Mesched Saber

A rare Saber Mesched carpet in oversize. As the brilliantly gifted head weaver in the world-renowned Amoghli workshop of Mashhad, Abbas Qoli Saber (1901 – 1966 CE) was personally chosen by Amoghli to take over the workshop after the great master’s retirement, to ensure its heritage of excellence would continue. Saber was so successful in fulfilling this objective, that his name was soon as famous throughout Persia and beyond as that of his illustrious predecessor. Here is a Saber creation with the definitive character of his most significant period in the late 1930s/early 1940s, signed in his unvarying manner with his single family name, and utilising the unmistakeable structure inherited from Amoghli with its own ‘signature’ attribute of flat-woven edge- and end-selvages overcast in crimson silk. The field design is similarly in keeping with a number of Amoghli examples, being inspired by the field of The Ardabil Shrine Carpet in the Victoria & Albert Museum London, and superbly adapted to the imposing near-square format also favoured by Amoghli, and found in certain other Mashhad works of the most precious calibre. The monumental splendour of the radiating medallion is flawlessly crafted in deep indigo and ivory to fill the length and breadth of the deep blood red field, where an enchanting array of innumerable small floral forms creates the impression of a star-filled night sky. With a characteristic mixture of imagination and knowledge, Saber combines this majestic Ardabil- variant medallion with a rendition of the equally celebrated reciprocal arch border of The Chelsea Carpet, similarly acquired for the Victoria & Albert Museum by William Morris in the last decade of the nineteenth century. Executed in resonant shades of indigo and dark ruby red, and memorably rich in interior detail, this triumphant border composition is presented between clear ivory side borders of exactingly-drawn rosette-and-leaf meanders. Of remarkably fine pile construction in the high lustre wool of Khurasan, and of superbly deep insect and vegetable dye colours, this is one of the greatest Saber carpets recorded to date.