While there are so many amazing, rare and beautiful carpets and textiles to choose from for the weekly Editor’s Choice, it is a welcome excuse to publish what is arguably one of the most famous carpets in the world: the ca.1600 Clark Sickle-Leaf Vase carpet. The lucky people of South Korea have only one month left to see it in the new Islamic art galleries of the National Museum of Korea.
The Clark Kerman sickleleaf vase-technique carpet, southeast Persia, late 16th– early 17th century. Wool pile, asymmetrically knotted, open left, cotton warps, 3 weft shoots (1st and 3rd wool, middle silk), 1.95 x 2.65 m (6' 5" x 8' 8"). Sotheby’s, New York, 5 June 2013, lot 12, estimate $5,000,000-7,000,000, sold for $33,765,000. Museum of Islamic Art, Doha
On view along with 83 other artefacts from the Museum of Islamic Art, Doha until the 11th of October, the carpet is now described as a Throne Carpet. I can’t argue with the underlying assertion that it is a carpet fit for a king, or perhaps more appropriately a shah. That description, by Arthur Upham Pope and later May Beattie, is what Jon Thompson referred to as a factoid: something that, when repeated enough, assumes the mantle of truth.
In our description of how and why this is such an important and beautiful carpet, in HALI 175, we related how Pope described a great carpet as singular as a sonnet, and we continued: ‘but perhaps an orchestral metaphor is more apt, since what we see in the Clark carpet is mastery of a host of contributing elements that form a harmonious whole: colour balance, design control, material perfection and exquisite proportion’. As true now as it was then.
