Rugs of the East

It has been said that, in her heyday, Persia achieved perfection in all the arts and her rug making was no exception.

The amazing patience and supreme skill shown in some of the rugs that have come down to us are nothing short of miraculous, and we in England are peculiarly fortunate in that we can, merely by visiting the Victoria and Albert Museum during a spare hour when in London, gaze upon one of the most superb of ancient pile carpets.

This is the great Ardebil carpet, made for the mosque at Ardebil, a small town in north-west Persia a little to the west of the Caspian Sea and once famed as a place of many pilgrimages.

It is "great" in all senses of the word, of wonderful colouring, delicate and elaborate design, measuring 34 feet 6 inches by 17 feet 6 inches and having 340 knots to the square inch, which means about 30 million knots for the whole carpet.

It is dated 1540 and its magnificence is of the same calibre as is Rembrandt's Night Watch of some 100 years later, a combination of supreme beauty, technical genius and vast size.

Hours of inspection of either masterpiece leave much to see and comprehend at another visit.