Description
This rug was found in 1925, cut into two pieces, at the abandoned church of Marby – a village in the province of Jämtland, Sweden.
Belonging to the genre of animal-themed carpets, it depicts stylized birds standing symmetrically on either side of a tree set within octagons on an ivory background. This birds and tree motif has long been known and is very common in Central Asia and Azerbaijan.
According to another interpretation, this ornamentation is visually divided into three parts standing for three domains (from top to bottom): this world in the middle, the heavens on top and the underworld at the bottom. The two birds in the middle might represent a man and a woman as two elemental beings.
