Hyungbae Korean Rank Badges

Paul Georg Baron von Möllendorff.

This image made me remember an insight into Harold Keshishian as expert and connoisseur.  Two Chinese Rank Badges came up for sale at Sloane’s auction in Bethesda Maryland. The badges had a high estimate well under $2,000 and surged to over $8,000 with Harold winning the lot over a phone bidder.

Everybody wanted to know why Harold would pay so much for the two Chinese Rank badges which delighted Harold to no end. Because as he told me they were not Chinese Rank badges but rather the far more rare Korean Rank badges.

These badges were worn fore and aft as we see in this image of Paul Georg Baron von Möllendorff.  Baron von Möllendorff was born February 17, 1847 in Zehdenick, Prussia and died April 20th, 1901 in Ningbo, Zhejiang, China. Baron von Möllendorff  adopted the Sino-Korean name Mok In-dok while he was deputy foreign minister of the kingdom of Korea. He also served as the president of the China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society in 1896 and 1897.

Baron von Möllendorff was a very important person at the Joseon (Choseon) court. Besides the historical record we can tell by his badge. One crane was a junior official and two cranes signify a senior official. It is often assumed that the ornate and more luxurious badges are the more esteemed but not so. The badges started out simpler and became increasingly more ornate as time passed. So the simplest badges are also the oldest.

Hyungbae Korean Rank Badge

Hyungbae the rank badges are properly called were first used in Korea in the first year of the reign of King Dangjong in 1453. Rank Badges with one or two cranes among the clouds denoted a civilian governed official as opposed to a military rank badge. 

Military Hyungbae Korean Rank Badge

Hyungbae were first used in Korea in the first year of the reign of King Dangjong 1453. I see them as a copy of the Ming Badges but I think they were originally from the Yuan Mongol dynsaty

Karlsruhe Safavid niche rug, Central Persia or Mashhad?

I was inspired to comment after seeing Francesca Fiorentino's blog

The Niche, the Rug and the Throne

The rug below was labeled "The Karlsruhe 'Salting' niche rug, Qazvin (?), 16th, second half (?)". I do not mean to disagree with her and certainly not to pick on her, I just thought it would be interesting to consider either "Kazvin" or the broader category "Central Persian" that Sotheby's used when this rug passed through their esteemed halls.

Sotheby's"Karlsruhe" Safavid niche rug, Central Persia,

Estimate   1,000,000 — 1,500,000  GBP

 LOT SOLD. 1,161,250 GBP 

Could this rug be from Kazvin or Central Persia?
I have some serious doubts about that possibility. Let us look at Qazvin which is the more common spelling for Kazvin, It is an area that does not produce any significant quantity of rugs and there is no evidence that it ever did. Even Kazvin rugs don't come from Qazvin. The Kazvin rugs that show up in the market were a line of double wefted rugs produced for OCM in Hamadan. Cecil Edwards picked Kazvin because calling them Hamadan would have been too confusing so he picked Kazvin as a trade name since it was not identified with a particular type of rug.
Kazvin creeps in now and then in Classical Rugs and Miniature Painting because Shah Tahmasp set up court there when the Turks dove him out of Tabriz once too often. Just because he was there does not mean that the Royal Workshops were and I will explore that path in with central Persia.4

As you examine the images ask your self if this was village workmanship or even the product of a minor backwater town. Could this rug have been the creation of a great artist who sent a design a great distance. I know today with automobiles and trains and planes it seems close but in 1550 Tabris was over two weeks from Tabriz by caravan and Tabriz to Kashan was over 3 weeks.

Years ago Jon Thompson put forth an idea in his book Carpet Magic which still resonates with me. This is that the resolution of the corners tells us if it was a workshop rug. Examine this image of the corner then ask yourself is it reasonable to suggest that this rug was created without the artists supervision.

Let me suggest something that seems so obvious to me but it seems to escape the experts on Oriental Rugs,

Great Art Comes From Great Artists

Let me also suggest that this quality of rug is produced under the supervision of an Ustad or weaving master and they would have been at the royal workshops where the painter and calligraphers lived and worked.
So how many royal workshops were there in Persia circa 1550? Only three, Tabriz, Shiraz, and the most important in those years the workshop at the court of the Soltan Ibrahim Mirza in Khorasan (Mashhad, Khorasan Razavi, Iran).
But what about the royal workshop at Kashan under Shah Abbas. Over the years I have heard the old chestnut of the Kashan royal workshop in discussions of 16th century Persian Rugs. I find this problematic since these rugs are mid 16th and the Kashan workshop which was for textiles was about 60 years later in the Early 17th Century
.
Why then would rug experts assign 16th century rugs to a workshop that was not established until 17th century?
I do not suggest that these experts were wicked or stupid. I believe that when people do not know much about the past they try to define the past by current realities. In the late 19th century when European scholars began to get interested in rugs among the very best rugs woven in Persia were those of Kashan. So then without a better idea the scholars began to mark things as Kashan (?) or Central Persia (?) and it continues now with Kazvin (?).  I certainly am not blaming Francesca Fiorentino since I am sure if we dig she is citing someone else. It could well be Jon Thompson or Michael Frances. They do great work but both at times seem at least to me to be adventurous in their attributions.

So I firmly believe that these rugs could only come from three places; Mashhad, Shiraz, or Tabriz in the mid-16th century. This design comes from the artists who designed the miniature paintings and none of those artists worked in Central Persia,
Please note in the image immediately above the intertwining of the branches in a manner not normally seen in nature. This is not common in Tabriz or Shiraz but was very common in mashhad in The Evil Years. It is distinctive to one region and one short period of time.