Middle East, Carpet. Carpet, silk knotted pile on silk foundation, possibly from Mausoleum of Shah `Abbas II in Qom, dateable 1671 (1082H), Safavid Iran

Carpet of woven silk, possibly of irregular shape. Colours include pale green, vivid blue, wine red, bright orange, salmon pink, jade green, pale pink, lime green, light, bright yellow, green-ish buff and white.

The field is full of asymmetrical plants arranged with no repeat in the height of the fragment; repeating symmetrically around the axis at the right of the fragment. The bright colours (faded at the front) are on a very pale green ground which looks white from the front.

A border has a bright yellow ground with wine red certouches containing three small buds, separated by blue flower heads. This border is extremely pieced. The only attached parts are at the top and to the left of the lower part, which has been cut and joined. One fragment of the border on the right side shows shaping; it is sewn on, but seams likely to have come from the carpet.

Analysed through glass:

WARP: white silk; Z2S; depressed; 44 threads per inch; 176 per dm

WEFT: light yellow silk; ?3 shoots between row of knots; 40 per inch, 160 per dm.; knot asymmetrical open to the left; silk; colours: 6: red, orange, yellow, dark yellow, green, blue (as seen from front, under glass).
From back as analysed in 1976: 3 greens, blue, red, orange, 2 pinks, light brown, yellow, white

SIDE EDGES: cut and rejoined except lower left. Not possible to determine.

ENDS: lower - cut and rejoined
upper - cut

DESIGN: Field: pieced across lower third, appears to be yellow, contains isolated shrubs and trees, predominately yellow and red with blue elements. Above a cypress tree is a bird form (lower third).
Border: heavily pieced ( see 1976 diagram), but appears to be two cartouche patterns, one with 3 buds on a red ground, the other with 3 flowerheads/leaves on a red ground, interspersed with a 4-petalled rosette.

Given by Dr. A. Myers, in memory of her father, Leonard Phillips.

The narrow border has been cut and rejoined.

This small silk carpet belongs to a set of twelve almost identical carpets, designed to fit around the walls of the twelve-sided room of the Mausoleum of Safavid Shah Abbas II, in Qom, Iran. One of these twelve carpets is inscribed "the work of Ustad Nimatullah Jawshaqani in the year 1082H". Citing a personal conversation held with the Shrine's custodians in 1929 and 1930, Arthur Upham Pope wrote that the tomb itself is or was covered with a metal-thread carpet of similar design, while a much larger twelve-sided carpet filled the centre of the room. The principal metal-thread carpet and six of the smaller carpets are reproduced in Pope's Survey of Persian Art plates 1257-1260, and several were exhibited "disposed just as they are to be seen round the tomb" at the 1931 Persian Art Exhibition held at Burlington House in London. A year later, Kendrick published a short article in The Burlington Magazine, indicating the existence of this carpet (now V&A T.438-1976), then in a private collection in London. A detail of the twelve-sided central carpet, now on loan to Iran Bastan Museum in Tehran, is reproduced in Bennett Rugs and Carpets of the World (1977) p.64.

T.438-1976