Carpets

Rugs were first collected at the MFA as examples of “fine ornament” intended to inspire and train American designers and manufacturers. Early donations from Denman Waldo Ross, a design professor at Harvard University, leaned heavily toward “classical” carpets from the courts of Safavid Iran and Mughal India, and joined an earlier acquisition of a 17th-century Mughal pictorial carpet, gifted by F. L. Ames in 1893. Subsequent collecting resulted in the addition of the Holbein Carpet, the Medallion Carpet, and the extraordinary 16th-century Safavid Hunting Carpet, a donation from collector John Goelet. The holdings were later enriched by gifts that reflected particularly New England tastes: Caucasian carpets and Turkmen, mainly Tekke, carpets. Largely ignored, however, were tribal carpets and flat weave (kilims). Later collecting efforts have sought to address these gaps; the Museum has recently acquired Persian (Luri) flatweave and Kazak carpets, as well as a 1960s Danish modern riyya rug and a 1980s carpet, designed by the Memphis Design Group, that extend the collection into the late 20th century.