Scripto | Transcribe Page

THE CHARLES T. YERKES COLLECTION

No. 215 SILK CARPET FROM ARDEBIL MOSQUE.

LR2 Library Hearth Rug ?

Length, seven feet two and one-half inches. Width, six feet five inches. Warp, cotton. Weft, silk. Pile, Silk. Texture, Six hundred and seventy-five hand-tied Persian knots to the square inch.

This may be accounted a carpet of two colors, so largely do the red and green predominate in it. Practically the only variations from this narrow schedule are the small quantities of yellow and blue used in picking out the patterns of the field and border. There is every iindication of great age here, and even were the fact not known it would be easy to deduce that in its original state it had been much larger and more pretentious, that the portions here so deftly united, in a fashion quite mosaic, are but the residue of what was once a mosque carpet of the most splendid kind. The personal statement of Mr. Stebbing, made to the writer in London, is confirmatory of this, since he says that when the Ardebil consignment reached the warehouses of Vincent Robinson and Company this piece was little more than a collection of tatters, from which, possibly upon its departure from the mosque, or upon the route, predatory but worshipful Mussulmans had cut scraps for their own edification and spiritual benefit. The work of restoring it has