Word: rugs
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Victor Behar, of Glasgow, went to a quiet hotel and had his luggage brought up. In one suitcase he had a docket of papers, the pedigree of the rug attested by the curators of the Austrian State Museum and witnessed by the British consul in Vienna. It was at least 150 years old when the Shah gave it to Peter. Leopold used it as a tapestry in the bedroom of his summer palace. Other Emperors took good care of it; at last it went to the State Museum. French officials said that it was worth twelve million francs and taxed...
When the Shah gave the rug to Peter most Emperors were huntsmen. Wearied after a day of statecraft, they would spend a week pelting after boars. Peter was an impressionable man. In his youth he made the Grand Tour and lived, for a while, in France, where he enjoyed all the pleasures of the Court. He brought back...
...determination to get the Orient out of Russia he moved his capital away from Moscow, built himself a Versailles, procured a Pompadour, and made hunting into a pageant, trotting out on horseback like a Bourbon, with ribbons, hounds, bugles, spears, and streamers. Because the rug showed a hunting scene he became very fond...
...slow Persian craftsmen, who made the rug out of silk threads, wove into it animals, riders, flowers. Horsemen move to and fro, pursuing lions, antelopes, ibexes, boars, hares, foxes, jackals and other beasts; many flowers, some western, some Persian, and some the flowers of no land, riot softly on the ground, or hang from delicate vines. The background is salmon-colored. Around the central field runs a quiet legend. In the middle all js speed: bugles blow there, stallions leap, and the beards of riding Khans shake out like flame along a wind of fruits and blossoms. But the border...
...border that charmed Leopold, that man of peace. He spent most of his life directing wars against Louis XIV, but he disliked soldiers, particularly his own, never visited a battlefield, and was embarrassed by maneuvers. The rug hung over his bed in an elaborate and jejune country place to which he retired for meditation and amour. It is said that two violin players, blindfolded with black silk handkerchiefs, fiddled at the head and foot of the bed while he was taking his pleasure. He died in 1705 and the rug passed through the estates of a series of princes. Connoisseurs...