2ft.8in. (246cm. x 81cm.)
Lot Notes This magnificent
weaving is as mysterious as it is beautiful. It appears to be the sole
surviving example of a Mongol wool tapestry-woven carpet and as such is of
great importance in the canon of Mongol textiles and the history of carpet
weaving.
The only visual record we have of carpets from the Mongol
period is from their depiction in a series of Chinese paintings dating to
the 13th century. The designs of the carpets in these paintings are
clearly discernible and are characterised by strong yet elegant geometric
patterns and a rich palette of red, blues, tans and white (M.S.Dimand and
J.Mailey, Oriental Rugs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1973,
pp.21-25). These paintings provide a tantalizing glimpse of the designs of
the carpets and context as to how they were used, but raise as many
questions as they answer. In relation to the present lot the overall
effect of the painted carpets is quite different and yet there are a
number of shared design features, such as the palette, the outer stripe of
discs or pearls and the use of lobed cloud band motifs (Volkmar Gantzhorn,
The Christian Oriental Carpet, Cologne, 1991, pp.142-154).
We have
a tantalizing glimpse of earlier simpler flatweave traditions in the form
of a small group of 9th century flatwoven carpet fragments in the Al Sabah
collection Kuwait (Friedrich Spuhler, Pre-Islamic Carpets and Textiles
from Eastern Lands, London, 2014, pp.70-75 and pp.83-85). Many of them
have ends that are finished with a series of stripes, in a very similar
fashion to our carpet. Another very interesting feature is the closely
related structure and selvage configuration, which is most clearly visible
in a border fragment, inv. no. LNS 66 R (Friedrich Spuhler, ibid.,
cat.1.24, pp.84-84). The brindled wool Z2S warps are very closely related
to the present carpet as is the plain multi-cord selvage, which shows
signs of loss but appears to have 7 cords, to the 9 of our carpet. The
palette, the geometric zigzag border and the suggestion of a pearl or disc
minor stripe in one corner all suggest a shared heritage with our carpet.
The border fragment was reportedly discovered in Northern Afghanistan.
This led to Spuhler’s tentative attribution of Eastern Iran as the place
of manufacture but it could just as easily have originated in Central
Asia.
While the border design and structure relates to these
earlier weavings, the field design appears to be from a very different
tradition. It is much closer in both technique and aesthetic to the flower
and bird silk tapestries or kesi of Central Asia and China. It has been
suggested that the technique of those silk tapestries has its origins in
wool tapestry weaving (J.E. Vollmer, Silk for Thrones and Altars, Chinese
Costumes and Textiles, Paris, 2003, p.17). Silk kesi are thought to have
originated with the Uyghurs, a Turkic people originating in Mongolia.
After the fall of the Uyghur empire in the 9th century, we know from the
account of an emissary in the Song Court, Hong Hao (1088-1155) in the
Songmo jiwen (Records of the Pine Forests in the Plains), that Uyghurs
were resettled in Northern Song dynasty territory in modern day Tianshui
in Kansu province and were subsequently relocated to Yanjing, modern day
Beijing, when the Jin Jurchens invaded. Hong Hao relates that some Uyghurs
settled in the Kansu corridor whilst others went further to establish
their own state, in Xinjiang. This narrative creates a fascinating picture
of the dispersal of Uyghurs and their weaving skills across an arc from
the Tarim basin to Beijing and corresponds with areas that we know
produced kesi from at least the 10th century. We know that by the 13th
century the Uyghurs were frequently employed by the Mongols in skilled
administrative positions across the empire, and it cannot be coincidental
that when Ogodei Khan was choosing locations for his resettlement of
weavers he chose the Uyghur capital of Besh Baliq to be one of them.
The patterns and motifs of these Central Asian silk tapestries seem to
have evolved through absorbing and synthesising the different artistic
influences of nearly every major culture that moved along the great
trading routes of the Silk Road. This transmission is well illustrated by
an 11th-12th century silk kesi in the collection of the Cleveland Museum
of Art, inv. No. 1988.100 (www.clevelandart.org/art/1988.100). The
Cleveland kesi depicts a series of three horizontal bands or friezes
depicting floral fields with real and mythical creatures divided by double
borders. The patterns of these borders, a series of multi-coloured pearls
abutting a stripe of bisected alternating lobed flower heads, appear as a
prototype for the border of the present lot and show the influence of both
Sogdiana and Tang China (James Watt and Anne Wardwell, When Silk Was Gold,
Central Asian and Chinese Textiles, New York, 1997, pp.66-67). The
designation of silk kesi to particular regions is however difficult. A
tentative classification of kesi has been attempted on archaeological and
stylistic grounds (James Watt and Anne Wardwell, ibid., p.53). The kesi
that have been identified as Central Asian are characterised by their
clever combination of naturalism and creative pattern-making, exuberant
colours, and depiction of mythical or realistic animals and birds on
floral grounds, all elements that can be seen in the design of the present
lot.
One of the most closely related kesi designs to our kilim is
found in two silk and metal-thread fragments, one in the collection of the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, inv no. 66.174b, the other in the
collection of the Textile Museum Washington D.C., inv. no. TM 51.61. Both
have very similar drawing to the present lot and are executed in an
interesting mixed technique. The way the treatment of the head of each
bird, defined by an ovoid shape in contrasting colour, with a central
beady ringed eye and clearly defined plumage is very similar to our
carpet. The dynamic and boldly coloured outlines of the design are also
closely related, as are the drawing of the voluptuous and elegantly
swaying peonies and the omission of black from the composition. The
Metropolitan Museum example is attributed to Song Dynasty China (960-1279)
and catalogued as 11th-12th century. Intriguingly, the Asian Art
department of the Metropolitan Museum of Art has confirmed that their
fragment has not been C14 dated. It would be very interesting to see if a
C14 test would bring the dating much closer to that of our carpet, in the
early Mongol period.
The Mongols first invaded North West China in
the early 13th century and over a period of fifty years established the
largest continuous empire ever to exist, spanning from Hungary to Korea.
By 1260 the Mongol empire was loosely organized into four Khanates; the
Yuan dynasty in China and Mongolia, the Golden Horde in Russia, the
Chaghadai Khanate in Central Asia, and the Ilkhanid dynasty in Persia
(Linda Komaroff and Stefano Carboni, The Legacy of Genghis Khan, Courtly
Art and Culture in Western Asia, 1256-1353, New York, 2002, p.16). Whilst
the ruthlessness and destruction of Genghis Khan (r.1206-1227) and his
horde is well documented, what is often overlooked is the importance of
the Mongols in the fostering of the arts and the development of trade
throughout Eurasia almost immediately following the destruction. In spite
of internal skirmishes between the different khanates, the Pax Mongolica,
or Mongol Peace, ensured that foreign merchants and missionaries could
travel from Europe to China in relative safety. It was this active
encouragement of trade under the Mongols that led foreign merchants, such
as Marco Polo, to seek their fortunes in the East by trading spices and
textiles, leading to one of the largest expansions of trade in Eurasian
history (James Watt and Anne Wardwell, ibid., pp.14-15).
Under
Mongol rule, the status of artisans also rose. Genghis Khan freed
craftsmen from corvee labour and relocated many of them from all over the
empire to new areas. Genghis Khan’s son and successor, Ogodei Khan
(r.1229-1241), established at least three settlements of textile workers
in East and Central Asia, one in Xunmalin near present day Kalgan, another
near Hongzhou in Inner Mongolia and a third in the Uyghur capital Besh
Baliq, near modern-day Urumqi in the Tarim basin. Weavers were given
special status due to the importance of textiles for trade, and the Muslim
weavers from Persia were particularly prized for their ability to weave
patterned silks and cloth of gold, nasij (James Watt and Anne Wardwell,
ibid., p.14). The magnificent 14th century Ilkhanid silk and gold-thread
tapestry roundel in the David Collection, Copenhagen, amply demonstrates
why the Muslim weavers were so sought after (Kjeld von Folsach, Art from
the World of Islam in The David Collection, Copenhagen, 2001, fig.642,
pp.376-77 and Kjeld von Folsach, Pax Mongolica, ‘An Ilkhanid
Tapestry-Woven Roundel’, Hali 85, pp.80-87).
The David Collection
Ilkhanid silk and metal-thread tapestry makes a particularly interesting
comparison to our carpet, due to it having been C14 dated to the first
half of the 14th century. The bold colours, the floral and animal
composition, and the incorporation of trefoil motifs in the David
Collection roundel are all shared factors with our carpet. They are design
features that have far more in common with the silk kesi of China and
Central Asia than with known Islamic tapestry-woven textiles. However,
stylistically the drawing of the elegant but highly stylized animals,
birds and figures which relate closely to Ilkhanid metalwork iconography
clearly identified as such by the inscriptions, the inclusion of cotton in
the structure, the figurative composition and the legible Arabic
inscription all suggest that it was woven within the Ilkhanid Empire
centred on Iran.
In her article ‘Textiles and Patterns Across Asia
in the Thirteenth Century’, Yolande Crowe considers the importance of
looking at a range of crafts for evidence of more accurate attribution and
addresses the correlation between ceramic and textile designs (Yolande
Crowe, ‘Textiles and Patterns Across Asia in the Thirteenth Century, A
Southern Song Tomb, Armenian Manuscripts and Mongol Tiles’, Carpets and
Textiles in the Iranian World 1400-1700, Oxford and Genoa, 2010,
pp.11-17). In this way the 14th century blue and white ceramics of the
Yuan dynasty are of especial interest in the consideration of our carpet.
The bold naturalistic motifs and carefully contrived pattern design of
blue and white ceramics such as the magnificent fish jar sold in these
Rooms, 11 July 2006, lot 111 are very similar to the drawing of the
present carpet. In particular the furled lotus leaves and flowers and the
waving grasses are reminiscent of the drawing of our carpet. This raises
the possibility that the carpet may in fact have been woven in Yuan China.
The majority of this flatweave is woven in a standard kilim
technique, with front and back being identical, the different colours of
horizontal weft creating the blocks of colour. This is a very old
technique. A kilim dated to the 4th /3rd century BC was sold in these
Rooms, 5 April 2011, lot 100, contemporaneous with the kilims that were
discovered in the frozen graves at Pazyryk. The example sold here in 2011
and the present kilim not only use the wefts to create the colour, but the
wefts are also bent away from the straight horizontal to create curved
lines which establish a much clearer graphic. The technique used in the
present carpet has considerably more variety. As well as the curved wefts,
in the narrow barber pole stripes a different technique is used, with the
wefts of each alternating colour being carried over on the reverse until
the next time that they are employed, making the reverse appear with loose
lines of free travelling wefts like that of a verneh. Another interesting
feature, which would have added a considerable amount of time to the
weaving process, is the securing of the junctions where the different
colours meet. Where there is a colour change each weft, rather than
returning around the warp, is taken to the reverse and there looped around
the weft from the adjoining colour, ensuring that there is as strong a
join across breaks as there is in the solid blocks of colour. This
additional technique makes the weaving considerably more stable,
protecting the kilim from damage by preventing the weaving from opening up
where colours change.
The carpet is in remarkable condition for its
age with wonderfully rich and fresh colours. Despite some loss to one end,
the design of the kilim reads as a complete weaving and it is tempting to
argue that, if it was meant to be hung on the wall of a building tent or
as a door flap, you would not expect it to be much longer than its current
246cm length. This theory would appear to be supported by the transition
across the length of the design from the two doves sitting amongst the
grasses and watery lotuses at the bottom of the kilim to the two large
peonies above it reaching for the sky. This extremely important and
beautiful weaving sheds new light on textiles of the Mongol Empire and is
a new milestone in the history of carpet weaving.
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