It began, as many curious things do, with a photograph that I was sent, I don’t remember from whom. Faded slightly at the edges, the photograph showed an ornate carpet – a Qashqai triclinium, if my eye wasn’t mistaken – stretched solemnly before the high altar of a stone chapel. The caption read only – “St. Mary’s Abbey, Iona”.
Iona, battered by sea winds and sanctified by centuries of prayer, seemed an unlikely place for a Persian weaving of such scale and splendour. And yet, there it was.
I might have passed over the image entirely, had something about the pattern – bold yet worn – not tugged at me. Carpets, after all, don’t travel by themselves. Someone had brought it to Iona. And so, with that thread in hand, I began to pull.
Unravelling the past
The first name I uncovered was Margaret Roxburgh – a missionary, once young, once brave, once sailing eastward from Iona across the grey straits to Mull; her breath wrapped in mist and her fingers clutching a rosary. She would not return for many years. Her journey took her to China; cast far into the world on the current of her faith.
She returned home to Iona in 1922. And with her, came the carpet.
Not just any carpet. A Persian triclinium – woven for feasts, made in the mountains of what is now southern Iran, where the Qashqai tribes lived between migration and memory. A carpet intended for gatherings, not solitude. Yet, it had no obvious purpose in a distant Scottish chapel.
The rebirth of St.Mary’s Abbey
Two decades passed. The abbey on Iona – long derelict – was now to be restored. It was the Reverend George MacLeod, the Baron MacLeod of Fuinary, and founder of the Iona Community, who supported the restoration effort.
The reconstruction of the abbey gathered momentum. Stone by stone, the sacred ruin rose again. And with its restoration various artefacts emerged – small, large, curious, and among them: the Qashqai carpet.
The carpet had arrived without much ceremony, folded with care, and accompanied by a modest note: “From Margaret Roxburgh – God Bless.”
That was all.
From the abbey’s altar to an auction house
There was no mention of its origin, no account of its journey. No explanation as to how a tribal Persian weaving crossed continents to rest beneath Scottish feet.
But for those who know how to look, a carpet is never just a floor covering. It is a map. A memory. A cipher.
Years passed. The abbey, now whole again, stood as a testament to faith renewed – and to all the unseen hands that shaped its rebirth. The carpet lay in silence before the altar for decades. Feet passed over it, prayers rose above it, and dust, gently, settled in its threads.
And then, suddenly, it was gone.
An unspectacular Edinburgh auction
In 2001, the rug reappeared – not in a church inventory or a museum catalogue, but on the auction floor in Edinburgh. A catalogue entry, a photograph, a lot number. No fanfare. No ecclesiastical provenance. Just a large Qashqai triclinium carpet, quietly being offered for sale.
It was a cold November evening in Edinburgh. The wind pressed against the stained-glass windows of an old church, which was long ago converted into an auction house. Inside, the heating barely held, and a small crowd of weary bidders milled about, their breath faint in the air.
Perhaps those there had come expecting more; antiques, silver, a rare canvas or two. Instead, the catalogue offers little to stir the heart. A few attendees muttered about wasted time.
But, beneath a long oak table, legs visibly bowing under the weight of a mismatched mountain of Edwardian crockery, lay something hidden. Tucked almost out of sight, with its edges curled, a large carpet waited without fanfare or flourish.
Its colours were dulled by dust, its condition unremarkable. Most walked past without looking. But someone – perhaps a dealer with a trained eye, or a bidder simply avoiding the draught near the door – took a second glance. It was not just any carpet. And it most certainly didn’t not belong under porcelain.
It was a Qashqai triclinium carpet – massive and complex. Its structure was unmistakable to anyone who was expert in the field. And yet no one, not even the auctioneer, seemed quite sure how it ended up here.
The auction result – a disappointment. The carpet sold for little more than what one might pay for a soulless rug of a similar size at John Lewis.But that is how auctions work. It is not the value of the object, but how much that one person in the room wants it. The gavel falls – not always on history, but on appetite. The carpet was sold for very little.
Sold and vanished
Yet, something about the story stayed with me. A carpet with no reason to be there. A missionary’s fleeting note. A gift to a sacred island. A weaving meant for tribal feasts repurposed for Christian ritual. The puzzle did not resolve itself; it only deepened.
Who knows if the new owner realised what they had? Perhaps it was just another lot, just another rug. But for 60 years, it had knelt in devotion before the high altar of St. Mary’s, Iona. It had witnessed silence, incense, sung liturgies, and solitary prayers. It had absorbed something of the place. It was not just a carpet. It was part of the chapel.
How wonderful it would be, I thought, to bring it ‘home’
I made calls, dozens of them, some to those who had seen the rug, others to those who remembered the sale. I followed names, hints, fragments. But the thread, once promising, unravelled right at the source: the auction house.
The law, they told me, forbade them from disclosing the identity of the buyer. All I was told – in the hush of an off-record aside – was that it had gone to an English merchant, perhaps no longer in business. Emails went unanswered. The number I was given – disconnected.
We were getting somewhere, and then – nothing.
The trail went cold. As cold as the North Atlantic wind that sweeps Iona’s shores.
But I haven’t given up. Let us hope the carpet resurfaces – perhaps overseas – or perhaps not far away at all. Perhaps in a country house, folded in a storeroom. Perhaps still in Scotland, awaiting rediscovery.
And perhaps – just perhaps – I’ll one day bring it home to St. Mary’s, Iona. To that small chapel on the mist-draped island, where for over half a century it lay like a quiet blessing over the bones of saints.
More on history:
CLICK HERE TO DONATE TO OUR CROWDFUNDER
HELP US BECOME STRONGER SO THAT WE CAN CONTINUE TO DELIVER POWERFUL CITIZEN JOURNALISM!
