Inventing the Ardabil Carpet: A Case Study in the Appropriation and Transformation of a Persian Artifact

Abstract

The Ardabil carpet in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London is one of the most-studied in the world. This paper takes a non-traditional perspective: that the carpet has been the site of transcultural reframings that reveal ambiguities and conflicts in attitudes to Islamic material culture. It examines the carpet as part of the discourse on Persia constructed by non-Persians. It looks in particular at the storytelling that developed around the carpet, and what those stories tell us about the cultures that created them. From the account of the physical recreation of two carpets into one, the narrative of ‘The Holy Carpet’, its positioning as ‘the world's finest carpet’, and its changing display in the museum, to its afterlives as a replica, a gold-standard for the carpet-market, and an icon of Persia, the paper examines the motives for, and response to, these conflicting framings.

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