The term “Polonaise” or “Shah Abbas” is used for some precious silk carpets with a brocade of gold or silver-coloured metallic threads woven in the workshops of the Safavid court in Isfahan in the last decade of the 16th century and the first half of the 17th. Normally woven in pastel shades and hence differing markedly from the Persian taste of the period, they were presented as gifts from Shah Abbas the Great and his successors by embassies to the leading European courts. They are also known as “Polonaise” because some bear the coats of arms of the noble Polish families for whom they were made in Persia. The presentation of some specimens bearing the Czartoryski arms and others the royal crest of Vasa family in the Polish Pavilion of the 1889 World’s Fair in Paris gave rise to the idea that they had been woven in Poland. It was, however, later established that they had in fact been commissioned and produced in Persia, a process in which an Armenian merchant named Sefer Muratowicz played an important part as an intermediary.

In virtue of the expensive materials used (silk, gold and silver) and the very high costs involved, these “Polonaise” carpets were once the exclusive preserve of sovereigns and some can still be found today in palaces converted into museums, like Palazzo Pitti in Florence (now in the Museo degli Argenti) and the Residenz Museum in Munich. A set of five, gifts from the rulers of Persia to the Venetian Republic presented by various diplomatic missions, are now in the Museo del Tesoro di San Marco. Very few indeed are in private collections.

The Cerruti carpet is richly worked in silver and presents a wide border with the classic floral motifs of the reign of Shah Abbas the Great. All of the field is taken up by a large elongated medallion with four juxtaposed palmettes, again in the Persian floral style typical of the period, in the centre. Despite the oxidation of much of the area woven in silver, the carpet still retains its freshness and a brightness that is very seldom found in such fragile articles.

Alberto Boralevi