For Christie’s next major London carpet sale at King Street on 19 April 2016, head of department Louise Broadhurst has secured the consignment by ‘A Nobleman’ of three previously unknown and unpublished Safavid ‘vase-technique’ carpets. That alone would be something of a coup for the auctioneers, but the sheer beauty, art historical interest and provenance of the trio add to their lustre.
Kerman 'vase' carpet, southeast Persia, late 17th century. 1.51 x 2.51m (5’0” x 8’3”). £1,000,000-1,500,000
The three – a complete small carpet; a large field and top border section of an enormous fragmented carpet; and the entire field and inner guard border of a mid-size carpet – while each very different in design, are in good colour and condition, having been in storage for many years.They all share the same intriguing provenance in the British branch of the Rothschild banking dynasty: first the socialite Alice de Rothschild (d.1922), sometime chatelaine of Waddesdon Manor in Buckinghamshire; then on to her chosen heir, the British philanthropist and politician James (Jimmy) de Rothschild (who bequeathed Waddesdon and its contents to the National Trust on his death in 1957); and thence by descent, probably via his widow Dorothy (Dolly), who died in 1988, to the present noble consignor. The three vase carpets were evidently not part of the Waddesdon Bequest, and were likely to have been kept, if not much seen, in another Rothschild family home in the Vale of Aylesbury, perhaps Alice and later Dolly’s nearby property at Eythrope. Unfortunately, no documentation concerning Alice's acquisition of the carpets, or their prior provenance, survives.
The first of the trio, complete with just minor damage, is assigned to the late 17th century. Not altogether surprisingly estimated at £1,000,000-1,500,000, it is very close in design and colour to the somewhat larger Behague/Augsburg vase carpet, now in Doha, that sold at King Street in April 2010 for what was then a world record price for an oriental carpet at auction of more than $9.5 million; doubtless a catalyst for the current consignment (HALI 164, p.127). It differs only in size, choice of narrow guard borders, and the fact that part way through the beautifully abrashed mid-blue field of the Rothschild rug, the complex articulation of the lancet-leaf lattice becomes elegantly simplified, with less floral infill.
