Ashly Fine Rugs
Antique 17th Century Mortlake English Wool & Silk 11x13 Blue & Taupe Handmade Tapestry Rug #9902475
Antique 17th Century Mortlake English Wool & Silk 11x13 Blue & Taupe Handmade Tapestry Rug #9902475
** Add a custom-cut pad to extend the life of your rug and prevent it from slipping. (This is NOT the same pad you find at local stores - please call for details.)
Rug Price: $65000
Total: $65000
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Condition: Antique
Circa: 1650s
Origin: England
Design: Mortlake Tapestry
Actual size: 10.8x 13.4
Thickness: 1/8"
Colors: Blue, Taupe, Ivory, Teal, Green, Wheat
Content: Wool & Silk
Ashly Fine Rugs presents an original, 400-year-old, English Baroque Garden Landscape Tapestry from the Royal Mortlake Workshop, 17th Century - once hung in an English castle.
Woven with silk and wool, it is in a rectangular form that centers on a stone footbridge over a meandering stream with paired geese amidst a garden of various blossoming plant species beneath towering trees concealing a parrot and magpie foraging on large grape clusters, It continues on showing a topiary garden hedge and spherical wall before a fountain, with a forest and manor in the distance. The entire scene is then enclosed by a spiraling acanthus leaf wrapped fruiting and flowering border, framed by a lambrequin edge trimmed in a brown outer slip, surmounted by a coronet above an armorial three-bar shield flanked by palm fronds centering a fleur-de-lys.
Note: The Mortlake Tapestry Works was established in Mortlake, England, under the proprietorship of Sir Francis Crane, 1620-1636. The Prince of Wales, soon to be King Charles I, arranged for Francis Cleyn to join the Mortlake Tapestry Manufactory in 1624. Cleyn became a key designer at the manufactory and was responsible for several of its most successful series, such as the 'Story of Hero and Leander' and the 'Royal Horses'. He also designed a series depicting 'Playing Boys', which took direct inspiration from two paintings by Polidoro de Caravaggio, which Charles II later purchased in 1637, and appears to form the basis for this tapestry.
This tapestry is very desirable considering its size, age, and its unusual English workshop background, as well as its uncontroversial subject depicting a lovely garden park with a fountain and manor in the distance. This is in good condition considering its age, use, and materials.
