Ardabil carpet (pair of twins)

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The Ardabil carpet (also Ardebil carpet ; Persian قالی اردبیل, DMG qālī-ye Ardabīl ) is a famous Iranian Persian carpet from the 16th century and at the same time the oldest carpet in the world with a specific year of manufacture. It was made in two copies, which have very different states of preservation. They are in the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in London and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) in Los Angeles .

history

The famous “holy carpet” in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London from 1539/1540

The two carpets were commissioned by the Safavid ruler , Shah Tahmasp I (1524–1576). He wanted to dedicate it to the shrine of one of his ancestors, the Sheikh Safi d-Din Ardabili , in Ardabil. The carpets were completed in 1539–40 (Ardabil - London) and shortly thereafter on an unknown date (Ardabil - Los Angeles). Older dated carpets are not known.

The more famous of the two “ Ardabil carpets ” is in good condition in London. Its name goes back to the city of Ardabil in the province of the same name in northern Iran on the Caspian Sea . Here it was kept in the mosque until it was sold in 1890. The sale became necessary because funds had to be raised to renovate the mosque. The vault of the prayer room had collapsed and had to be restored at great expense. The second Ardabil carpet was also sold. At the time the carpets were sold, both were badly damaged and in need of repair. The transaction was handled by negotiators from the Anglo-Persian manufacturer Ziegler from Manchester . A British carpet dealer from Vincent J. Robinson & Co. bought both of them, had one repaired and used the other himself. He later sold them to the museum in London (the repaired carpet) and to a private collector. The price was for the time at the monstrous sum of £ 2500 , for which a consortium of buyers was established. In England the new acquisition was called the "holy carpet". The second of the two magnificent carpets, which is now in Los Angeles, has been increasingly damaged in the course of its long history and is only partially preserved today.

Both carpets were not in Ardabil made, but in the Knüpfmanufakturen Kashan ( Isfahan province designed), and after a relatively secured knowledge among specialists in Tabriz made.

The “holy carpet” in London

The extremely finely knotted floor covering typical of the Kashan region measures 11.52 by 5.34 meters and has a knot density of over 520,000 knots per square meter. In total, the 61.5 m² carpet has a good 26 million knots. The pattern of the carpet is extraordinarily dense and rich in ornament and lies on an indigo blue background. The weft and warp of the carpet are made of silk , while the pile is made of wool . In the opinion of many viewers, the overall composition suggests the “illusion of a heavenly tent studded with stars (in the form of glass mosque lamps) that are reflected in a water bath that is itself full of the floating splendor of the lotus flowers ”.

The carpet has inscriptions. On the one hand, there are couplets from a ghazel (a form of song that originated in the 8th century in the South Asian region between India and Persia) by the Persian poet Hafis . The date of manufacture, the Islamic year 947 (corresponds to the year 1540/41), is attached to the decorative frame in a rectangular white field on the head of the carpet . Next to it is the name of the knotter, “Maqsud Kaschani”.

The medallion carpet shows countless “mosque traffic lights” - vase- and chalice-shaped vessels - that hang from the ceiling to illuminate the mosque. The medallion itself is yellow and filled with unrolling tendrils that protrude from strong branches and are intertwined with splendidly curved bands of cloud that strive for the blue field of the center. Sixteen decorative elements (ogees) , which are aligned in a star shape , hang on the tips of the leaves . The elements on the main axis have a green background. Others have a red or white background.

The entire ensemble around the medallion is flanked by two red lamp motifs of different sizes, which are filled with floral structures. These are suspended from four chain links on the ogees of the main axis. Today, experts recognize a stylistic intention of the manufacturer in the different sizes of the lamp motifs: If the viewing angle of the carpet is taken from the side of the smaller lamp motif, both appear equally large. In the spandrels of the carpet, sections of the medallion reappear, but without any hint of a lamp motif. The indigo blue main field of the carpet is filled with floral motifs and shows a high level of design complexity.

The border edges are strangely asymmetrical to the left and right of the main axis of the carpet. Red decorative frames and green multi-pass motifs alternate in a constant sequence, but at different heights of the carpet in the left and right course of the border. In the outer band of the border, the palmettes show different conceptions despite their uniform, reciprocal course.

The British arts and craftsman William Morris helped with the purchase of the carpet for the Victoria and Albert Museum with an expert opinion (inv. No. 272 ​​of the year 1893). The London carpet hung in a permanent exhibition in the Victoria and Albert Museum until 2006 and has since been located in a glass pavilion in the middle of the main gallery for Islamic art . For reasons of conservation, the light is kept scarce.

The carpet in Los Angeles

The twin of the “sacred carpet”, which is known as the “secret carpet” in English usage, is narrower and therefore smaller. Today it no longer has borders , and entire parts of the carpet are missing. It has been partly reconstructed and partly improved by fragments that appear from time to time. Other fragments became special exhibits in various museums. Examples include the Rietberg Museum in Zurich -Enge, the Burrell Collection in Glasgow and the “Carl Zopf” carpet store in Stuttgart . Allegedly, the number of knots in this work of art should even exceed that of the “holy carpet”.

After its sale in 1890, the carpet passed through the hands of many wealthy businessmen in the long period that followed. Among them were financiers like Clarence Mackay , Charles Tyson Yerkes and the “De la Mare art collections”, after all the carpet was shown to the world public at an exhibition in London in 1931. This was preceded by exhibitions in American cities such as St. Louis and Chicago in the 1920s and in Detroit in 1930 . American industrialist J. Paul Getty saw the carpet at the exhibition and bought it a few years later from Joseph Duveen for $ 70,000 . He turned down an offer from the Egyptian King Faruq to purchase the carpet for USD 250,000. Faruq wanted to purchase the collector's item as a wedding present from his sister for the marriage to Mohammad Reza Pahlavi , the later Shah of Persia (from 1941). Getty donated the rug to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1953.

Imitations

The two carpets are the most important Persian carpets made in Iran. So it was inevitable that they were copied almost endlessly in all variants of the art of carpet weaving. For example, a so-called 'ardabil' now adorns the residence room of the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom at 10 Downing Street . Adolf Hitler had an 'Ardabil' in his Berlin office.

literature

  • Kurt Erdmann : Seven hundred years of oriental carpets. To its history and research. Busse, Herford 1966
  • Natalie Rothstein: Victoria & Albert Museum Masterpieces: The Ardabil Carpet , Victoria and Albert Museum, 1976 - 2 pages
  • Sheila S. Blair: The Ardabil Carpets in Context. In: Andrew J. Newman (Ed.): Society and culture in the early modern Middle East. Studies on Iran in the Safavid Period , Brill, Leiden 2003, ISBN 90-04-12774-7 , pp. 125-144.
  • May H. Beattie: Carpets of Central Persia - With special Reference to Rugs of Kirman , World of Islam Festival Publishing Company Ltd., Sheffield 1976 ISBN 0-905035-17-8
  • Josef Günther Lettenmair: The large oriental carpet book . Welsermühl Verlag, Wels, Munich 1962
  • Rexford Stead (Ed.): The Ardabil carpets. Malibu 1974

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ Note: A designation chosen by Christian journalists; a Muslim would never call a carpet 'sacred'.
  2. ↑ Ardebil Carpet: Separate Twin
  3. ↑ a b c d The 'Holy' Carpet of Ardebil, explanations of details, p. 29 ff.
  4. ↑ Fred S. Kleiner, Christin J. Mamiya, Gardner's Art Through the Ages: Non-Western Perspectives , p. 140 .
  5. ↑ a b c Lynda Hillyer, Boris Pretzel, The Ardabil Carpet - a new perspective , Victoria and Albert Museum
  6. ^ Exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art
  7. ^ A Classification of American Wealth, Jean Paul Getty art collector and hotel owner
  8. ↑ Jennifer Wearden, The Surprising Geometry of the Ardabil Carpet
  9. ↑ Abstracts - ARS Textrina, International Textiles Conference , July 10-12, 1995, University of Leeds, England