Unlike the other two specimens in the Cerruti Collection (N. Cat. A682 and A683), this small medallion Ushak presents no elements of design identifying it as a prayer rug. Its pure centralised pattern consists of a small, blue, quatrefoil medallion in the centre on a field in the unusual colour of salmon pink rather than the normal red. This particular shade of pink is fairly common in Ushak rugs but usually employed only for small details and not for large expanses, as in this case. There is, however, at least one other known specimen with the same chromatic characteristics and a very similar design in the Textile Museum in Washington (inv. no. R34.1.3). Both are regarded as slightly later than the other two specimens of the same type in the Cerruti Collection and dated to the late 16th or early 17th century. The spandrels present a particular design in two different colours, red and yellow, where it appears just about possible to distinguish a variation on the cloudband motif. This instead appears in very clear and balanced form on the broad dark blue border, which has a narrow outer guard with a delicate, floral meander motif on a red ground. The border is, instead, separated from the inner field only by two simple lines of yellow and blue. 

Borders with a highly geometric cloudband motif - described in a slightly ironic and disparaging way by the great American expert Charles Grant Ellis and others as “octopuses” rather than clouds - also appear in other kinds of Anatolian rugs from the Ushak area in the Ottoman period, namely the “Lotto” type with an arabesque design and those with star-shaped medallions known as “Star Ushaks”. The same border is also often found in different colours in white-ground Selendi carpets, such as the Cerruti “bird” carpet (N. Cat. A681). 

Alberto Boralevi