Hi Filiberto,
Cit. "What doesn’t convince me is the fact that IF those 17th century “imitation” or “pot-pourri” rugs really were really woven in the Netherlands or elsewhere in Europe, why they weren’t identified as such since the beginning? There should be some contemporary written references about their production somewhere, don’t you think?"
Yes, there are documents about European rug production, but, (at least at the date of publication of Ydema's book) there was no description of such rugs made-in-Europe, nor any extant piece which could be analyzed. If I remember well, Ydema mentions also somewhere that not many many extant antique rugs of any kind were found in the Netherlands and faults the climate for it. As far as Scheunemann rugs are more specifically concerned, their relatively low knot- count would not help either, i suppose.
If we accept the pot-pourri theory, a production in villages in an area of Asia (preferably Persia or India) visited by Dutch ships could be, indeed an option, especially if we suppose that the rugs were made on order, specifically for sale to Europeans and based on composite design proposed by European buyers. I still have difficulties with the idea of composite rugs made on purely local Asian initiative. Sure, it did happen, including in the Caucasus (Seychur?), but that was a couple of centuries later.
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