FROM THE VAULT
Selected acquisitions of antique textile art

25. 
Alg 1665
Gabbeh rug
Bakhtiari tribe
Southwest Persia
circa 1940
207 x 140 cm (6’9” x 4’7”)

asymmetrically knotted wool pile open to the left on a cotton foundation


A strikingly abstract and minimalist composition, dominated by a large lozenge punctuated at its top end by a series of smaller blue lozenges, as if to indicate some sort of directional reading to the pattern. Although the substrate of certain Gabbeh patterns is, as here, clearly inspired by a more urban iconography, the interpretation given to the design is almost pictorial in character, bringing it closer to our contemporary western artistic sensibility.





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