A diverse set was collectively named “Salting Carpets”, named after this example in the V&A, although they are now understood as a more complex cluster with a wider date-range. Known in scholarly literature as 'the Salting Carpet', this famous carpet belongs to a larger carpet group which has long been debated by art historians. At this time, carpet weaving had reached an extraordinarily high standard of design and technique, and the Safavid shahs commissioned the finest carpets as pious shrine donations, personal furnishings and suitably impressive diplomatic gifts to other states. The carpet is attributed to the late sixteenth century, and the Safavid court of Iran (which was then based in Qazvin). The central medallion repeats the red and pink background, with a leafy design also overlaid with gleaming metal brocade. O nightingale, what say you?” The verses are emphasised by the scale of the fine calligraphy, by the use of silver brocade lettering against a dark red background, and by the distinctive formatting: each half-verse is placed in a cartouche, laid against a green border. This poetry was certainly chosen to suit the design and intended purpose of the carpet itself, to be a beautiful place to sit together with friends, in a private garden, reciting romantic verses: “Call for wine and scatter roses: what do you seek from Time?/ Thus spoke the rose at dawn.

The lines quote the great Iranian poet Hafez (d.1389), and they describe a blissful world of gardens, nightingales, roses and wine. Dating from late sixteenth-century Iran, this is an extremely fine and beautiful carpet, with an intricate floral design filled with wild creatures, and verses of Persian poetry all around the borders, highlighted in metal brocade.

Intricate silver brocade