Carpet with vine scroll and palmette pattern

The patterns found throughout this carpet are associated most often with Indo-Persian pieces (see 1975.1.2464, 1975.1.2457, 1975.1.2461, 1975.1.2456, 1975.1.2462, 1975.1.2460 and 1975.1.2459). The symmetrical arrangement of vine scrolls and large palmettes in the field, as well as the palmettes and “strap arabesques” of the main border, is seen in numerous works from that class. However, several features here are atypical: the use of two weft shoots instead of three; the palette of somber, grayish, metallic colors; the side finish consisting of an overcast cord of compressed rag (instead of spun and plied cotton); and the overall proportions — the length (and it has not been reduced) is short for its width. The Lehman rug represents Indian commercial production of the late nineteenth century made in the style of a seventeenth-century Indo-Persian rug. It is a copy of a prototype in the Archaeological Museum in Bijapur, India,(1) that formerly belonged to a religious shrine known as the Asar Mahal, also in Bijapur, where the rugs are said to have been acquired in 1657.(2) Certain details of the main border are so unusual and so precisely repeated — a saddled and bridled horse followed by a smaller quadruped, probably a dog; two small rams butting heads; and a series of decorative squiggles and coils — that there can be no doubt. Indian prisons were known for their replicas of plates from the catalogue of the 1891 Vienna exhibition(3) and also those made directly from rugs in the Jaipur collection. Pattern copies are reputed to have been shared among jails, thus complicating the issue of attribution, but the Bijapur carpets are known to have been lent to the Yeraoda Jail in nearby Poona to be replicated in at least two sets,(4) hence the designation in this case.

Catalogue entry from Daniel Walker. The Robert Collection. Decorative Arts, Volume XV. Wolfram Koeppe, et al. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in association with Princeton University Press, 2012, p. 385.

NOTES:
1. Archaeological Museum, Bijapur, India, 747.
2. Indian Art at Delhi, 1903: Being the Official Catalogue of the Delhi Exhibition, 1902 – 1903. Exhibition, 1902 – 3. Catalogue by George Watt. Calcutta, 1903, pp. 431 – 32.
3. Katalog der Ausstellung orientalischer Teppiche im K.K. Österr. Handels-Museum, 1891. Exhibition, 1891. Vienna.
4. Bennett, Ian. “Isfahan ‘Strapwork’ Carpets.” Hali, no. 41 (September – October), 1988, p. 119, n. 13.

[Duveen Brothers (?), Paris]. Probably the carpet acquired by Philip Lehman through Duveen Brothers, Paris, in February 1923.