PLATES THIRTY-ONE & THIRTY-TWO


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This carpet, Plate Thirty One, was sold for $120,890 at an auction held by
Christies in their King Street London saleroom in 1996.

It was consigned for that sale by the Bernheimer Family of Munich, Germany,
having previously been in their private collection for decades.

Legend has it that when Humayun, the deposed Emperor of India, sought refuge at the court of Shah Tahmasp, no prayer rug could be found for his personal use. This is probably a spiteful Sunni tale but how could they have found this carpet? Up until the 1930`s it hung in Friedrich Sarre`s office in Berlin, where a young Kurt Erdmann, perhaps the most famous carpet scholar of the mid-twentieth century, so often admired it.