A Khorasan carpet, Northeast Persia, circa 1880

This wonderfully detailed carpet, exploding with vignettes of courtly life, musicians, the hunt, and real and fantastic creatures, relates to a carpet thought to depict Nasir al-Din Shah’s 1873 trip to the Vienna World Fair sold at Austria Auction Company, 24 October 2020, lot 162. The trip marked a promotional opportunity for Iran’s carpet trade at the Iranian pavilion while Iranian officials could witness Europe’s industrial progress. The distinctive colour palette of the Vienna carpet and the present carpet reflects the taste for acidic green and purple that were the first synthetic colours produced in Europe (HALI, no. 206, p. 23-24).

The imagery here is less narrative but more fantastical than the Vienna carpet, with a quarter repeat design creating vibrant rows of polychromatic figures. The depictions of the ladies of the harem were most likely taken from photographs supplied by members of the court. Nasir al-Din Shah was an avid amateur photographer and by the 1860s began capturing courtly life under the tutelage of French photographer Francis Carlhian (1818–1870). His official photographers accompanied the shah on his European travels in 1873, 1878 and 1890. The tutu-like shaliteh skirts of the female figures were reputedly based on the skirts of the ballerinas of St Petersburg that the shah had admired on this 1873 trip.