Szilágyi András (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 22. (Budapest, 2003)

Iván SZÁNTÓ: Reflections on the Origins of the Persian Appliqué from the Esterházy Treasury

seems necessary to point out that the original function of the work is connected to the milieu we see in its depictions. In other words, the scene in some way expresses the purpose for which the artefact was created. The appliqué presents a royal engagement well known from paintings, literary and historical sources, and from the descriptions of European travellers, namely an open-air convivial gathering of the encamped court (///. /). This entertainment was customary up until the nineteenth century; the ml er and his populous entourage regularly set out and, in compliance with the nomadic origins of the later Persian dynasties, travelled the roads of the empire. At this time he put up either in some country residence or in magnificent tents: such tents from the Safavid time are known only from paintings and descriptions. However, examples from the Qäjär era (1785 - 1925), fabrics made using the appliqué technique, survive.

62 It is not impossible that somewhere there exist also hithertounpublished early Safavid tents, since Tahmäsb I, to take just one ruler, had such a huge stock that could not have disappeared without trace. Michèle Membre, the Venetian ambassador, estimated the number of royal tents put up during a royal encampment in 1539, at Maraud, at 5000; the entire court (including painters in a separate structure) was accommodated in tents.

63 The royal body of tent weavers (kaymedüzän) made not only tents (bärgäh and k

v

ärgäh, reception and dwelling tents), but also various accessories, e.g. enclosure screens (saräparda) and awnings (säyabän). Such an awning protects the shah in the depiction on the Budapest appliqué. From the point of view of shape, the work stands closest to this type. But it is not an awning. Three main differences are discernible between the appliqué and the säyabäns known from the pictorial sources. Each feature sideedges on all four sides, mnning along the full length of the trimming, rendered in a different colour scheme as the body of the weaving. So it is with the awning seen on the central scene of the appliqué, but from the appliqué itself this important detail is entirely absent. The original support and the lining stored separately at the Museum of Applied Arts are considerably shorter than the front part, in all directions (admittedly, their deterioration has played a part in this).

64 An accessory for every säyabän was a device for erecting it, generally wooden poles for both of the upper comers. One such appears next to the figure of the shah, but there is no trace of it on the actual artefact. A strap surviving on one of the sides of the support suggests a rather different, most probably suspended, positioning, if contemporaneous with the work itself. The third major difference is that on the many surviving depictions of awnings nowhere can there be found anything comparable with the pictorial wealth displayed by the appliqué. Even so, it is likely that - although not definitely as an awning - the Budapest work was present at those splendid garden entertainments the mood of which is perhaps most sensuously captured by the appliqué. Richard Ettinghausen regarded hunting carpets as being at the base of the royal throne: according to him, the iconography of the carpets precisely designated the place for the throne in the middle of the carpet (just as it is shown by the arrangement of the Budapest composition).

65 Sheila R. Canby took the court banquet scene in the middle border of the Boston carpet as an indication that if it "did not actually accompany the shah or a member of his family on encampments, it may have served as a reminder of the glories of the field when the court was in the palaces of Tabriz".

66 Without doubt, a similar role was assigned to our appliqué, too, although it is conceivable that while carpets with stylised decorative systems could reasonably have served at the base of the throne, it is difficult to imagine as a "throne tapestry" any work which duplicates, in a redundant way, the image of the ruler, being present there in physical reality. Our knowledge today is insufficient for the establishment of the precise function of the appliqué. Only the field is delineable in which there is space for research, and this is, indubitably, the tent-making tradition. It is known that trellis tent architecture - and within this säyabän symbolism - reached its highest degree of development in Moghal India