10100 ISFAHAN

Home/Isfahan/10100 ISFAHAN

10100 ISFAHAN

 

Materials: warp in pure natural silk; pile in precious kork wool and high quality natural silk; natural dyes

Size: cm. 99 x 71

Knot density: approx 900.000 knots per sq.mt.

 

 

     

    Available

     

     

    Description

    Small masterpiece of Isfahan in fine kork wool on silk. The decoration has a directional development, from the bottom to the top, through the zeilli sultan pattern or – when the flowered vase is repeated over the whole central field of the carpet as in this case – goldani (literally ‘vase’).

    This decoration is an evolution of the tree of life, a theme widely recurring in Asian art. The iconography of this specimen derives in part from the Mazdist era, in which a representation of the tree was flanked by two birds facing each other, and  in part by the development of this motif in the Safavid period, when the tree was replaced by a vase full of flowers.

    The zeilli sultan is one of the evolutions developed after the advent of Islamic culture and in this form has spread throughout the Eastern arts, often as a metaphor of love between a man and a woman. In this stilyzed motif we find the central rose flanked by two nightingales: a tradition tells that the red rose was born from the blind love of a nightingale for the white rose: in an attempt to steal it furtively, the nightingale broke the branch wounding its chest and thus inexorably dyeing its petals with blood.

    The repetition of the motif that seems to continue beyond the frame refers to that ubiquity of the center of the Islamic conception of the divine presence in every place and in everything.

    Go back to our Isfahan collection