PHILADELPHIA – One of the finest oriental rug collections in Philadelphia came to the block at Material Culture on June 27. The Leigh Marsh collection, with its important Turkmen component, was well known to seasoned rug collectors as many of the rugs have been well published and often exhibited.

Leigh Andrew Marsh, who died in 2019 at the age of 90, was a veterinarian by profession and an astute connoisseur of antique tribal and village rugs and trappings, which he avidly collected and studied for the better part of a century. Fine art was another of his passions.  He could talk for hours about the motifs, colors and weaves of a Turkmen rug, or about the brushstrokes used by a particular painter from the Bucks County school of Pennsylvania Impressionism.

Some of Marsh’s fine art collection was included in the sale. Among the top selling lots was a painting by Richard Gibson Wedderspoon (American, 1889-1976) depicting three African American gentlemen seated on a town bench in Naples, Florida. It sold for $11,250 to a phone bidder.

The leading lot of the day was a bright crimson 18th-century Salor Chuval carpet from Turkmenistan that sold for $59,375. The maida-gul-type textile, circa 1800, from the Marsh collection featured a middle row with large maida-gul turreted octagons beautifully executed with a partial row at the top and bottom disappearing under the respective border, suggesting the desirable feature of an “infinite repeat.” It had been exhibited and published in Dodds and Eilan Jr.’s Oriental Rugs From Atlantic Collections, Philadelphia, 1996, and Masterpieces of Turkmen Weaving at the Arthur Ross Gallery, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 2003, as well as the Corcoran Gallery, Washington, D.C., and the Textile Museum. The carpet went to an American collector bidding in the gallery.

A phone bidder successfully won a Salor Juval, thought to be an early example, for $43,750. The carpet ranks high among similar pieces in private collections, according to catalog notes. A kochanak border surrounds a spaciously composed field of large archetypal chuval guls of generous height interspersed with smaller octagonal guls, which disappear beneath the upper and lower borders. Along the elem at the bottom is a row of spare, elegant trees, each topped by a kochak rams-horn device. Like the Salor Chuval, it was both published and exhibited in the Dodds/Eiland Jr publication, Ross Gallery, Corcoran Gallery and Textile Museum.

An unusual antique Serapi carpet from Western Persia, dating to the last quarter of the 19th century, exhibited a bright and cheerful palette and a large red medallion on a white field with four large palmettes in each corner. It sold for $15,000.

Prior to the auction there were several days of well-attended public exhibition, which included an informal gallery talk by rug expert Dennis Dodds, secretary general of the International Conference on Oriental Carpets (ICOC).  Dodds knew the Marsh collection well and selected 28 carpets for a sort of show-and-tell of styles and history.

The Leigh Marsh collection was a successful sale that allowed seasoned collectors to pick up the finest of museum quality rugs while permitting new, young collectors an opportunity to acquire exemplary rugs with the finest provenance.

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