(Museum-Quality) (One of 70 "Best-of-Their-Type Rugs" Sold in 2025)  This 300-year-old carpet was woven presumably under the auspices of Shah Abbas the Great’s sponsorship, the sitting ruler of the Safavid Dynasty at the time. A rare example from the period known as The Golden Age of Persian Weaving, it is an astonishingly well-preserved, magnificently rendered piece, in both color and drawing, of the dragon style. Based on ancient lore from both Mesopotamia and China, this design, created in the Safavids’ Caucasian territories and embraced by Persian royalty, enhanced the dynasty’s eagerness to project a powerful presence in world affairs at the time. Published examples of exceedingly similar carpets with this rendering of their complex field pattern place them as woven in the early 16th century, described as having a “richness of motif, delicacy of drawing, and harmony of color” (Seven Hundred Years of Oriental Carpets, by Kurt Erdmann, 1966, p. 132). This haunting, small room-size rug with its spiny, writhing dragons and other fluid anthropomorphic forms between and within an overscale shield template, certainly captures the celestial quality of an almighty force. Its still-saturated color palette after three centuries exudes an undeniably yang energy, the crimson and lapis tonalities in timeless interaction supported by an amazing array of original honey-amber, difficult-to-diversify greens, and a surprising rose-petal pink.

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