<p>Bahmanli rug, third quarter 19th century, 1.50 x 2.10 m (4′ 11” x 6′ 11”). Austria Auction Company, Vienna, 1 August 2020. Lot 24, est: €5,000-7,000, sold: €20,000 ($23,550)
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Top lot in this sale, attracting numerous bids, this rug, while attributed by Austria Auction Company to Moghan (?), was probably woven in or near Bahmanli on the Iranian border in Karabagh. It is basically a descendent of large relatively early Transcaucasian workshop carpets containing recognisable cypress trees, here highly stylised. It is from the ‘rug boom’ period, which ramped up once the railroad from Batumi to Baku was completed in 1884. Early 19th-century versions of this type have a longer format, more design units, paler yellows and a more intense aubergine. Good aubergine dye fell out of use in Transcaucasian pile rug weaving by the mid-1860s. A somewhat comparable rug is dated the equivalent of 1872. Some of these early Bahmanli ‘cypress tree’ rugs were probably woven in workshops, because of the complexity of the pattern, the size and the evenness of colour.
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