How A “centuries-old” Carpet Duped Art Dealers And Curators For Decades

On nan greeting of November 7, 1933, a Viennese art-dealer named Paul Perlefter near his lodgings successful nan luxurious Park Lane Hotel, London pinch a rolled-up carpet nether his arm. At astir 117 inches agelong and 75 inches wide erstwhile unfurled, it made a compact package. Perlefter was connected his measurement to nan V&A Museum to spot its curator of textiles, Cecil Tattersall.

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What Perlefter showed Tattersall excited nan curator truthful overmuch that he wrote that aforesaid day to nan V&A’s Deputy Keeper of Textiles, A.B. Wace, urging nan depository to bargain nan carpet. Within 2 days nan petition had made it to nan table of nan V&A’s director, Eric Maclagan. As soon arsenic he viewed nan item, Maclagan approved nan purchase. Whereas astir acquisitions were ponderous affairs, this 1 took small much than a week from opening to end.

The V&A paid Perlefter £310, nan balanced coming of £8,000, conscionable complete $10,000. This was 25 per cent of nan V&A’s full acquisition fund for that year. In their correspondence, Wace and Maclagan acknowledged nan V&A’s “depleted funds”—the Great Depression had put it nether terrible pressure—but asserted their condemnation that nan costs was justified moreover “in nan coming authorities of affairs.”

For 30 years, Perlefter’s carpet hung peacefully connected nan wall successful nan museum, delighting visitors pinch its beauty, its different palette, enigmatic motifs and its echoes of 4 empires.

This highly desired carpet was ivory, pinch a unique repeated shape of 3 circles organized into a pyramid and underscored by 2 wavy lines, forming regular rows marching crossed nan full section of nan carpet. The motifs and borders were knotted successful red, blue, achromatic and different shades of pick aliases earthy wool. Carpets of this type are believed to person originated successful occidental Anatolia successful nan sixteenth century. Contemporaneous Ottoman value registers grounds akin white-ground carpets pinch spots and stripes arsenic “Selendi” type, suggesting that they whitethorn person originated successful nan colony of that name, westbound of nan awesome carpet-making halfway of Ushak.

To those pinch a sensation for nan esoteric, they person overmuch to urge them. Only astir 30 are still successful existence, and it is apt they were ever a small-scale specialized production. Aesthetically, they are wholly dissimilar nan richly colored and engaged designs of different carpets from Anatolia, offering alternatively a serene, ray minimalism. Their signature three-circle motif floating connected a ray oversea invites questions and provokes fantasies. Speculation connected nan history and meaning of nan motif offered what has been described arsenic “a boon for rug dealers and authors connected nan lookout for a lurid income pitch.”

These spots and stripes were a favored motif of Ottoman makers and merchants, pinch objects base nan creation traded crossed nan empire’s increasing territory passim nan sixteenth century. It tin beryllium recovered connected tiles from nan highest of Ottoman ceramic accumulation successful İznik and woven into velvet and brocade for splendid royal kaftans. Theories abound. Some modern commentators propose that nan circles correspond nan triple domiciled of Ottoman sultans arsenic chieftain, warrior and emperor. Others spot nan 3 circles and 2 wavy lines arsenic a awesome of nan 3 continents and 2 seas ruled by nan sultans—Europe, Asia and Africa, and nan Mediterranean and nan Black Seas.

But nan awesome had been successful usage crossed Asia for hundreds of years earlier nan white-ground rugs from Anatolia were woven, and so agelong earlier nan Ottoman Empire itself. In 1902, nan clever clever Wilhelm Bode suggested that it derived from an older Buddhist awesome of 3 jewels surrounded by fire. Bode interpreted nan 3 circles arsenic nan Buddhist magic gems which tin fulfill each worldly and belief desires, and nan 2 wavy lines arsenic a stylized type of nan flames. He gave nan motif a Sanskrit name: tschintamani, wish-fulfilling jewels. Carpets which carnivore it are known arsenic chintamani to this day.

Other scholars looked to Iranian and Central Asian folklore for nan meaning of nan motifs, proposing that nan spots and stripes mightiness beryllium intended to evoke nan leopard and tiger skins worn by ancient warriors successful those cultures. Rustam, nan leader of nan eleventh-century Iranian epic Shanama: The Book of Kings, famously wore a tiger-skin jerkin. The gigantic red-haired warrior fought nan seven-headed White Div to prevention his shah, Kay Kāvus, who had been captured and blinded by nan demon chieftain. Rustam needed to trim retired nan Div’s liver truthful that he could pain it and smear nan ashes connected Kay Kāvus’s eyes to reconstruct his sight. In nan galore gloriously illustrated versions of this section of nan Shanama, Rustam is shown wearing his tiger-skin jerkin, sometimes complete pinch its claws.

By nan clip Tattersall and Wace group astir making their lawsuit for acquisition successful 1933, a wealthiness of intriguing stories were disposable astir nan meaning of nan motifs successful nan carpet. And yet nan 2 curators did not evoke Buddhist monks, legendary Persian heroes aliases moreover mighty Ottoman emperors to ignite nan imagination of nan V&A’s budget-holders. Instead they turned to Central Asia.

The Turco-Mongol emperor Timur Leng, known to nan West arsenic Tamerlane, was a monumentally successful nomadic leader, renowned and feared successful late-medieval Europe. Said to beryllium descended from Mongol emperor Chinggis (Genghis) Khan, Timur forged a immense empire crossed Asia successful nan fourteenth century. The chintamani motif has been recovered connected coins minted successful his name, and Ruy González de Clavijo, who met Timur arsenic Henry III of Castile’s ambassador to Samarkand, believed it to symbolize nan ruler’s 3 territories: Persia, Central Asia and India. It is said that Timur celebrated nan 1366 conquest of Samarkand by dipping his fingers into nan humor of an force corpse and printing 3 reddish circles connected nan doorway of a mosque.

Here was a seductive transportation for Perlefter’s carpet. Tattersall and Wace instantly began describing it arsenic a carpet base nan “badge of Tamburlaine” successful their correspondence pinch V&A head Maclagan, contempt believing that it was made successful sixteenth-century Anatolia, 3 100 years aft Timur, 2 1000 miles from Samarkand and nether a different empire. The curators were of people mindful that nan motif had besides been utilized by nan Ottomans, but this was manifestly not an Ottoman tribunal carpet—and truthful Timur offered a useful imperial alternative.

Furthermore, nan Central Asian heartlands that Timur had erstwhile ruled were a very coming interest successful 1930s Britain. British India faced Soviet Central Asia crossed nan Wakhan Corridor, a portion of Afghanistan only eleven miles wide astatine its narrowest points, which successful 1893 had been designated nan buffer area betwixt nan Russian and British Empires. The fathers and grandfathers of nan curators of Britain’s starring museums had spent nan erstwhile period anxiously watching nan Afghan frontier arsenic imperial Russia expanded into what had agelong agone been Timurid territory. There were Maclagans successful nan British authorities successful Punjab successful nan precocious nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

For 30 years, Perlefter’s carpet hung peacefully connected nan wall successful nan museum, delighting visitors pinch its beauty, its different palette, enigmatic motifs and its echoes of 4 empires.

And then, 1 time successful March 1962, George Wingfield Digby, Keeper of Textiles astatine nan V&A, received a missive from 1 Nessim Cohen. An art-dealer and carpet master successful nan US, Mr. Cohen believed that, acold from being hundreds of years old, nan V&A’s Schwarzenberg chintamani had successful truth been woven specified decades ago. Curators often person accusation from nan nationalist suggesting replacement histories for objects successful a museum’s care, and astatine first Mr. Cohen was rebuffed arsenic conscionable different amateur enthusiast. But he refused to fto nan matter go, continuing to constitute to nan depository each six months for 2 years. “I americium a small puzzled,” Digby wrote, “at Mr Cohen’s bonzer persistence.”

Digby turned to (who else) May Beattie. Her suspicions were alerted from nan start. Her study expanse notes that among nan “yellow/camel” wool of nan lengthwise warp (the yarns which are strung connected nan loom arsenic nan first measurement of constructing a carpet), location were 3 stripes of red. This looked to Beattie “like aniline”—the family of synthetic dyes that had only entered large-scale carpet accumulation successful nan 2nd half of nan nineteenth century.

Demand for luxury objects exploded successful nan precocious nineteenth and early twentieth centuries….As prices soared, scammers and fraudsters sewage successful connected nan action.

When nan reddish warp dye was chemically analyzed successful 1964, it was recovered to beryllium a substance of purpurin, first produced successful 1867, and chrysophenine, first synthesized successful 1885. The aniline-dyed threads were portion of nan foundational building of nan carpet; location was nary anticipation of them having been added arsenic portion of a repair. The carpet had to person been made aft 1885 alternatively than successful nan sixteenth century. Beattie amended her study expanse to grounds this, unusually for her, successful reddish ink. The carpet was softly withdrawn from nan assemblage and placed successful storage.

Badly stung, it wasn’t agelong earlier Digby’s ire extended to nan messenger who first alerted him to Perlefter’s deception: Nessim Cohen. As he faced down embarrassing publicity successful nan world press, Digby wrote to a chap V&A charismatic successful a hardly legible scrawl of angst, “This is clever advertizing for nan trader and ‘expert’ Nessim Cohen! […] I wonderment if he doesn’t cognize excessively overmuch astir this and different of Perlefter’s carpets.”

As pinch each bully conspiracy theories, nan communicative of Perlefter and Cohen would soon go associated pinch different nefarious activities. On 2 January 1964, Digby was contacted by Labour Member of Parliament Tom Driberg, later Baron Bradwell. Driberg had agelong been suspected, without confirmation, of being portion of nan Soviet spy ringing that included Kim Philby and Guy Burgess. He had louche tastes. As a young man he had been a adjacent friend of necromancer Aleister Crowley, and successful nan early 1960s included successful his societal circle some nan Rolling Stones and nan East End gangsters nan Kray twins. He was besides connected to Nessim Cohen, and had learned of nan ungraded of nan faked carpet done that connection. In early 1964 he sought much accusation from Digby, for now mislaid and chartless purposes. He was an inveterate collector of gossip, truthful possibly it was conscionable lust to cognize secrets; but, fixed his connections pinch nan criminal underworld, possibly he was checking that he himself wasn’t someway exposed successful nan story.

Demand for luxury objects exploded successful nan precocious nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, driven by backstage collectors who had amassed immense wealthiness successful nan Industrial Revolution and by nationalist museums established to observe and sphere nan spoils of empire. As prices soared, scammers and fraudsters sewage successful connected nan action.

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From Threads of Empire: A History of nan World successful Twelve Carpets by Dorothy Armstrong. Copyright © 2025. Available from St. Martin’s Press, an imprint of Macmillan.