Rug - Floral rug

One of the very few Mughal carpets the Budapest Museum of Applied Arts owns dates from the late 17th century and was probably made in Lahore. The museum bought it from an unknown person for 15,000 crowns between 1915 and 1924 and showed it at the 1924 exhibition together with two other Indian carpets. The central field features the small scrolling vine-and-blossom pattern common on Herat carpets, while the ornamentation and colouring bears the traits of Mughal carpets; sickle-shaped wisteria among flowers and palmettes and ton-sur-ton colouring (areas lighter than the ground without contours). The main border consists of red, undyed and ochre round and oblong cartouches with little floral decorations on a dark blue ground. There is an analogue of the irregular cartouches on a late 16th-century or early 17th-century Lahore carpet from the collection of Vojtech Blau, Inc., New York City, formerly in the von Pannwitz Collection, Heemstede. The Lahore carpet is the same size and with similar ornamentation, but earlier, from the second quarter of the 17th century. It was formerly held in the collection of the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., William A. Clark Collection (26.297). The carpet was auctioned in 2013.

See also: Museum With No Frontiers