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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