Ushak carpets are known primarily for a number of classic designs developed in the manufactories of the Ottoman court and disseminated from the end of the 15th century. Alongside the previously mentioned “Lotto” and “Tintoretto” groups and the larger and more majestic Ushak carpets with ogival or star-shaped medallions, there is a very small number of examples of less common types. Some of these present a peculiar design of the central field developed through the repetition of decorations usually employed for the borders, which are laid out in parallel columns to form a completely new pattern. The item examined here belongs to this family and, in particular, presents a meander motif of leaves, cloudbands and palmettes to be found as a border also in some Ushak carpets of the more common types. The design resulting from the arrangement in the field of these border motifs on a dark blue ground creates a sort of textile pattern of perpetually repeated, elongated medallions interrupted by a fine border with large, polychromatic, serrated palmettes on a red ground. There are less than ten known specimens with this kind of design in all, the most similar - with the same palmettes and the same leaves on a dark blue ground - being in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Unlike the Cerruti carpet, this presents the same design also in the border, which differs from the field only by its red ground.¹ Another with the same design characteristics is owned by the Museum of Islamic Art in Berlin, purchased by the Kunstgewerbemuseum in 1884, which is unusual in that a quarter of the field has a dark blue ground while the rest is bright yellow and the border is red as usual.² The Cerruti carpet is very finely woven and characterised by the use of white cotton knots to create small highlights that enhance its overall brightness. The same technical detail also appears in another very similar but larger carpet formerly owned by an Italian private collector and published in the magazine Hali,³ which presents a different border. 

Alberto Boralevi 

¹ Published in Franses, Pinner 1984, p. 372, fig. 25. 

² Published in Spuhler 1988, no. 20, p. 163, and elsewhere. 

³ Hali 1985, p. 6 (page of advertisements).