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Yellow-Ground Kuba Prayer Rug 140 x 102 cm (4’ 7” x 3’ 4”) Caucasus, mid 19th century or before Condition: good, pile low in places, several professional restorations Provenance: Roland Weise Collection Published: ”Weise Collection - Ambassadors from the Orient”, 2019, p. 27 Warp: wool, weft: cotton, pile: wool A wonderful little prayer rug with excellent colors and a rare pattern. In Ralph Kaffel’s seminal book ”Caucasian Prayer Rugs”, 1998, there is only one other example with this field design. That rug has a white background, and the palmettes and flowering shrubs are lined up like soldiers and appear somewhat stiff. In our rug, on the other hand, a summer breeze seems to have blown everything around in the most charming way. We are actually only aware of one other directly comparable rug, published in ”Seltene Orientteppiche V” (Rare Oriental Rugs V) as No. 25 by Eberhart Herrmann. This rug shows a somewhat orderly field in a loose manner and in light pastel colors. It has the same borders, but without the outer one. Herrmann refers to border designs that are otherwise frequently seen in color on Caucasian carpets, as in piece no. 24 in the same catalog. Although the dark flower on a white background looks slightly different than in the colored version, the connection is clear. Herrmann links the rare field design with early Caucasian carpets, as in Yetkin, ”Early Caucasian Carpets,” Nos. 40, 53, 58, 61. In this context, however, intermediate stages should also be mentioned, such as three pieces in Schürmann’s ”Kaukasische Teppiche” (Caucasian Carpets), numbers 6, 94, and perhaps also No. 128, and used for comparison. Last but not least, there is a remarkable carpet shown by Emil Mirzakhanian at the Milan Antiquariato (Hali 64, page 172), which was described as Kuba and dated to the 18th or early 19th century. An extremely wild, eccentric prayer rug with this design was advertised by Bausback in Hali 6/4, Gallery 6. Only a thin crenellated border surrounds the field, and an inverted ’U’ is inserted at the top to mark the prayer niche.