Kum Kapı rugs at auction

Since 1990, HALI has recorded almost eighty late 19th- and 20th-century silk and metal thread ‘Kum Kapı’ carpets, rugs and prayer rugs sold at auction for prices above $20,000. Thirteen made more than $100,000, with six going on to fetch $200,000 plus. All but a dozen were offered in London at either Christie’s or Sotheby’s.

Carefully designed and finely woven from detailed cartoons in highly-regarded workshops in the Armenian quarter of Istanbul during the last decades of the Ottoman period, a minority of these elegant rugs carry a maker’s signature, often a ‘hidden’ calligraphic cipher. Others can be attributed to specific ateliers by comparison with signed pieces (see Pamela Bensoussan, ‘The Masterweavers of Istanbul’, HALI 26, 1985, pp. 34-41). The signatures most often encountered are those of Zareh Penyamin and Hagop Kapoudjian, but rugs signed by Avedis Tameshjian and othershave also been sold at auction.

Typically Persianate designs, often with elaborate inscriptions, are mainly modelled on (or closely copied from) 16th/17th-century Safavid export production, especially the ‘Salting’ group of medallion rugs and the closely related ‘Topkapı’ niche rugs, as well as the ‘vase’ carpets of Kerman and the central Persian ‘Shah Abbas’ palmette, cloudband and spiral vine repertoire.

Top of the auction pile is a grand early-20th-century all-silk ‘spiral vine with animals’ carpet (1) attributed to the entrepreneur Abraham Toussounian, who moved his workshop t0 Corfu in the 1920s. An outlier in terms of price and size, without metal thread brocading, it sold at Sotheby’s in London in November 2017 for $551,145 (£393,000), a world-record sum which will be hard to better in the foreseeable future.

Unsigned and undated, it is a beautifully executed faithful representation of the famous pair of 16th-century Safavid ‘Emperors’ carpets, now in the Museum für angewandte Kunst, Vienna, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The inner border carries inscription cartouches containing couplets by an unknown Persian poet in praise of the carpet and its patterns. It was acquired directly from Toussounian by the late George Farrow, who resold it the late 1960s.

Second in the auction price hierarchy is a rather beautiful outsize carpet (2), delicately coloured, with an allover design of diagonally offset rows of small, scalloped cartouche-like medallions inspired by Kerman vase carpets. A weaving tour de force from the last throes of the Ottoman Empire, it is drawn and executed with a mastery that in the 20th century is only surpassed by the ustads of Pahlavi Iran. Although unsigned it is perhaps attributable to the Zareh atelier on account of its purple silk selvedges.

When it sold at Christie’s in London on 24 April 2012 for $349,775 (£217,250; HALI 172, p.116), it just eased past the long-standing record of $346,500 (£198,000) paid in the same rooms on 13 October 2005, for a similar but smaller carpet with metal thread brocading, also unsigned (lot 20; HALI 144, p.116).

In fourth place at $240,760 (£157,875) is another large, softly coloured, unsigned, silk, silver and gold thread Kum Kapı carpet (3) with a tight allover lattice of small, vase-carpet-style cartouche medallions, which was top lot in Christie’s spring 2013 carpet sale (HALI 177, p.127).

Fifth is a relatively large Kum Kapı rug (4) with a muted gold silk and metal thread ground in a Safavid palmette and scrolling vine design with animals, apparently unsigned, which sold for $230,090 (£175,000) to an internet bidder at Sotheby’s in London on 7 November 2017 (lot 84, HALI 194, p.141).

The sixth in the $200,000 plus group, a large, ultra-fine, ‘golden’ toned Zareh carpet with multiple signatures (HALI 78, p.128), sold at Christie’s on 20 October 1994, lot 508, for $214,935 (£133,500). It is either the rug (supposedly commissioned by the Ottoman sultan), from the collection of the late Henry Norell (HALI 64, 1992, p.10), or its pair.

Almost half the recorded Kum Kapıs are in ‘niche’ format. Top price for a ‘Sultan’s Head’ design prayer rug, $143,220 (£84,000), was paid at Christie’s as far back as 15 October 1998 for a rug signed by Tameshjian (HALI 102, p.124). Two more that fetched six-figure prices, both at Christie’s and unsigned, were lot 20 on 22 April 1999 ($117,310/£73,000; HALI 105, p.140), and lot 306 on 10 October 1991 ($100,100/£57,200; HALI 60, p.149). The $86,500 paid for a superb, all-silk golden-toned, signed Zareh ‘Sultan’s Head’ from the Barbara Sedlin Collection at Sotheby’s in New York on 3 March 2009 (lot 52) is the highest away from the two big London salerooms (HALI 161, p.121).

Moving from the past to the present and future, this year Christie’s will sell fine silk carpets, including many Kum Kapıs and Herekes, from the George F. Farrow collection beginning in the Spring Islamic and Indian art sale at King Street on 25 April 2024.

Born in London, George Farrow (1916–2001), made a property fortune the hard way, and then assembled notable collections of paintings, fine French furniture, Renaissance bronzes, jade, netsuke, cloisonné, tapestries and textiles. But perhaps above all else, his enduring passion was for silk rugs, primarily but not only from Turkey and Persia. In this he was much aided and abetted by the important London dealer John Cohen (C. John Rare Rugs) and his nephew Leon Sassoon.

Among some forty rugs and textiles, the initial tranche of the Farrow collection includes four prayer rugs either signed by (5) or attributable to Zareh, as well as a ‘Polonaise’ copy and small rug that comes with a relevant cartoon—a work of art in its own right.

In co-operation with Leonard Harrow, George Farrow made serious studies of the life and work of Zareh (1890–1949), who he thought to be the greatest of the Kum Kapı masters, and also of the prolific Hagop (d.1946), who left Istanbul for Corfu in 1914, and later moved to Paris. Hagop’s work is seen in more than a dozen original cartoons and four ‘Safavid-style’ rugs (one signed), among them an accurate copy (6) of the ‘Salting’-group Lobanov-Rostovsky medallion rug in St Petersburg, unsigned but traceable to the Paris Exposition Universellein 1900.

The first Farrow offering also includes 16 Persian-revival-period fine silk rugs and prayer rugs, mainly Heriz and Tabriz, as well as an Ottoman çatma yastık, a silk Azerbaijan embroidered rug and a silk Yarkand pomegranate carpet.