Rug - Brocade Rug

The decorations on 17th-century Cuenca rugs were inspired by patterns from 16th-century silk textiles and rugs. The Spanish rug in the Museum of Applied Arts’ collection belongs to the Brocade series. The field contains large, stylised palmettes in an axially symmetrical arrangement/composition on a blue ground. A vertical series of palmettes, each surmounted by a crown, runs along the central axis of the long, narrow rug and is enclosed by inclined palmettes. These are decorated with ivory, orange, light blue and green floral elements on a pale-yellow ground. The blue ground of the field is filled with a row of tiny, four-petalled rosettes. The border contains a chain created by horizontal "S" motifs connected by rings on a pale-yellow ground.

At one time, lawyer Alfréd Perlmutter (1867–1929) also owned similarly decorated Spanish rug in Budapest. The whereabouts of the 520cm x 220cm rug are unknown; an photo of a detail of the rug can be found in the archives of the Museum of Applied Arts.

See also: Museum With No Frontiers