A 'C-gul' main carpet, Yomut confederation, West Turkestan, mid-19th century

A Group IV C-Gul carpet, the alternately coloured diagonal rows of guls with rare toothed edges, and animated by asymmetrical use of white centres, with ‘rams’ horn’ elems. Hans Sienknecht, in his article "A Turkic Heritage," Hali 47, October 1989, pp. 30-39, studied the development of Yomud C-gul carpets and organised them into four groups: I through IV.  Under Sienknecht’s classification, Group I uses multiple forms of palmettes and guls in various stages of transition: the James Ballard carpet in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, \New York, inv. no. 22.100.44 is arguably the best and most well known of this subset. Group II employs a mix of kepse and C-guls, whilst Group III uses only C-guls but arranged in a kind of quincunx pattern based on their colour, whilst Group IV lays the guls out in diagonal rows by colour, as in the present example.  

Jon Thompson and Louise Mackie In Turkman: Tribal Carpets and Traditions, Washington D.C., 1980 illustrate (p.150) a possible evolution of the C-gul from a feathered palmette. The guls in the present lot have (unique?) saw-tooth decoration edging each of the guls - in white where the outer ring of the gul is red, and in alternating pale pink and blue around the blue-rimmed guls. Each of the ‘spanner-like’ projections from the guls change to white at their tips, also an unusual feature, which adds further dynamism to the design of this example.

Naim Attallah CBE (1931 – 1921), was born in the British Mandate of Palestine, and came to London in 1949, initially to study engineering, but in his long career moved from currency dealer to company director, racehorse-owner, film and theatre impresario (producing ‘The Slipper and the Rose in 1976), parfumier and chocolate-maker, and (for which he is perhaps best remembered) publisher and magazine proprietor, and as described in the Guardian in 2000 a "legendary adorer of beautiful women". In the early 1970’s he met John Asprey, and became joint managing director and ultimately chief executive of the eponymous luxury goods group, vastly expanding its turnover. He also acquired Quartet Books (1976), The Women’s Press (1977) and several magazines, including the Wire, the Oldie and the Literary Review; he was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2017 New Year Honours List for services to literature and the arts. 

Amongst Attallah’s many collecting passions, rugs was one of the most dear to him, covering the walls, beds and floors of his Mayfair apartment. His son recollects visits with his father to see Jean Lefevre, in Knightsbridge  during the early 1970’s, remembering them as very good friends, and the source for most of the pieces his father bought. Attallah was known for wearing vivid coloured odd socks and iridescent silk linings to his jackets; his son recalls it was the love of colour in the carpets that his father had most enjoyed about living with them, over the intervening four decades since his collection was formed.