Azeri Shadda

Azeri Shadda
214 x 164 cm (7' x 5' 5")
Azerbaijan, second half 19th century
Condition: very good, minor small repairs
Warp: wool, weft: wool

There is a often some confusion over the correct nomenclature for certain types of Azeri flatwoven covers. Those with dense designs composed of highly stylized S-dragon forms in extra-weft wrapping are almost invariably called sileh but should be labelled verneh.
Pieces that combine a balanced plain-weave ground fabric with more or less sparse supplementary decoration executed in weft-float brocading, often showing camel trains or other pastoral livestock such as sheep or goats in appear in the narrow border of this graphically striking cover or decorative hanging, tend to be called verneh, but are more correctly known as shadda or zili (see Richard E. Wright & John T. Wertime, Caucasian Carpets & Covers, 1995, pp.101-107).
The present shadda, woven in wool using just three colours - red, blue, and natural ivory - is almost certainly from the Karabagh district or an adjacent area in western Transcaucasia. It belongs to a distinctive subgroup, squarish in format, woven with warps arranged in broad bands of solid colour, and discontinuous wefts, to create a long narrow central panel - typically blue or green but here in ivory surrounded by blue - floating on a red ground with reciprocal interlocking margins between adjacent colour areas. Where warps and wefts of different colour interlace, a salt and pepper effect occur.
Taken with its almost pristine condition, its bold simplicity has a 'modern' aesthetic character that could, wrongly, suggest that it is younger than catalogued.

Estimate: € 8000 - 12000