IMAGE DETAILS

Shahsavan sumakh khorjin bagface, Caucasus, mid-19th century, lot 35, Est: €9,500, sold for €32,400

| Click to enlarge

30 November 2005

Daniel Shaffer reports: No one can dispute the fact that Detlef and Christa Maltzahn's sale in Wiesbaden on 19 November was a long way from being the best they had put together, lacking lots with obvious 'star' appeal, or many of the high value 'bankers' that guarantee the overall success of any auction. The core of the consignment was another large group of pieces consigned by the Horst and Eva Engelhardt Foundation, with the proceeds again going to benefit the young Ukrainian victims of the Chernobyl disaster.

The sale was reasonably well attended, with the customary crowd of local auction enthusiasts, the vast majority of whom are there for the entertainment rather than the goods. A handful of foreign bidders were also present, but the international trade was poorly represented, with the Italian contingent in particular reduced in number, and the German/Austrian commercial market almost totally absent.

The sale began well, with lot 1, a good looking Ziegler vagireh tetching €2,280 (including 20% buyer's premium). Heinrich Kirchheim, one of the auctioneers' staunchest supporters, stepped up to the plate for lot 10, an enigmatic carpet fragment, coarsely woven, but with an extremely archaic-looking 3-medallion design, which was very tentatively assigned to late 19th century eastern Anatolia. Kirchheim paid just €5,280 for a rug which he suspects may well be older than catalogued.

Lot 13, a pretty Mujur prayer rug was a reasonable buy at €6,000, while lot 16, a blue-field/yellow border Karachov, in need of plenty of restoration, was bought by the Turkish trade for €7,560. A large and coarse but extremely good-looking Kurdish kilim from the Bijar area, l0t 20, with an overall design of small diamonds, fetched a good price at €11,400, while the next lot, a very good blue and white Ndop resist-dyed textile from Cameroon, was a bargain at €3,480.

Most of a sizeable group of Ningxia seat covers and small mats sold. The best of them, lot 27, a two panel 18th century fragment with red cloth trim indicating a Tibetan monastic sojurn, was very inexpensive at €3,480. Lot 29, a Yomut tauk Nuska göl Turkmen main carpet sold for €7,680, while lot 33, a large banded Middle Amu Darya chuval, was inexpensive at €2,160. Next up was a small, almost square Moghan 'keyhole' design rug, which weighed in at €9,600.

Then came the first real surprise of the sale. We all know by now that 'cruciform' design Shahsavan khorjin command a premium in the market, particularly those extra fine, very precisely woven, Moghan region single bags with blue and black striped backs, but lot 35, with a very pink tonality and extremely pretty borders, soared above its €9,500 estimate to notch up €32,400 ($37,910), joint top lot on the day, selling to a commission bidder to set a new world record for the type, outstripping the $34,070 paid for one on 16 November 2002 (HALI 127, p.146). So strong was its performance that it completely overshadowed lot 129, an exceptionally good Shahsavan kilim technique khorjin face, with details in metallic yarn, which made €6,000. 

The other top lot was a lovely early 19th century Bergama rug, lot 91, with a field design composed of columns of rosettes and 'tulip' brackets akin to Ladik border designs. This had the floral stems in a corroded olive/cream yarn, which had originally been dyed bright green using a dye based on copper compounds.

Perhaps the best of the unillustrated lots was a superb large early Caucasian dragon verneh (lot 113), in fairly shredded condition, but very finely woven (in one piece), with some of the S-dragons in yellow, which we cannot recall having seen before.

There were two good Bakhshaish carpets in the sale. Both were sold at below par prices to the Italian trade. The first, lot 44, with an allover shrub and tree design fetched €26,400, as did lot 128, a pristine dragon medallion rug from the Engelhardt Collection chosen for the catalogue cover image. The same price was also paid for a well known medallion design Karapinar yastik, lot 93, a rare example which came very close to achieving what had been thought to be a very high estimate, and for lot 50, a handsome cartouche field Borjalu Kazak. Another Borjalu, lot 150, a very good example of the hooked diamond field and hooked border type fetched a well-earned €24,000. generally, however, there were fewer really good Caucasians on offer than one is accustomed to seeing at Wiesbaden, and lot 139, probably the best Shusha kelleh we have seen, was cheap at just €12,000.