. . . "Purchased on behalf of the Museum from Edgar and Alice Whitaker, executors for the Istanbul estate of William Henry Wrench (1836-96), British Consul to Ottoman Turkey. Caspar Purdon Clarke, then Director of the Art Museum at South Kensington, travelled to Istanbul to negotiate a bulk purchase from Wrench's well-known art collection. He singled out this carpet in his correspondence, noting that \"the Ispahan carpet [...] was well known to amateurs, and Mr Wrench had refused \u00A3300 for it, indeed all offers to purchase\". He noted that Wrench had purchased the carpet ten years previously for \u00A385. In the printed catalogue of the Wrench sale, the carpet was described as an \"Ispahan porti\u00E8re\" [door curtain]. Indeed the carpet may be seen hanging on an interior wall (presumably covering a doorway) of Wrench's home in Istanbul, in an archive photograph captioned \"Constantinople. The Wrench Collection at Pera. Room showing Persian art objects\" (V&A Archives). A second carpet (V&A 358-1897) may be seen lying on the floor in the same photograph."@en . "Purchased on behalf of the Museum from Edgar and Alice Whitaker, executors for the Istanbul estate of William Henry Wrench (1836-96), British Consul to Ottoman Turkey. Caspar Purdon Clarke, then Director of the Art Museum at South Kensington, travelled to Istanbul to negotiate a bulk purchase from Wrench's well-known art collection. He singled out this carpet in his correspondence, noting that \"the Ispahan carpet [...] was well known to amateurs, and Mr Wrench had refused \u00A3300 for it, indeed all offers to purchase\". He noted that Wrench had purchased the carpet ten years previously for \u00A385. In the printed catalogue of the Wrench sale, the carpet was described as an \"Ispahan porti\u00E8re\" [door curtain]. Indeed the carpet may be seen hanging on an interior wall (presumably covering a doorway) of Wrench's home in Istanbul, in an archive photograph captioned \"Constantinople. The Wrench Collection at Pera. Room showing Persian art objects\" (V&A Archives). A second carpet (V&A 358-1897) may be seen lying on the floor in the same photograph."@en .