Early Karabagh
576 x 174 cm (18' 11" x 5' 9")
Caucasus, ca. 1800
Condition: good for its age, low pile in places, corroded dark brown, scattered small repairs, both ends slightly incomplete
Warp: wool, weft: wool, pile: wool

This impressive group of large-scale carpets featuring the Harshang design was produced in a region stretching from northwestern Persia to the southern Caucasus. The design itself is related to the Kirman vase carpets. An excellent comparison is provided by a 17th-century fragment that sold at Christie's on April 19, 2016, for £542,500.
In the vase carpets, the flowers are connected by spiral tendrils. Traces of this can still be seen in the present Harshang carpet as well as in the most famous piece of this group at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, published by McMullan in "Islamic Carpets," no. 27. The Harshang design consists of opposing palmettes and flowers in a quatrefoil arrangement, with cartouches filled with fork leaves in between. The whole is laid out as an endless repeat, and the field contains smaller motifs whose traces can be found in later Caucasian carpets.
Characteristically, the weaver has inserted small animals on both sides of the field. The secondary borders are already known from dragon carpets, whereas the main border, with its double-pointed leaves, appears to be quite unique. In ?erare Yetkin, "Early Caucasian Carpets in Turkey," Volume I, Plate 40 depicts a carpet that illustrates this principle. On September 16, 2014, we sold a Harshang carpet from the Marshall Collection for € 40,260.