SSUE 142 SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2005

CONTENTS &EDITORIAL

23 |LETTERS

Talking Tekke Turkmen; taste for taste's sake.

27 |NEWS

Marcuson & Hall move; Lumley's new venture.

29 | FRAGMENTS

Medieval textiles at Cluny; Domotex awards.

31 |MARKET REPORT

Chris Buckley reports from Beijing.

33 |PREVI EW

Exhibitions: Hoffmeister's Turkmens; De Young opening; Central Asian dress; Ottoman silks; Chinese carpets; Giant Leaf tapestries; W itney’s maps. Auctions: The autumn sales.

49 |CALENDAR

Auctions, exhibitions, fairs and conferences.

53 |GALLERY

House style advertisements.

59 |BOOKS

Le del dans un Tapis; Spindle and Bow; Textiles for this World and Beyond and more. Titles Received.

65 |WORKSHOP

Raging war on rugivores. Part One.

66 |FORUM

Shedding new light on ancient Peruvian patterns.

68 |T HE LEGACY OF THE

INDJOUDJIANS Berdj Achdjian & D ickran Kouymjian The story o f the Armenian art dealing brothers and the world-class textiles they handled.

74 |THE FORGOTTEN TRIBE

David and Sue Richardson Reassessing the history o f the Central Asian Karakalpak tribe and their weavings.

80 |VARIATIONS IN ROYAL BLUE

Bamileke Display Cloth from Ritual Respect to Ethnic Demonstration Pamela Feldman-Savelsberg The origin and use o f Bamileke indigoresist-dyed textiles from Cameroon.

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REVIEW Exhibitions: Kashmir shawls; Andean textiles. Conferences: Eurasian textiles in St Petersburg.

AUCTION PRICE GUIDE Highlights from London's spring sales and more.

DESIGN FILE Melbourne's Victorian Tapestry Workshop.

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126

NETWORK Classified advertisements.

PROFILE Aaron Nejad on Raymond Bernadout.

PARTING SHOTS The HALI Fair 2005: vendors and visitors.

128 |LAST PAGE

Bridging the academic gap in rug studies.

O n this issue’s 'Last Page’ Dennis Dodds discusses the academic world's lack o f involvement in the serious study o f rugs. His analysis o f the papers offered fo r the last four International Conferences on O riental Carpets (1COC), shows that around three-quarters came from the community o f independent researchers and enthusiasts in our field and a further sixth from contributors affiliated to museums. Only a tenth o f the papers were from those working in a university context.

This seems lamentably small, but a word o f caution is in order. However valuable the involvement o f the academic community may be in building research, in real terms overwhelmingly the most significant contributions to our fie ld have been made by museums and the ir dedicated curators. Carpet studies began in 1877 when Julius Lessing, D irector o f the Kunst gewerbe Museum in Berlin, published his Altorientalische Teppichmuster nach Bildern und Originalen des XV-XVI. This was fo llo w ed by the 1891 V ienna exhibition and Alois Riegl's 1892 catalogue. A century later, the Washington Textile Museum’s 'Turkmen' exhibition and catalogue in 1980, ‘The Eastern Carpet in the Western W o r ld ’ at the Hayward Gallery and 'Carpet Magic’ at the Barbican, in London in 1983. the Muse and Alexander exhibitions o f Turkish kilim s and carpets during the 1990 ICOC in San Francisco, and the ‘O rient Stars' exhibition at the 1993 Hamburg ICOC, as well as many more, have been responsible fo r exciting many w ith a passion fo r rugs and textiles. Indeed the w illin gness fo r institu tions to accompany exhibitions w ith thoroughly researched catalogues has led to the one area in which new research, sometimes w ith real analytical content, does consistently appear.

The tradition happily continues: in this issue we preview a number o f forthcom ing events offering fresh material and original research, among them an exhibition and symposium on early Chinese carpets at the Museum fo r East Asian Art in Cologne. Looking forward a little , the XI ICOC in Istanbul in 2007 promises a clutch o f projects in a sim ilar vein.

It is w o rth remembering that many insightful and well researched exhibitions seen at past ICOCs have been curated by those w ith neither university or museum affiliations. Researchers would be misguided indeed to neglect the w o rk o f these o r o f the many o th e r ‘amateurs' who contribute to our field. When, fo r instance, generations o f families have been involved in the carpet trade fo r years, they accrue invaluable experience. Even when there may not be many hard facts involved, the areas around the facts, their shadows i f you like, stand as a practical record o f the culture and traditions surrounding the trading, making and appreciation o f carpets and textiles. They may prove in tim e to be no less important than a work such as A. Cecil Edwards' The Persian Carpet.

Lotus and peony daybed cover, Ningxia, west China, mid-i7th century. Wool pile on a cotton foundation, 1.57x1.92m (5'2" x 6'4"). Reportedly from the Imperial Palace, Beijing and once owned by Yamanaka & Co., New York, the field of this daybed cover is composed of a series of well executed lotus and peony flowers arranged symmetrically on a fine meandering trailing leaf stem with large yellow leaves set against a deep blue ground. The inner border is a T pattern and the outer primary border a swastika fret design that reverses at the centre of both sides and ends. The borders are separated by a series of narrow bands and the outer brown frame has been restored in places. On later versions of these leaf and peony forms, the leaf stems are less prominent and fade into the background. Published: American Art Association, 1917, lot 307. Private collection, Ticino

THE COVER

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