This delightful antique Oushak rug is a particularly charming example of early 20th-century Anatolian weaving. The design is remarkably open and spacious, featuring five floral bouquet medallions floating across a luminous golden-ivory field. The minimalist composition creates a sophisticated decorative appearance that feels surprisingly modern despite its age.
The soft palette is one of the rug's strongest attributes.
Antique Shirvan Prayer Rug with multi color motives on white background field.
The historic Khanate or administrative district of Shirvan produced many highly decorative antique rugs that have a formality and stylistic complexity that is found in few rugs from the Caucasus. The depth of colors, the complexity of the composition and the phenomenal patterns featured in antique Shirvan rugs set them apart from those produced in other regions of the Caucasus.
A very fine and unusual antique Persian Feraghan Sarouk featuring an elegant Tree of Life design rising from a flowering garden mound against a luminous ivory field. At the center stands a magnificent cypress-like flowering tree populated with birds and floral ornament, flanked below by a pair of peacocks rendered in rich shades of sapphire blue, rose, ivory, and soft green.
The spacious ivory field creates a striking contrast with the intricately drawn midnight-blue border, which is filled with scrolling vinery, palmettes, rosettes, and flowering arabesques.
Unusual Pictural Oushak Rug. Greek mythology story. Probably Armenian Rug.
Antique Turkish Oushak rugs have been woven in Western Turkey since the beginning of the Ottoman period. Historians attributed to them many of the great masterpieces of early Turkish carpet weaving from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries. However, less is known about what happened to production there in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. When things become clearer toward 1900, the Oushak region re-emerges as a major center, this time for room-size decorative rugs.
The Iranian city of Isfahan has long been one of the centres for production of the famous Persian carpet. Isfahani carpets are known for their high quality. The most famous workshop in Isfahan is Seirafian. Weaving in Isfahan flourished in the Safavid era. But when the Afghans invaded Iran, ending the Safavid dynasty, the craft also became stagnant. The high knot density antique carpets in which Isfahan excelled continued to be woven in the late 19th and 20th centuries, maintaining the original inspiration and attention to refinement and detail.
The Caucasus is bounded by the rugged mountains and lush valleys of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia. This cultural melting pot was populated by Armenian dyers and weavers, Azeri Turks, groups from the Northern Caucasus and minorities from the surrounding areas. The Kazak rugs of the Caucasus are distinctive and individual. Geometric people and animals, symbolic motifs, dramatic medallions, crenelated fence borders, angular cloud-bands and graphic latch hook
Colorful and dramatic Kilims (kelims) were produced by both villagers and tribal nomads in Persia. Slit tapestry predominated among Azerbaijani, Shahsevan and Ghashghai weavers, while some Kurds and others in western Persia used interlocked tapestry. These all typically have clear coloring and bold patterns.
