Even though the Safavid ‘Coronation carpet’ failed to sell at Sothebys recently, its story can’t fail to interest you. It was used at the coronation of two British Kings, Edward VII (in 1902) and George V (1911), as well as at the marriage of Princess Mary (1922). Click here to see what I’m talking about
The carpet has been “somewhat reconfigured into a squarish fragment” – which presumably means it’s been chopped about at some time, and it’s certainly an odd size and shape for what is stylistically a seventeenth century Safavid carpet, stylistically similar to the blockbuster Clark Corcoran most-expensive-carpet-in-the-world.
In fact three Safavid carpets were loaned for Edward VII’s coronation. The one recently seen at Sothebys was underneath the throne where King Edward was crowned. A not-very-clear image of that is here. Another carpet, covering the dais, was most recently sold by Christies in 1997. The largest covered the steps to the dais as shown in the splendid painting to the left and the gravure here and is now in the LACMA collection.
But back to ‘our’ Coronation carpet. It went through the dealer Duveen’s hands, though it’s not 100{b8c22f93d422ef023db83f5d48725f643afc88b95166e83d1145a454adbf2ccd} clear who owned it when it was seen at Edward’s coronation. It might have been borrowed from a client – or may simply have been languishing, unsold, in Duveen’s stock. There are similar uncertainties about other important Duveen carpets seen at other important public occasions.
Whatever the truth, in 1903 the carpet was sold to John Augustus Holms, who wanted to decorate a model estate, Formakin. Funds ran out and the house was never completed: “Even in the 1930s, [Holms] was giving dinner parties in his half-completed mansion, with tapestries concealing bare stone walls“. There is also an “oft-told story” that the carpet was stolen from Holms, “slashed with a knife and thrown in a ditch where it spent several months before [Charles A] Hepburn bought it and had it repaired”. This is not the ‘chopping about’ I suggested earlier on, I think. – though please do correct me if you know better! And this story was, understandably, not repeated in the Sothebys lot notes.
Hepburn then donated the carpet to St Mungos cathedral – you can see a picture of it with another very snazzy altar cover here. O what an appalling clash for a perfectly Safavid textile!
I don’t know why Sotheby’s set a sales estimate of 100-150K, when the poor carpet had failed to even reach £80K last June in Scotland. The maltreated carpet failed to sell at all.
This is the first time I’ve ever felt sorry for a carpet. What a life!
YC comments: Poor carpet. I liked your approach…