The so-called ‘Polonaise’ carpets and rugs are among the most luxurious and elegant creations achieved by the great master weaving workshops established in Persia during the Safavid Period (1501-1736). They are also among the rarest. Only some two hundred thirty or so survive today from among the many thousands of rugs now attributed to this golden age of Persian rug production. The ‘Polonaise’ label (French for Polish), though still widely used, is, of course an old misnomer stemming from the ground-breaking Paris Universal Exhibition of 1878 in which a group of rugs from the collection of the Polish Princess Czartoryski were displayed. The public came away with the impression that the rugs themselves were Polish, and the name has stuck ever since then, despite the fact that research soon disclosed them to be court productions either from Kashan or, more likely, from the imperial capital of Isfahan founded under the energetic Persian monarch Shah Abbas (ruled 1588-1639).
Shah Abbas did much to improve the economy and international standing of Persia during his reign. He established wide ranging diplomatic and commercial relations with the rest of the Islamic world and Europe, connecting his domain with the neighboring Ottoman Empire and the European West, thereby introducing new products and technologies to Persia, while also acquainting the wider world with the unparalleled skills and creativity of Persian artists and craftsmen. At home in Persia he brought artistic production to a new level by re-organizing it under state control, and especially by establishing state manufacturies or kharkaneh to furnish the royal court with an endless supply of luxurious metalwork, ceramics, painting, and textiles, not mention rugs and carpets of the highest quality. The production of these various kharkaneh was carefully supervised to assure the highest quality in design, materials, and craftsmanship. This court supervision also took control of silk production, which now became a state monopoly and an increasingly prominent component of luxury textile manufacturing.
Polonaise rugs and carpets are perhaps the most significant manifestation of the artistic revolution set in motion by Shah Abbas. Whether large or small, they were designed and woven to the most exacting specifications. The designs represented the cutting edge of an elaborate, finely detailed advanced Islamic floral or ‘arabesque’ ornament. In his thorough study of these rugs Spuhler identified at least thirteen different basic design variations that could be used to produce large, palatial scale carpets or smaller pieces as well by zooming in on a selected portion of a larger overall pattern. Technically, the Polonaise were also top-of-the-line. They were finely woven with high knots counts per square inch. Only the vertical warps were made of cotton to assure strength, uniform tension, and regularity of design. The wefts and all the pile of the Polonaise carpets were made entirely from silk. The pile was further embellished by metallic thread brocading in a ‘weft float’ technique. This consisted of flat silver or silver gilt wire wrapped around a silk core, originally highly reflective, although mostly tarnished and corroded today.
Like many other types of Persian court rugs, the vertical warps of the Polonaise pieces were arranged on upper and lower levels separated by tightly pulled weft threads. The weavers of the Polonaise pieces introduced the glimmering metallic wefts through the warps only at the upper level, where they would be visible as additional highlights amidst the low-clipped silk pile. The Polonaise carpet represented the apogee of Persian rug weaving throughout the seventeenth century. As part of Shah Abbas’ high-level international network, they were circulated to the Ottoman Turkish court in the form of diplomatic gifts, and then beyond into Europe commercially, where they became highly prized by the nobility not only for their exotic beauty, but also for their luxurious silk and silver pile. Some were even produced as special commissions all the way from Poland that required the weavers back in Persia to include the coat of arms of the buyer. Examples of this kind probably helped to support the mistaken belief that the carpets were actually made in Poland.
Like so many Polonaise carpets, this exceptional piece has a storied and distinguished provenance. In 1908 it was already published by F.R. Martin in his ground-breaking A History of Oriental Carpets before 1800, when it had until recently been in the possession of the Swedish aristocrat, Count Wachtmeister. He had inherited it from his mother, a member of the noble Wrangel family, who are documented as having owned the carpet since the early eighteenth century, when it was acquired by Count Wachtmeister’s great, great grandfather on his mother’s side, Jacob Anton Wrangel, born in 1679. Since the Wrangels had reputedly used the piece for the marrying the daughters of their house for generations, it came to be known as ‘the Wrangel Bridal Carpet.’ This history accords well with the accepted chronology of the Polonaise production, which belongs broadly to the seventeenth century, although stylistically it is difficult to date them more closely within this date range.
In terms of design, the present piece exemplifies the smaller type of Polonaise, whose field may be understood as a ‘close-up’ shot of a larger allover pattern used in the larger carpets of this type. With an age of between three and four hundred years, this piece discloses the wear and tear typical of most surviving Polonaise carpets. Very few of those from European collections have preserved much of their pile or original color, like the exceptional small Polonaise now in the Metropolitan Museum. So as is often the case, the pile of the present piece is now largely worn down to the upper-level warps, while the once vibrant palette of the silk has softened to pastel shades of red, blue, cocoa, green, yellow, and gold across much of the field. Indeed, the color and overall design appears most clearly when the rug is viewed from the less worn back surface. But in the border, where piled areas of vivid sky-blue ground still remain along with the portions of rich dark aubergine, deeper red and green in the floral details, we may still perceive something of the original color intensity.
In the field, one must also look carefully and with some knowledge of classical Persian rug design to appreciate the complex pattern of swaying vine sprays, rosettes, and palmettes arranged within enclosing cartouche forms. As in the case of the color, the beauty of the curvilinear floral Safavid Persian design is especially clear in the main border. There we can see a grand interlacing Arabesque vinescroll sprouting palmettes and serrated herati leaves or ‘sickle palmettes’ in deep aubergine enlivened by what remains of the silver-wrapped weft float brocading. The flowing dynamism of the border still impresses the viewer with its swaying rhythms and shifting symmetries, as pairs of sickle palmettes arranged as ovals enclosing clusters of flowers or rosettes alternate with larger floral palmettes. The border here is in fact very close to that on the magnificent example in the Metropolitan Museum.
Whether large or small, the field design principle of Polonaise carpets and rugs tended to be radially symmetrical, i.e., the left side mirrors the right side, just as the top half mirrors the lower. In such an arrangement there is no discernible top or bottom; the pattern looks the same from any angle. Some Polonaise pieces like the present one, however, utilize only bilateral symmetry, whereby the design components mirror one another from left to right, but may vary from the bottom to the top. Polonaise carpets also tend to use either an allover trellis or mina khani pattern, or a compartment design consisting of adjacent, more geometric ‘cartouche’ forms, like the famous pair of Rockefeller Polonaises in the Metropolitan Museum. More rarely they may also have a radially symmetrical central medallion design. The present one takes a more unusual approach by blending the typical alternatives. Its design is essentially an excerpt of a larger compartment Polonaise, but it arranges most of the cartouches in a novel fashion around a larger central green one of trapezoidal form, much like Polonaises with a central medallion. Yet unlike medallion compositions, which tend to be purely radial, the present example uses cartouches of clearly different form in aubergine above and below the central green one, with flanking red-ground cartouches in the four corners of the field.
Within the various cartouches elegant floral palmettes, sickle palmette leaves, vines and small blossoms spread gracefully across the field, arranged radially in the central green cartouche, but only in mirror symmetry in all the rest, because the upper and lower pairs of corner cartouches also differ from one another somewhat in form and internal detail. Even the border system follows this scheme. The composition of the upper border is different from the lower and side ones, but the overall border design is still arranged in mirror symmetry. Given the fact that the weavers were following carefully designed cartoons or pattern templates, such variations were clearly deliberate and purposeful. They were meant add a note of novelty or slight surprise. Nothing could more effectively demonstrate Spuhler’s insightful observations that despite the rigorous control of their design or pattern repertoire, the master weavers of the Polonaise carpets were nonetheless given the latitude to vary or recombine the elements of these designs as they saw fit, so long as they could do so with subtlety and maintain the aesthetic unity of their work. In this instance they have done so with the consummate skill and imagination demanded of them by their illustrious sovereign.