CONTENTS ISSUE 156 SUMMER 2008

37 AN AFGHAN FELT MANTLE

60THE BENAKI MUSEUM IN DETAIL

FRONTLINES

LETTERS Expanding on the elements of a textile fragment in the Hermitage Museum, and a plea

for coverage in HALI of the ins-and-outs of LACMA’s ‘Bellini’ carpet acquisition 25 NEWS The Doris Duke Central Persian ‘proto-Polonaise’ silk rug which sold for $4.5 million at

Christie’s in New York; a farewell to the late Charles Lave; Turkmentreffen 2008

27

ENEWS A summary of the best on www.hali.com and the rest of the web

29

BENCHMARKS In which ‘experts’ identify key attributes of good rugs and textiles 37 PROFILE John Carswell interviews Edmund de Unger, the renowned Hungarian-born collector of

Islamic art in general and classical oriental rugs in particular, at his home in Surrey 44 MASTERPIECE A 9th century Abbasid lustreware tile fragment from Iraq, in the collection

of the Islamic Art Museum in Berlin, presented by former Deputy Director Jens Krööger

52

FEATURES

QIZILBASH FROM KHORASAN?

A Turkmen multiple-gööl main carpet from the George and Marie Hecksher Collection

54

PETER POULLADA

An exploration by the author into the origins of this carpet, which appears in the exhibition ‘For Tent

and Trade: Masterpieces of Turkmen Weaving’ at the de Young Museum in San Francisco, within the

complex of tribes in and around northern Khorasan in the 18th and 19th centuries

THE BENAKI MUSEUM OF ISLAMIC ART

The Collections of the Islamic Art Museum in Athens

ANGELOS DELIVORRIAS, ANNA BALLIAN, MINA MORAITOU, MARIA SARDI, JULIA THEOLOGOU,

60

ANASTASIA OZOLINE, YANNIS SARTZETAKIS & JOHN CARSWELL

A wide-ranging curatorial overview of the Museum’s collections of Islamic textiles, early

carpet fragments, woodwork, metalwork and ceramics, most of which were acquired in the early

years of the 20th century by Alexandrine Greek collector and connoisseur Anthony Benaki and are

now housed in a recently opened building in Kerameikos

RADIANCE FROM THE RAINFOREST

84

HEIDI KING

Examining a selection from among more than seventy Pre-Columbian featherworks, some published

here for the first time, currently on view in a special loan display curated by the author in the new AOA

galleries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York

FIRST AMONG EQUALS

90

ANTHONY HAZLEDINE

A first-hand exploration into the life and passions of the pioneering Turkish surgeon Dr AyanGüülgöönen,

who has amassed an impressive collection of Anatolian kilims and pileweaves

112SPECTACULAR PARACAS IN PARIS

CONTEXT

EXHIBITIONS The Hajji Baba Club’s public exhibition ‘Timbuktu to Tibet’, which marks the Club’s

75th anniversary, at the New-York Historical Society, and the celebratory brunch and kilim spectacular

held by Marilyn and Marshall Wolf at the Nazmiyal Gallery; Moroccan textiles at the Cavin-Morris

Gallery in New York; a diverse array of bags and containers from across the Islamic world at the

Minasian Rug Company in Evanston, Illinois; early Paracas mantles from Peruvian public collections

at the Muséée du Quai Branly in Paris 106 CALENDAR Auctions, exhibitions, fairs and conferences worldwide 124 AUCTION PRICE GUIDE Recent sales in London and Massachusetts 129 BOOKS Margaret Young Sanchez reviews Lena Bjerregaard’s Chachapoya Textiles: The Laguna

de Los Cóóndores Textiles in the Museo Leymebamba, Chachapoyas, Peru;Jenny Balfour-Paul

welcomes the English edition ofDominique Cardon’s Natural Dyes: Sources, Tradition, Technology

and Science; Jens Krööger interprets Werner Brüüggemann’s Der Orientteppich: Einblicke In Seine

Geschichte Und ÄÄsthetik

141

PARTING SHOTS London to Lower Saxony via San Francisco and New York

150

FIRST VIEW A splendid early 19th century Uzbek suzani embroidery from the Burrell Collection in

Glasgow, currently on display in ‘Colours of the Silk Road: Suzani Embroideries from Uzbekistan’ 152

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