. . "The design of this beautiful carpet follows a vertical symmetry, with right and left sides mirroring each other. The central field is dark red, and filled with two dynamic elements: pairs of wild animals and spiralling leafy stems of huge lotus flowers. The animals are depicted with a vibrant fluency, and include prowling tigers, crouching leopards, running wolves and more. Lions pin down bulls, while leopards pounce on mountain goats. More magical creatures are also to be found, with close inspection, hidden within the stylised plant forms. The surrounding border is on a white ground, with a series of single lotus flowers outlined in green, joined by a red half-palmette scroll. These bold motifs are filled with tiny details, including further flowers, Chinese-style clouds and animal heads.\nThis belongs to a well-known group of carpets and carpet fragments from Iran, today dispersed in public and private collections around the world, usually called Hunting Carpets. These share the same structure, and often the same design cartoon. They are closely related to an exceptional pair of carpets known as the \u201CEmperor Carpets\u201D (in New York Metropolitan Museum and Vienna Museum fur Angewandte Kunst), which are inscribed with Persian verses dedicated to \u201Cthe king of the world\u201D. \nCarpets like this confirm the design correlation with the arts of the book in Safavid Iran: these wild creatures all spring from the landscape scenes, border illumination and album-drawings of the sixteenth century, in which a minute and precise draughtsmanship was rated the height of skill. For virtuoso performance, Safavid painters such as Sultan Muhammad concealed miniature figures within the natural world, by painting tiny faces in rock formations and even tinier animal combats in the clouds. A similar delivery occurs in this carpet, where red-eyed lions and serpentine dragons crouch in the flower-heads."@en . .