The Ardabil Carpet
Unknown, signed by Maqsud Kashani · 1539 to 1540
More than ten metres long and five wide, the Ardabil Carpet lies in the centre of the Jameel Gallery under low light that is raised for a few minutes every half hour so that its colours can be seen. A single golden sunburst medallion sits at the centre of a deep blue field strewn with flowers and vines, and from the medallion hang two lamps of different sizes. Sixteen pointed ovals surround it like petals, the corners repeat a quarter of the design, and a border of cartouches frames the whole. It is one of a pair, made in the fifteen thirties for the shrine of the Safavid dynasty's ancestor at Ardabil in north-western Iran.
The carpet contains about twenty six million knots, tied by hand at a density of roughly five thousand per ten centimetres square, and would have taken a team of weavers several years. Look for the small panel at one end that carries a Persian verse and the signature of Maqsud Kashani, who called himself the humble servant of the shrine, together with the date of the year 946 in the Islamic calendar. The two lamps are drawn in different sizes, perhaps to correct the perspective for someone kneeling at one end. The ten colours of wool were dyed with natural materials, and the blues and reds are still remarkably deep.
The pair was sold from the shrine in the eighteen eighties, when both were damaged, and one was cannibalised to repair the other. This carpet was bought by the museum in 1893 for two thousand pounds after William Morris, then an adviser, wrote that it was of singular perfection and the finest Eastern carpet he had seen. The sister carpet, reduced in size, is in Los Angeles. It has been copied for prime ministers and dictators, and a version lay in Hitler's Berlin office.
Did You Know? The lights over the carpet are turned up for ten minutes on the hour and half hour, so time your visit to see the full colours.
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