After long study of these two rugs, I have come to the conclusion that the design shown in [Plate I] is a rug design, made for that purpose and no other, and the one here shown, beautiful as it is, was borrowed from the porcelain, perhaps from several vases. There are certain Persian rugs of the 17th and 18th centuries, and many Perso-Indian rugs of a still earlier period, which have something in common with this minute floral type of Chinese design. Which artist, the Mohammedan or the Chinese, was the borrower and which the lender would be difficult to say at this distance.
But all this aside, it is still worthy of note and should never be forgotten in the study of Chinese rugs, that whatever and wherever they borrow they are still Chinese. In this rug ([Plate II]) there is one concession to the Persian habit, which might better have been omitted for the sake of decorative purity; namely, the conversion of the narrow inner “water” stripes into corner ornaments. Not that the shapes thus obtained are Persian in their character. They are not. On the contrary, they suggest the conventional corner dragons in the oldest Ming rugs, of which a superb example is found in [Plate VI]. But the manner in which they are brought out is more that of the heavy Chinese teak wood carving, which plays so large a part in the interior decoration of China down to the present day. They add an element of strength to the design; but they distinctly “do not belong,” and constitute therefore an inharmonious factor when considered in the light of cold analysis. None the less, with its superb coloring, the rug is far more beautiful than most that come out of China in these days of rug decadence.
PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION
ILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR, VOL. 4, No. 2, SERIAL No. 102
COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION, INC.
PLATE III
LOANED BY MR. CHARLES B. ALEXANDER
ROUND CHINESE RUG
