Illustrative model — an approximation, not a scan of the original object.
c. 1550 – 1600
Cairene Table Carpet
The museum notes that the mid-sixteenth century is the current dating.
- Material
- Hand-knotted wool pile on wool
- Dimensions
- 89 × 125 × 114 cm (as displayed over a table)
- Findspot
- Probably woven in Cairo
- Discovery
- Bought by the museum in 1883 at a sale in Paris; at the time it was thought to be a Persian processional canopy.
- Held by
- Victoria and Albert Museum, London
- Inventory number
- 151-1883
A cross-shaped carpet designed to lie over a cube-shaped table with its four flaps hanging down. Its field is red, and its pattern uses eight colours.
Its design follows Ottoman court taste, but the knotting and the wool point to the workshops of Cairo.
Certainty: Probable
The museum attributes it to Cairo from the asymmetric knot and S-spun wool.
Scholarly note: Attributing a carpet to its place of making rests on technique, not on a document.
- Victoria and Albert Museum, London “Table carpet, 151-1883” collections.vam.ac.uk
Certainty: Established
Its knot density is about 3,000 knots per square decimetre.
- Victoria and Albert Museum, London “Table carpet, 151-1883” collections.vam.ac.uk