A copy of the Kelekian Safavid Niche Rug, possibly Constantinople, Turkey, last quarter 19th century

The Kelekian niche rug is a tour de force of Safavid weaving and is among the finest and most widely published Safavid rugs to have survived today. It is now housed in the Louvre, Paris (inv. no. MAO 2234) and its provenance can be traced back to the mid-1880s when it was acquired by Dikran Kelekianin in Constantinople around 1885. From Kelekian, the rug entered the Brauer Collection, Florence, and can subsequently be traced through Julius Böhler, Munich; Bacri Frères, Paris; The Textile Gallery, London; Private Collection, Turin; before entering the Louvre in 2011 (see HALI, no. 173, p. 51). Its first exposure in Europe was in 1903 when it was exhibited in the Exposition des Arts Musulmans, Paris (Migeon 1903, p. 368).

The earlier history of the Louvre Kelekian rug is somewhat less certain, but according to Friedrich Sarre and Fredrik Robert Martin in their 1912 publication, the rug was formerly part of the Topkapi Palace collection until around 1879 (Sarre and Martin 1912, pl. 83, no. 61). The 16^th century Marquand Medallion Carpet, now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art (inv. no. 1943-28-1), is another example thought to have left the Topkapi Palace at a similar time. When he published the carpet in 1902, John K. Mumford, stated that Marquand, had an "authenticated record" confirming that it had belonged to Sultan Abdulaziz of Turkey at his death in 1876 (Ellis 1988, p. 112). Another example includes the Safavid, Lobanov-Rostovsky medallion rug, now in the Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, which entered Russia in 1878 during the Russo-Turkish war (Mills 1999, pp. 1-17). A Koum Kapi copy of that carpet, attributed to Hagop Kapoudjian in 1895 was recently sold at Christie’s, London, 25 April 2024, lot 178. The magnificent silk, wool and metal-thread Safavid prayer rug sold in these rooms, 7 October 2009, lot 279, is another example thought to have been sold by the Topkapi palace during the throes of the Russo-Turkish war.

The present rug is the only copy of the Kelekian niche rug thus far recorded. Its structure indicates a Turkish, rather than Persian, origin, notably woven with flat cord selvages. Moreover, the resolution of the corners in the lower border show an abrupt severance of the arabesque scroll where the weaver was required to turn, rather than a continuous execution, a feature less commonly found in contemporaneous Persian weaving.

Like the Koum Kapi copy of the Lobanov-Rostovsky medallion rug, this direct copy of the Kelekian niche rug was most probably woven in Constantinople in the period between the original leaving the Topkapi Palace around 1879 and its entry into Europe at the turn of the 20^th century. The rug is unusually woven in wool, rather than silk and metal-thread as seen in Koum Kapi carpets that have become the most celebrated weavings of Istanbul in the late 19^th and early 20^th century. Farrow notes in Hagop Kapoudjian, op.cit., that the very earliest of his rugs were of wool (p.11), possibly as this would have been the material the weavers were more familiar with, or possibly to more closely imitate the Safavid prototypes. This rug could therefore be considered an early precursor to the silk and metal-thread Koum Kapi carpets that would reach their maturity in the years to follow. A wool pile and metal-thread Koum Kapi carpet was sold in these rooms, 26 April 2023, lot 150.