Description The ‘Bernheimer’ Star Ushak
171 x 118 cm (5’ 7” x 3’ 10”)
Turkey, 16th century
Condition: good according to age, low pile, slightly incomplete all around, several old repairs
Warp: wool, weft: wool, pile: wool
The pattern of this famous carpet, which has been published many times, is obviously derived from Persian miniature paintings of the 15th century, in which carpets are depicted.
It was probably woven in Anatolia from the second half of the 15th century onwards. Of a total of twenty-six known examples, mostly fragmented, only seven, including the present one, are clearly from Ushak. This carpet differs from the other classic Ushaks in that its design is drawn in a small format.
Also, the so-called wine glass border already appears in European paintings from the early 16th century onwards (for example in Maria Magdalena by Jacob Cornelisc from 1519, currently in the Art Museum of St. Louis.) The pattern scheme follows the archaic 4+1, the similarity of the central emblem with the Tibetan double vajra seems evident, although researchers tend to assume floral origins.
This carpet comes from the private collection of Otto Bernheimer in Munich and is published by Kurt Erdmann:
“Weniger bekannte Ushak-Muster, Kunst des Orients IV”, Wiesbaden, 1963, Page 92, Fig. 6, and in Michael Franses/Robert Pinner, “Turkish Carpets in the Victoria & Albert Museum, Part I”, The Classical Carpets of the 15–17th Century, in HALI Vol. 6, No. 4, 1984, pp. 356-381