The beauty of auctions is that sometimes they give you a chance to own a piece of history. And that’s exactly what happened last week in London, when at a Christie’s auction an exceptionally rare pashmina carpet woven for the court of Emperor Shah Jahan in circa 1650 came under the hammer. After a competitive telephone bidding that lasted over 10 minutes, it was sold for £5,442,000.  

The carpet that is only one of four 17th century pashmina carpets remaining in private hands, has a lattice and flower design and still retains its brilliant colour and design. It’s woven with prized pashmina goat hair on a silk foundation.  

The 9 feet by 8 feet carpet had an estimated price of £2.5 million to £3.5 million, but finally sold for almost double that. The carpet which is now almost square was earlier over 14 feet long. Three smaller fragments from the same carpet are known to have survived, two are in museums, the third is privately owned. 

“Due to the fragility of the silk and the finely spun pashmina pile very few examples survive, making a carpet of this size and condition an extraordinarily rare survivor from the golden age of Imperial Mughal carpet production,” said a Christie’s press release.  

The carpet was a highlight in Art of the Islamic & Indian Worlds including Oriental Rugs and Carpets sale which totalled £15,989,352. The auction comprised 265 lots, including works of art, paintings, carpets and manuscripts from the 9th through to the 20th century, and from Spain to India. 

As per Christie’s, this carpet is an important example of the new Flower Style in Mughal India which became popular in architectural decoration and the decorative arts under Shah Jahan (r. 1628-58). The style is distinguished by a wide range of flowers – roses, lilies, carnations and sunflowers among others — depicted in profile and arranged in rows. The Flower Style in Indian art can be traced back to the 1620 visit of Mughal Emperor Jahangir (r.1605-27) to Kashmir. Mansur, his favourite natural history painter, accompanied him on the trip and produced more than 100 paintings of local flowers, three of which survive. However, it was not until after 1630 that the vast majority of court carpets woven in India reflected the new taste for the Flower Style which dominated carpet design as well as all aspects of Mughal art.     

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