Around 1930. With a pattern after the famous "Chelsea carpet" found in the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Provenance
The Benlian star signature reads sherkat-e jabbarzadeh-ye qali-bafiyan va Mahmud, which translates as ‘The Jabbarzadeh Carpet weaving company and Mahmud’. Whilst other early 20th century workshops such as PETAG began producing Tabriz carpets of similar style, Benlian carpets can be identified by their eight-pointed star insignia woven in the corner of each inner guard stripe. The Benlian workshop was founded in the first half of the 20th century in Tabriz where it wove carpets specifically for the European market. Of Armenian descent, Edward E Benlian, a London based carpet dealer, had a strong affinity with the Armenian community of Tabriz and set up a workshop employing the best weavers in order to produce carpets of the highest quality. His master weavers included Javan Amir Kizi and Mahmud Ghalicheh, by whom the present carpet is woven. Both of these master weavers were extremely successful in reinterpreting the classical carpet designs of 16th and 17th century Safavid Persia, for more modern tastes.
Literature
Compare F.R. Martin, A History of Oriental Carpets before 1800 (Vienna: 1908) p. 33.
More information
The name of the Chelsea carpet comes from it being purchased by a dealer in Chelsea (in southwest London), named Alfred Cohen, in 1890. It was made in Iran during the early 1500s and was probably designed for the Persian Court.
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