English: Size: 2.86 x 2.05m (9’5” x 6’9”).Estimate: £250,000-350,000

The second piece, a large, well balanced, field and border section, assigned to the early 17th century and symmetrically cut from the original sometime in the 19th, is particularly finely woven and in wonderful condition. It is estimated at just £250,000-350,000. With huge classic vase carpet palmettes and blossoms on a rich red-ground, topped by a broad blue-ground strap-work border, it represents a significant but previously unrecorded part of a well-known dismembered grand red-ground Kerman carpet (or perhaps a matched pair of carpets?). At least another dozen fragments, large and small, survive in museum collections in Boston, London, Paris, Lyons, Copenhagen, Glasgow, St Petersburg, Berlin and Doha. The fragment now in Doha is the only other piece to appear on the auction market in recent times, when it made just over a quarter of a million dollars at CLO in April 2011 (HALI 168, p.139).