The Anhalt Medallion Carpet

From the notebook of a night guard at the Metropolitan Museum, autumn 1946. Imagined.

Monday. They hung the new carpet from the balcony over the Great Hall today. Took eight men and most of the afternoon. It is nearly eight metres long and over four wide, and when it finally dropped open the whole crew stopped talking. A gift from the Kress Foundation. The label men call it the Anhalt carpet, after the German dukes who owned it for a couple of centuries. Persian, they say, from the first half of the fifteen hundreds.

Tuesday. On rounds I keep looking up at it. In the day it is the colour of honey; at night, under the work lights, more like old brass. That yellow ground is unusual, one of the curators told me, rare in carpets of this kind. Right in the middle sits a big round medallion in deep red, with a smaller one inside it in green and blue, and above and below it two long blue-green panels, like lozenge-shaped pools. The border is a wide band of wine red, full of vines.

Thursday. Brought my flashlight up to the balcony rail. If you get close enough, the yellow is not plain at all. It is crowded with thin scrolling stems, curling and doubling back, and among them, birds. Peacocks, I think, tails trailing. Flowers no bigger than a thumbnail. The curator says the same court workshop that drew this probably drew book covers and tile patterns too, which would explain why the middle looks like the front of a very expensive book.

Friday. Story going round that the carpet was left behind by the Ottoman army outside Vienna in 1683 and picked up by the dukes. Curator says it is a nice story and nobody can prove it. I like it anyway.

Saturday. Someone sat down at the knotting of this, row after row, wool on cotton and silk, every knot tied by a hand. Over four hundred years old and you could still walk across it, but here it is hanging in the air over a crowd of people in hats who mostly look straight past it to the stairs.

Sunday. Off duty. Came in anyway and stood under it for ten minutes. My wife thinks I have gone soft. She may be right.