ISSUE 147 JULY/AUGUST 2006
CONTENTS & EDITORIAL
17 | LETTERS Praise for Cathy Cootner; 150 years of mauve; querying the age of a Turkmen rug.
19 | NEWS Events at the Islamic Art Museum in Berlin; the new Musée du Quai Branly in Paris; record set for textile at Sotheby’s New York.
20 | MARKET REPORT Tyrone Campbell reports on market trends for Navajo blankets.
22 | OUTLOOK Daniel Shaffer and Penny Oakley take in textiles and carpets in Prato and Vok suzanis in Lispida.
29 | PREVIEW The Jameel Gallery of Islamic Art at the V&A.
39 | CALENDAR Auctions, exhibitions, fairs and conferences.
43 | GALLERY House style advertisements.
49 | BOOKS Looms Past and Present, Tattooed Mountain Women and Spoon Boxes of Daghestan.
51 | A PARACAS MANTLE Ann Pollard Rowe A pre-Columbian masterpiece from The Textile Museum, Washington DC.
55 | A TALE OF SURVIVAL Textiles of Huamachuco, Peru Joseph Fabish and Lynn Meisch A group of textiles in northern Peru bear witness to an ancient Andean weaving tradition.
58 | CAROLINE M C COY-JONES Cathryn M. Cootner and John T. Wertime The legacy and influence of one of America’s leading rug and textile collectors, a major benefactor of the de Young Museum.
66 | THE TREASURE OF THE SANGRE DE CHRISTO Anthony Hazledine Photos by Lois Ellen Frank A visit to Santa Fe, where Stephen Lister talks about collecting native American Art.
85 | REVIEW Exhibitions: Anatolian kilims in Istanbul; Bijars and ACOR in Boston; Chinese minority textiles in Beirut. Fairs: Tribal Art in New York; The HALI Fair 2006 at London’s Olympia
99 | AUCTION PRICE GUIDE The pick of the London Spring sales.
107 | DESIGN FILE Craig Watson talks about recovering the tradition of Navajo weaving in his Colorado-based project.
110 | NETWORK Classified advertisements.
136 | PARTING SHOTS From Boston, Italy, New York and London.
It is difficult to maintain one’s relative optimism when confronted with the loss of two of the leading and most respected collectors of the last two decades, Caroline McCoy-Jones, and Heinrich Kirchheim. For anyone with a keen interest in rugs and early kilims, these two names are synonymous with the publications that carried their names as well as their collections, and which opened the eyes of the rug community to early kilims, Caucasian rugs, and early Turkish carpets. For me, relatively newly enrolled in the rug world, Orient Stars(1993) and Anatolian Kilims(1990) were the two works that most excited my interest and imagination. I immersed myself in their pages, determined to understand more and to feed my new found fascination with carpets and kilims. Ad hoc discussions with equally committed fellow neophytes saw each of us nominating the pieces we would take home if the opportunity arose. For those of us who knew these collectors above all through the carpets and textiles they assembled, their lasting legacy will be their taste, courage and passion. At a time when new and unknown material was reaching the market both collectors forged their respective paths through a willingness to go out on a limb, backing their understanding and judgement of quality. Indeed they both pushed the boundaries of what it was viable to collect and what should be considered beautiful. Similarly both were willing, through exhibitions and books, to share the pieces and knowledge that their position in the higher echelons of the market allowed them access. Their willingness and ability to communicate a deeply felt enthusiasm undoubtedly introduced many new people to the subject, set a benchmark for fellow collectors and allowed ‘rug studies’ and the market to mature and develop. This issue’s feature on Caroline McCoyJones, written by two rug and textile specialists who were close to her, shows, I believe, just how much can be achieved through longterm relationships between dealers and collectors, and collectors and museums. These collections are the most recent in a distinguished line that have similarly engaged eager minds with rugs - one need only think of H. McCoy-Jones, George Hewit Myers and Joseph McMullan. Looking forward we may hope that a number of important institutional events, among them the opening of the Jameel Gallery of Islamic Art at the V&A and ICOC in Istanbul in 2007, will inspire similar excitement and enthusiasm in new audience?
Cairene Ottoman table carpet, Egypt, mid-16th century. Wool pile and foundation, asymmetric knot, 2.30 x 2.52m (7'7" x 8'3"). According to one tradition this unusual cruciform carpet was the property in turn of several of the most notorious figures of the Italian Renaissance, being first owned by Paolo Orsini, before passing in turn to Cesare Borgia in 1502 and finally to Niccolo Machiavelli. The author of Il Principeis said to have taken it to San Gimignano, where it remains to this day. Sadly this version of its history is out of kilter with the general scholarly view that carpets of this type, which combine the structure of Mamluk weavings with floral ornamentation in typical Ottoman taste, could not have been woven earlier than 1517, the year of the Ottoman conquest of Egypt. Museu Civico, San Gimignano, Italy
THE COVER
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