The Hindu : `Finest' carpet fragment to be sold

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Mar 23, 2004

International

International

`Finest' carpet fragment to be sold

LONDON, MARCH 22. The sad, frayed scrap of silk and wool is not big enough to make a mouse mat, never mind a carpet slipper. It is, however, a fabulous rarity, described by one expert as ``a portion of the finest hand-knotted carpet in the history of the world.''

The claim is made by Steven Cohen, an authority on Indian carpets, who has examined the fabric, which was shut up in a drawer for nearly a century and kept as a family curiosity.

It will be auctioned at Bonhams in London next month, estimated to fetch £6,000-8,000. ``It has been almost impossible to value,'' said Mark Dance, oriental carpet expert at Bonhams.

``Nothing like it has been sold in the memory of our experts. On the one hand we have only such a tiny piece of it, on the other it is a world-class object of museum quality. The family is happy with the estimate, and we shall see — it may be that specialist collectors will pay a lot more for it.''

The fragment survived as a souvenir of the owners' great-grandfather, a London carpet dealer. It is a tiny part of a Mughal carpet made around 1630 in India, similar to a prayer mat but probably used for decoration, possibly hung behind an emperor's throne.

Other fragments of the same small carpet survive in museums, the largest in the Metropolitan Museum, New York and other scraps in Boston and Kuwait. —

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