Lot 227
A magnificent Kashgai audience or triclinium carpet
Auction: 30 June 2001 at 12:00 BST
Description
Fars province, profusely decorated with stylised animals and flowerheads, the main red field (mian farsh) with three hooked medallions and spandrels in blue and cream, flanked by panelled borders (kenareh) each with ten hooked blue medallions, and multiple guard bands, similar top panel (kellei) with three hooked medallions and spandrels
305cm (20') x 360cm (12')
Footnote
Provenance: Iona Abbey
This carpet was gifted to the Iona Community by Miss Margaret Roxburgh, whose father was a successful solicitor and a founding elder of St Columba's Presbyterian Church in Cambridge. In the 1920s she was a missionary in China and apparently acquired the carpet on one of these trips. It was subsequently used in the hall of the family house in Cambridge until Miss Roxburgh moved to a smaller house in the 1940s and subsequently gave the carpet to the Community.
Since then it has lain in front of the alter in Iona Abbey, both enhancing the Abbey and protecting significant gravestones below. In that position countless feet, ranging from the famous to the humble, have passed over it, including those of the Queen and the late John Smith.
Historic Scotland has recently taken over stewardship of the Abbey and now wishes to reveal the gravestones. As the Community has no other potential use for the carpet, and it was expressly gifted to benefit the Community, a decision has been made to sell it and use the funds in a more appropriate manner.