# The Ardabil Carpet

> Maqsud of Kashan (Maqsud Kashani), named in the inscription - Dated AH 946, equivalent to 1539-40
> Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/maqsud-of-kashan/the-ardabil-carpet/
> Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-08-19

## Tombstone

- **Artist:** Maqsud of Kashan (Maqsud Kashani), named in the inscription
- **Date:** Dated AH 946, equivalent to 1539-40
- **Medium:** Wool knotted pile on a silk warp and weft foundation, asymmetrical knot open to the left
- **Dimensions:** V&A carpet (272-1893): 1044 cm at the middle, 1032.5 cm and 1031 cm at the sides, by 529.5 to 535.5 cm. LACMA carpet (53.50.2): 718.8 x 400.1 cm.
- **Object type:** Textile
- **Period:** Safavid Iran, sixteenth century
- **Current location:** Victoria and Albert Museum, London, Room 42, the Jameel Gallery (272-1893). The twin is in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, David Geffen Galleries (53.50.2).
- **Attribution:** documented

## Summary

Two carpets, not one. A matching pair woven in Safavid Iran and dated 1539-40, designed to lie side by side and fill a square room. One is in London and is complete. The other is in Los Angeles and is not, because before either was sold its outer borders and part of its lower field were cut away and used to mend the one now in London.Almost every popular account of the Ardabil Carpet describes a single object. The V&A's own catalogue record gives the twin the wrong inventory number in one place and the right one in another. This record separates the two carpets, states which is which on every plate, and records what was taken from which.

## Provenance

Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it.

- **1539-40** Woven as a matching pair `[documented]` (origin)
  Both carpets carry a knotted panel dating them to AH 946 and naming Maqsud of Kashan. LACMA reports the plausible proposal that they were woven simultaneously on back-to-back looms; the V&A notes that their knot densities are near-identical, which supports one team working at one time. Stead's 1974 monograph is reported to dissent from that reading on the knot counts; not verified at source.
- **1539-40-1888** The shrine of Shaykh Safi al-Din, Ardabil (reported) `[disputed]` (use)
  Both museums say the carpets were reported to have come from the shrine, and the V&A proposes that the pair was designed to fill a square space under the dome of the Jannat-sara built by Shah Tahmasp. Nineteenth-century travellers recorded carpets at the shrine: Keith Edward Abbott in a Foreign Office narrative of 1843 and W. R. Holmes in 1845. No sixteenth-century document naming these two carpets has been published in the sources consulted; surviving eighteenth-century shrine inventories do not obviously list them; and at least one survey has argued the pair could not have been laid unfolded in the room proposed. Three centuries of the chain are otherwise blank.
- **1888-c. 1890** Ziegler and Co, Manchester `[documented]` (purchase)
  A trading firm with offices at Tabriz and Sultanabad (modern Arak). It bought the carpet in 1888 from the shrine, either directly or through the Tabriz-based carpet dealer Hildebrand Stevens, and repaired it heavily. In 1889-90 the shrine authorities completed restoration works on buildings of the complex; the V&A's inference is that the carpet was sold to fund the renovation. The earthquake usually named as the cause of that damage is a later tradition and is not asserted by the museum.
- **c. 1890-1893** Vincent J. Robinson and Co Ltd, 34 Wigmore Street, London `[documented]` (trade stock)
  The art-import firm that held both carpets. The repairs that made one carpet complete at the expense of the other were carried out in this period; the V&A credits Robinson's with extensive repair work before the sale. By 1892 the London carpet was on show in Robinson's showroom, and the managing director Edward Stebbing published a monograph on it the same year. The Times covered it on 26 May 1892.
- **1892-1905** Charles Tyson Yerkes, New York and Chicago (the Los Angeles carpet) `[documented]` (purchase)
  Robinson sold the second carpet to the traction magnate Charles Tyson Yerkes for 80,000 dollars, in the V&A's words apparently on condition that the carpet should not return to Britain. Yerkes died in 1905 and his collections were dispersed at auction in New York in 1910.
- **1893-present** Victoria and Albert Museum, London (the London carpet) `[documented]` (acquisition)
  Purchased March 1893 for 1,750 pounds from Vincent J. Robinson and Co Ltd, after an opening offer of 1,500 pounds in January was refused by Robinson's managing director Edward Stebbing. The increase followed consultation with the Museum's Art Referees William Morris and Frederic Leighton. The shortfall was made up by private subscription: John Edward Taylor guaranteed 250 pounds, Morris offered 20 pounds, with A. W. Frank, E. Steinkopff and, in the accession register's phrase, other gentlemen. Museum number 272-1893.
- **after 1905-before 1938** Joseph Raphael De Lamar, then Joseph Duveen (the Los Angeles carpet) `[documented]` (sale)
  The V&A records the sequence from the Yerkes collection to De Lamar and then to the dealer Joseph Duveen. De Lamar died in 1918 and his collection was dispersed in turn. The exact dates and the prices of these two transfers are not given in the V&A record.
- **1938-1953** J. Paul Getty (the Los Angeles carpet) `[documented]` (purchase)
  Getty bought the carpet from Duveen in 1938. The price is not given in the V&A or LACMA records.
- **1953-present** Los Angeles County Museum of Art (the Los Angeles carpet) `[documented]` (gift)
  Gift of J. Paul Getty, 1953, to what was then the Los Angeles County Museum of History, Science and Art. Accession number 53.50.2. On view in the David Geffen Galleries in a display titled Persianate Arts: The Ardabil Carpet and Manuscript Painting.

## Auction results

Hammer and buyer's premium are stated separately. Where a source conflates them this record says so.

- **** , 
  - Neither carpet has been sold at public auction as a single lot in the modern market. The two figures that circulate are private-treaty prices from the 1890s: 1,750 pounds paid by the South Kensington Museum in March 1893 for the London carpet, and 80,000 dollars paid by Charles Tyson Yerkes in 1892 for the Los Angeles carpet. Both are private sales with no buyer's premium; a premium column would be meaningless for either. The Los Angeles carpet did pass through the Yerkes estate dispersal of 1910 and the De Lamar dispersal after 1918, and figures from those sales are not carried here because none has been cited to a source in this pass. Any modern auction figure quoted for an Ardabil carpet refers to a different object.

## Exhibitions

- Jameel Gallery, Room 42, permanent display in a purpose-built central case, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 2006-present
- Persianate Arts: The Ardabil Carpet and Manuscript Painting, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, David Geffen Galleries, 2026

## Literature

- 1892, Edward Stebbing, The Holy Carpet of the Mosque at Ardebil, London, 1892. Written by the managing director of the firm that was selling it.
- 1974, Rexford Stead, The Ardabil Carpets, Malibu: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 1974. The monograph on the pair, published by the museum whose founder bought the second carpet.
- 1984, Martin E. Weaver, The Ardabil Puzzle, The Textile Museum Journal 23 (1984), pp. 43-51.
- 1995, Jennifer Wearden, The Ardabil Carpet: The Early Repairs, HALI 80 (1995), pp. 102-107.
- 1996, Donald King, The Ardabil Puzzle Unravelled, HALI 88 (1996), pp. 88-92.
- 2005, Lynda Hillyer and Boris Pretzel, The Ardabil Carpet: A New Perspective, V&A Conservation Journal 49 (2005), pp. 11-13.
- 2014, Sheila S. Blair, Proclaiming Sovereignty: The Ardabil Carpets, in Text and Image in Medieval Persian Art, Edinburgh University Press, 2014, pp. 228-282.
- 2020, Dorothy Armstrong, Inventing the Ardabil Carpet: a Case Study in the Appropriation and Transformation of a Persian Artifact, Iran 58, no. 1 (2020), pp. 110-130.
- 2024, Tim Stanley, A Speculation on the Design of the Ardabil Carpets, in Iranian Art from the Sasanians to the Islamic Republic: Essays in Honour of Linda Komaroff, Edinburgh University Press, 2024.

## Open questions

- Were these two carpets made for the shrine at Ardabil at all? Both museums say the carpets were reported to have come from the shrine, and the V&A calls the Jannat-sara fit a proposal. No sixteenth-century inventory naming them has been published in the sources consulted.
- Do the carpets physically fit the room they are said to have been made for? At least one survey has concluded that they could not have been laid there unfolded. The V&A's square-space argument and that objection have not been reconciled in print.
- Where were they woven? Tabriz is the usual attribution on design grounds. LACMA gives Iran, possibly Tabriz. There is no documentary evidence of the workshop.
- Who was Maqsud of Kashan? He is named on two carpets and nowhere else in the literature either museum cites.
- How many fragments of the two carpets survive, and where are they? The V&A records that fragments exist in public and private collections but no census has been published.
- What exactly was cut, and from where? LACMA says the outer borders and a section of the lower field are believed to have been removed. Believed is the museum's word. The V&A's diagram of patches is the closest thing to a map, and it maps the London carpet, not the Los Angeles one.
- Did Vincent Robinson really impose a condition that the second carpet must not return to Britain? The V&A reports it with the qualifier apparently. No contract has been published.
- What did the V&A actually pay, 1,750 pounds or 2,000? Two current V&A publications disagree.
- Was there an earthquake, and did it cause the sale? The restoration works of 1889-90 are recorded; the earthquake that supposedly necessitated them is a tradition, and the V&A frames the connection to the sale as an argument rather than a fact.
- What happened between 1540 and 1843? No owner, location or use is documented for three centuries; the shrine attribution rests on nineteenth-century travellers and on the fit of the room.
- Was the date panel misread when the carpet was first published in 1892, and later corrected to AH 946? The claim appears in secondary writing and could not be verified against Stead or against Stebbing in this pass. If true it would explain nineteenth-century references carrying a different year.

## Sources

- [1] Victoria and Albert Museum, Explore the Collections, catalogue record for The Ardabil Carpet, museum number 272-1893. Carries the physical description, dimensions, inscription and translation, object history with the purchase negotiation and prices, the Yerkes to De Lamar to Duveen to Getty chain, and the gallery labels of 1998 and 2006. <https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O54307/the-ardabil-carpet-carpet-unknown/>
- [2] Victoria and Albert Museum, article, The Ardabil Carpet. The museum's public account, including the dyes, the knot density, the lighting regime and William Morris's assessment. Gives the purchase price as 2,000 pounds, which conflicts with the catalogue record. <https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/the-ardabil-carpet>
- [3] Los Angeles County Museum of Art, collection record for the Ardabil Carpet, accession 53.50.2, curatorial note revised 2024. States what was removed from the Los Angeles carpet and when, the replacement outer border, the partial survival of the corner medallions, and the back-to-back looms proposal. <https://collections.lacma.org/object/15378>
- [4] Rexford Stead, The Ardabil Carpets, Malibu: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 1974. Getty publications record. NOT READ AT SOURCE IN THIS PASS: the Getty virtual-library PDF address redirects to a JavaScript landing page that could not be read, so the monograph is cited here only for the existence and shape of its argument, at second hand from later summaries. Every claim in this record attributed to Stead is marked as unverified and must be checked against the book before it is relied on. <https://www.getty.edu/publications-reports/item/246RCZ>
- [5] Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Unframed, 50 Works 50 Weeks: The Ardabil Carpet, 7 April 2026. The museum's current public writing on its carpet, confirming the matched pair, the partially preserved corners, and the carpet's place in the permanent collection of the David Geffen Galleries opening in 2026. <https://unframed.lacma.org/2026/04/07/50-works-50-weeks-ardabil-carpet>
- [6] Victoria and Albert Museum, machine-readable object record and IIIF presentation manifest for 272-1893. The API record confirms the accession number and title; the IIIF manifest is an open, deep-zoomable imaging resource that any student or researcher can use without permission or fee. Both were retrieved successfully for this record. <https://iiif.vam.ac.uk/collections/O54307/manifest.json>

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