49 IDENTIFYING KEY ATTRIBUTES OF ‘GOOD’ TEXTILES
62MADE OF STEEL: A TURKMEN MASTERPIECE
153BOOKS REVIEWED – SUSAN MELLER’S RUSSIAN TEXTILES
CONTENTS ISSUE 155 SPRING 2008
FRONTLINES
LETTERS The ‘uncrossed’ Nepali weaving debate continues. Leslie Orgel remembered 25 NEWS Auction surprises at Lawrence in Crewkerne and Sotheby’s New York, Chinese textiles from
the Linda Wrigglesworth Collection at Christie’s New York, the Kensington Oriental Rug and Textile
Symposium, latest moves; in conversation with ICOC Istanbul Chairman Mehmet ÇÇetinkaya 27 OBITUARIES Paying our last respects to Bryan Meredith Huffner and Leslie Orgel 31 ENEWS A summary of the best on www.hali.com and the rest of the web 33 POSTCARD Jonathan Hope revisits Cambodia and its unchanged architectural heritage 38 PROFILE Robert Kime: interior designer and textile collector 42 FROM THE ARCHIVE How the Esfahani weaving master Seyrafian started to make rugs 46 BENCHMARKS A new series in which ‘experts’ identify key attributes of good textiles 49 FORUM David Reuben dissects the dyrnakmotif on Yomut family Turkmen main carpets 59 MASTERPIECE A Turkmen steel ‘turban helmet’ from the Islamic Art Museum, Berlin 62
FEATURES
SIMPLY SILK
Woven bedcovers of Southwest China’s ethnic minorities
ERIC BOUDOT
A field-based survey of weft-patterned ceremonial silk covers made tribal groups in Guizhou and
neighbouring provinces
65
MUSEUM OF MASTERPIECES
Safavid carpets in the Museum of Islamic Art, Qatar
72
MICHAEL FRANSES
The first in a series of articles on the collections assembled for the new MIAQ in Doha over
the past decade, focusing on six classical Persian pile carpets and two silk tapestries
GLIMPSES OF A SHAMAN’S HOARD
90
ANTHONY HAZLEDINE
Exploring the life and legacy of one of the Turkey’s most mysterious and mystical antique rug
merchants, the late Mustafa Kınaci, whose collection is now held by the TESVAfoundation
THE ALEXANDER TAPESTRIES
94
ANNA RAPP BURI & MONICA STUCKY-SCHÜÜRER
Masterpieces made in the workshops of the great Tournai tapestry weavers include a
spectacular pair of 15th century hangings, The Story of Alexander the Great, from the collection of
the Princes Doria Pamphilj in Genoa, recently conserved by the DeWit Royal Manufactory
in Mechelen, Belgium
CONTEXT
EXHIBITIONS Anatolian nomadic kilims, bags, tents and rugs from the ‘De Pracht van Anatoliëë
Het onbekende Turkije’ exhibition at the Kunsthal in Rotterdam; Pip Rau’s 19th century Central Asian
ikats at the V&A in London; Turkmen rugs at the de Young Museum, San Francisco; Calgary’s Nickel
Arts Museum shows Central Asian textiles; the tradition of Navajo textiles at the Bruce Museum in
Greenwich, CT; Islamic art from the 15th to 18th centuries from the holdings at the Louvre and the
Muséée des Arts Decoratifs in Paris at Istanbul’s Sakıp Sabancı Museum 113 CALENDAR Auctions, exhibitions, fairs and conferences worldwide 130 AUCTION PRICE GUIDE Sales in New York, Wiesbaden, London and beyond 137 BOOKS Susan Meller’s Russian Textiles: Printed Cloth for the Bazaars of Central Asia,
Uzbek Embroidery in the Nomadic Tradition: The Jack A. and Aviva Robinson
Collection at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts,and Skullcaps of Uzbekistan, 19th
and 20th Centuriesby Irina Bogoslovskaya and Larisa Levteeva
DESIGN FILE Two important fairs in the modern rug calendar reviewed: Domotex in
153
Hanover and the AmericasMart in Atlanta
165
PARTING SHOTS Rotterdam to San Francisco via Istanbul and Dubai
166
FIRST VIEW A splendid Ushak medallion carpet from a recent exhibition of 16th to 20th century
carpets held at the monastery of San Francesco in Pordenone, Italy 168
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