Bedding bag (mafrash) end panel - Mafrash (Bedding Bag) End Panel

Certain textiles from Anatolia, covers and containers made by nomads, semi-nomads and villagers for their own use known as the Caucasus and Iran, first came to the attention of consumers in Europe, in the final third of the 19th century. Although the Budapest Museum of Applied Arts purchased its first nomad and village flat-woven textiles at the turn of the 19th/20th century, this carpet was a donation by Prof. Ottó Fettick (1946, followed by his bequest in 1954) that laid the real foundations of the Museum's woven carpet collection. The 104 items included textiles of a kind that were new to the Museum: 19th-century woven Caucasian and North Iranian soumak, palas, verneh and jajim rugs, containers and covers, and Anatolian, Iranian and Balkan kilims. Professor Fettick (1875–1954) was a veterinary surgeon, bacteriologist and art collector and probably started building his collection of 19th-century flat-woven nomad carpets and other textiles in the early 20th century. The end panel of a Shahsevan mafrash (bedding bag) presumably from the Moghan-Savalan region is from the Fettick collection. Its ornament is comprised of three broad horizontal bands. The dark brown central band has offset rows of hooked hexagons; one row in alternating colours between two rows of white half hexagons. The upper and lower secondary broad bands contain right-facing peacocks standing in line on a yellow ground, each with a stylized "cock" motif on its back.

Originally the side panel selvedges were sewn together with a blue and brown rope-like overcasting which remained on three edges of the end panel when the mafrash was taken apart. The cut edge of the long side panel is visible on the lower third of the left side under the frayed overcasting.

There is a mafrash end panel of almost identical pattern in the Charles Grant Ellis Collection.

See also: Museum With No Frontiers