To Patrick’s question about the serrated appendages on the bottom of the egg palmettes in the Italian rug, Daniel has raised the possibility that they might relate to Kurdish rugs with a “flame palmette” rather than to the palmettes of the dragon rugs. To me the similar points of reference between the flame palmettes and the Italian palmettes are rather weak.
Furthermore, there is substantial room for disagreement with Daniel’s observation: “Notice also that such serrated appendages never appear below the ‘egg palmettes’ of the early Caucasian blossom rugs.”
As with many other designs, it is extremely difficult to trace the precise lineage of any motif, including those of the egg palmettes themselves in the dragon and blossom rugs.
The earliest Caucasian dragon carpets, such as the magnificent one in the Keir collection below, have relatively realistic dragons (having found their way from China through Persia?) as well as blossom forms that are connected by bands of different colors. It is possible that any one of the several blossoms in this rug (or other comparable rugs of the period) could have been the model for what we now call egg palmettes.
While we can’t know exactly how these elements evolved, it seems clear that it must have been along several lines. The following detail of plate 42 in McMullan’s book shows how one egg palmette variant retained a serrated pendant and how some of the blossoms probably had evolved into what we call a sunburst. This rug also illustrates how the elements in the later (if you want to call 18th Century later) blossom carpets tended to become separated and not bound together by bands, as had been the case in the earliest dragon carpets of the 17th Century.
Plate 69 in Orient Stars is of another early Caucasian carpet having an egg palmette with a serrated pendant. Here, we may compare that palmette with the Italian palmette. (Note: the OS 69 palmette doesn’t exist separately in this form. I composed the whole by mirroring two halves, but the whole must have existed contemporaneously.)
These two comparisons don’t prove a descent of the serrated appendage of the Italian rug, but they do illustrate that such a relationship is entirely possible and, in my view at least, is much more likely than any relationship to the flame palmettes.
Nearly all of the egg palmettes have some form of little hooks coming off the bottom. The serrated pendant that surrounds them on the Italian rug is likely derived from something like the serrated appendages on OS 69 or McMullan 42, which, in turn, MAY exist as vestiges of the bands on the early dragon rugs.
Wendel
