Austrian Hunting Carpet

Austrian Hunting Carpet, Persian floor covering of silk with the addition of threads wrapped in gilded silver. Thought by some to be the finest of all surviving Ṣafavid carpets, it shows mounted hunters and their prey surrounding a relatively small central medallion, and the unique border includes a series of winged male figures. It is extremely finely woven, at 790 asymmetical knots per square inch, and it was almost certainly made for the court of Shah Ṭahmāsp I during the second quarter of the 16th century. It has been suggested that the carpet was woven in Kāshān because of that city’s association with silk production, but it was probably designed by artists attached to the Persian court and it could also have been woven in Tabrīz or Kazvin.

The carpet was formerly part of the Habsburg imperial collection and is now displayed in the Austrian Museum for Applied Art in Vienna.