Austria Auction Company, Fine Antique Oriental Rugs XXX, 1 October 2022

[View this email in your browser]( [Sponsored message] [Austria Auction Company]( Fine Antique Oriental Rugs XXX Auction: 1 October 2022, 4pm CEST Palais Breuner, Singerstrasse 16, Vienna [Register for Online Live Bidding]( On 1 October 2022, Austria Auction Company will present 227 high quality lots in its 30th specialist sale of fine rugs and textiles since opening its doors in 2013. Running at least three catalogue sales a year is quite an achievement, and that confidence is reflected in the quality of the material offered in this landmark sale. The role of the connoisseur is apparent in many different guises in the sale, both in appreciation of the rugs and the artistic endeavour of the weavers. For example, two lots in the sale are classical Turkish rugs associated with well-known old master painters: [lot 150]( a 17th-century Lotto design rug (above top, estimate €25-35,000) is of course named after the rugs that were the clearly depicted in paintings of the Venetian artist Lorenzo Lotto (1480–1556); and [lot 155]( a mid-18th century Bergama rug (above left, estimate €16-22,000) is named after 15th-century Florentine artist Domenico Ghirlandaio, who depicted a rug with this design in Madonna enthroned with Child and Saints (1480–85) in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence. This small gem of a rug is also associated with similar rugs in the Museum of Islamic art in Qatar, once in the Orient Stars Collection, and a single medallion version in the Museum of Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, once owned by legendary collector Joseph McMullan. The weavings of the Salor Turkmen have always been highly regarded by collectors, and assessing the difference between examples is matter of connoisseurial debate. Yet the last word about the quality of Salor kapunuk, [lot 165]( (estimate €80-120,000) was made by the late Jürg Rageth in Turkmen Carpets: A New Perspective, where he said that if it were not for the missing lower inner minor border, ‘it certainly would be unsurpassed not only in its harmonious proportions and outstanding quality of materials, but also its otherwise good condition’. His study also examined the skills of Salor weavers in achieving the subtle variations in red that help to create depth and movement in their compositions. These qualities were seen by the eye of the connoisseur but the specifics of the skills they used in creating compositions and the expense of the dyeing were not fully understood until he proved the use of Indian lac insect dye, alongside madder and Mexican or Armenian cochineal-dyed silk, to produce the strong colours seen for example here in the curled-leaf field. These qualities are obvious elsewhere in the sale which remarkably contains six other Salor weavings. In particular, [lot 169]( a Salor chuval, (above right, estimate €40-60,000) which is larger than other examples of the genre, which has oxidised cochineal-dyed silk in the centre of the medallions, and gül outlines in deep green rather than more typical indigo blue, as well as three different shades of red wool made with variations of lndian lac-dye and madder. [View these weavings and others in Austria Auction Company’s 30th fine rug and textiles sale.]( Copyright © 2022 Hali Publications Ltd, All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because you opted in at our website, or are a HALI customer. The attributions and valuations expressed by gallerists and auctioneers do not necessarily reflect the opinion of Hali Publications. [unsubscribe from this list]( [update subscription preferences](