ISSUE 139 MARCH/APRIL 2005
CONTENTS & EDITORIAL
31 j LETTERS
Hatchlu rugs and ancient Turks; Pi and the Pazyryk.
33 |NEWS
Museum shake-ups; Hamot sale part two.
35 | FRAGMENTS
Remembering Hans Elmby; army sewing skills.
37 | POSTCARD
Jenny Balfour-Paul travels to eastern Bhutan.
41 | PREVI EW
Exhibitions: Indonesian textiles at the TM, Washington; Uzbek embroideries in Moscow.
45 |CALENDAR
Auctions, exhibitions, fairs and conferences.
49 |GALLERY
House style advertisements.
55 | BOOKS
Reviews of: Antique Ottoman Rugs in Transylvania, TraditionalTextiles of Cambodia and Dream Weavers. TextilesArt from theTibetan Plateau: Titles Received.
62 | EARTH AND MOON
Kilims from the Ourika Valley Gebhart Blazek In search of a previously unrecorded group of horizontally banded kilims in Morocco.
68 |THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE
What drives Giuseppe and Shirin de Giosa to collect rugs of the Tibetan Plateau?
70 |A KASHMIR PARADIGM
SHIFT Qajar and Zand Paintings as Evidence for Shawl Dating Frank Ames Three Persian paintings oblige a rethink of conventional dating of the boteh motif.
76 |AFTER THE RAINS...
Vichai Chinalai, with Lee J. Chinalai Recollections of a unique carpet buying experience in Bahrain that relied upon heavy rains.
101 | REVI EW
Fairs: Textiles, tribal and Asian Art in SF. Exhibitions: Tim Stanley on ‘Turks' at the RA; Siyah Qalam; Hebye in Offenbach; Hunting in MA.
115 |AUCTION PRICE GUIDE
Turkish rugs in NY and Wiesbaden, plus a final round-up of the London autumn sales.
125 | DESIGN FILE
Miri in Japan: Atlanta and Domotex fairs; high performance textiles in New York.
135 |NETWORK
Classified advertisements.
139 ] PARTING SHOTS
Traders at the modern carpet markets.
140 | LAST PAG E
Questions and thoughts on Turkic art at the RA.
The Textile Museum in Washington DC, an institution that is so central to the interests of HALT'S readership, stands at a crossroads in its development. Founded in 1925 by the carpet and textile collecting pharmaceutical magnate George Hewitt Myers (1875-1957), the TM celebrated its 80th anniversary with the appointment of a new Director. Daniel Walker, the respected former Curator of Islamic Art at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, who takes up his new post on 1May 2005. The board of trustees, headed by the Houston collector Bruce Baganz, as well as the museum's staff and loyal public, have high hopes that the TMwill be able to follow a new and productive path for the 21st century, one which will see it reclaim its rightful position at the forefront of a resurgence of enthusiasm for the textile arts in general, and oriental carpets in particular. Above all, it is necessary that the TM again becomes a place where proper academic research based on its superb collections is being undertaken, where significant exhibitions are regularly mounted, and serious specialist catalogues and other books are written and published.
We should not underestimate the scale of the challenge the new director and his team have to confront. It is widely felt that the TMhad lost its way for much of the past two decades under the direction of Ursula McCracken, who was first and foremost a capable administrator and fund-raiser, but lacked a background or even a declared interest in carpets and textiles. As a consequence, productive activity and public confidence were blighted by uninspired and uninspiring curatorship. particularly with respect to its 'Eastern Hemisphere’ holdings, which include Mr Myers’ incomparable collections of classical carpets. The museum was en route to being thought of as an irrelevant historical curiosity, lacking 'outreach' beyond the limits of its ageing membership, with little or nothing to offer a new generation of textile art aficonados.
And quite apart from abstract questions of confidence, the museum urgently has to face up to the problem of its location. Evocative as they are of a bygone era, MrMyers' knocked-together mansions on ‘S’Street are no longer suitable in size, configuration or potential for a 21st century museum. Anew site, ideally within walking distance ofthe National Mall and the Smithsonian Institution's museums, with ample space for permanent displays of carpets and textiles from both Eastern and Western Hemispheres in addition to a dynamic exhibition and education programme, must be high on the list of priorities.
THE COVER
‘Seljuk’ carpet, Konya, central Anatolia, 13th century. Wool pile on a wool foundation, 2.69 x 6.03m (8T0" x 19‘9"). There is little of substance in the oriental rug literature about this ‘unique’ large carpet and its companions (two further substantially complete large carpets and five smaller fragments), which were discovered in 1905 by the Danish antiquarian F.R. Martin. They have traditionally been assigned to 13th century Konya on account ofthe building in which they were found, the mausoleum of the Seljuk Sultan Alaeddin Kaykubad (r.1220-27), although there is no evidence that they came to the Alaeddin mosque complex as pious donations (vakf) at that time, and could be early Ottoman rather than Seljuk. NoC-14analysis has ever been done. The presence of this and another of the grand ‘Seljuk’ carpets, as well as the famous ‘bird’ rug from Konya’s Mevlana Museum at the Royal Academy, marks the first time any of them have been seen outside Turkey. Unfortunately the Turks exhibition catalogue repeats the confused and confusing structural analysis by the Berlin textile conservator Nils Reiters, first published in Nazan ORer et al., Turkish Carpets from the I3th-i8th Centuries (Istanbul 1996, p.225). Turk ve Islam Eserleri Muzesi, Istanbul, no.689
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