ISSUE 121 MARCH/APRIL 2002
CONTENTS
9 |EDITORIAL
It's ail a matter of confidence; DOBAG’s 20th; academic go-slow for ICOC.
13 |LETTERS
Casting light on Assyut shawls; New York correction; market realities; just how natural are those dyes?
15 |NEWS
Winner o f the Ancient & Modern competition; Gebhart Blazek takes over Konzett gallery in Graz; new institutional appointments: London auction house updates; the Sylvester sale.
19 |FRAGMENTS
Armenian rugs in San Francisco; Handel returns to Brooke Street; forget Lara Croft, let's play computer rugs; high time for trouser-bound men to slip into something a little more comfortable.
2 3(POSTCARD
Or several postcards perhaps from Valerie Lefebvre: textile archivist in Paris, traveller in Damascus, bride in Bosra.
35 |PREVIEW
ACOR in Indianapolis: Cultural and commercial events at the 6th American conference. Moroccan rugs and textiles plus Silk Road weavings and jewellery at the Indianapolis Museum o f Art; Colonel Boucher’s Baluches in Columbus, Indiana; more Baluch rugs from US collections as well as ‘rugs o f beauty' from Midwestern private collections and Iranian tribal bands from the Mushkat Collection, all at the Marriott Hotel. Also Peruvian regional weavings at the Textile Museum in Washington DC.
69 |CALENDAR
Aworldwide listing of auctions, exhibitions, fairs and conferences.
75 |ISLAMIC ART
How the Greek community of Alexandria discovered Islamic art; moves, changes, acquisitions; an early Spanish ivory under the hammer; Persian and Indian paintings; Ayyubid art at the IMA: upcoming auctions.
81 |BOOKS
Lucia Meoni’s study o f Medici tapestries in Florentine museums, reviewed by Ian Buchanan; Richard E. Wright on Azadi, Kerimov & Zollinger's AzerbaijaniCaucasian Rugs: The Ulmke Collection.
93 |F0RUM
Jenny Balfour-Paul's fieldwork amongst the Miao of southwest China revealed a hidden aspect of hemp cultivation. Both raw and woven fibres are vital to the enactment of funeral rites ensuring the safe passage of the soul after death.
94 A NOBLE ART
Burgundian Tapestries in aNewLight Elke Jezler-Hiibner The Bern Historisches Museum holds one o f the great collections o f early Franco-Flemish tapestries, once the property o f the Dukes of Burgundy. Their excellent state o f preservation is owed, paradoxically, to the Swiss city's Protestant aversion to displays of luxury. The results o f a long-running research project on the history and meaning of the tapestries have now been published, and the collection, which includes both religious and historical cycles, is freshly displayed in a special exhibition.
100 1 MENDERES VALLEY
CARPETS Brian Morehouse The area around the Menderes River Valley in southwest Anatolia is home to a village weaving tradition that is often mistakenly associated with distant urban centres such as Bergama to the northwest or Konya to the east. Careful study of the design influences evident in the region's rugs, most significant o f which is the so-called Ushak 'Transylvanian' style, can help to establish a more accurate picture o f their provenance.
108|ANCESTRAL IDEALS
Turkish Silk Flangings in Poland Tadeusz Majda An ancestral myth embraced by the Polish nobility led to the accumulation, during the 17th and 18th centuries, o f huge numbers of Ottoman silk wall hangings. Many are still preserved today in Poland's museum collections.
111 | THE HALI GALLERY
A house style advertisement section.
119 |REVIEW
Exhibitions; The 'Witches Pallium' from the Episcopal Museum in Vic, newly conserved and exhibited at the Abegg-Stiftung; carpets from Austrian and German private collections at the Grazer Stadtmuseum; in brief reports from the US on Appalachian textiles in Knoxville; quilts in Texas; the intimate story o f textiles in digital close-ups in Madison, Wisconsin; emblems of passage at the San Francisco Craft & Folk Art Museum: short reports from Europe: Moroccan rugs in ClermontFerrand; Uzbek kilims in Bremen; ethnographic textiles in Vienna; a British-Japanese design affair at the Whitworth in Manchester; Fairs: A first outing for the Milano Textile Art Fair.
133 |AUCTION PRICE GUIDE
Highlights from RB's highest-grossing sale ever, plus top-notch Turkish rugs at SNY and Ottoman textiles at CSK.
149 |DESIGN FILE
All the action at the Domotex and Atlanta fairs 2002; design award winners at Atlanta; Swedish design on tour; Stella Benjamin's weavings at Christopher Farr in London.
157 |NETWORK
A classified advertisement section.
165 jPARTING SHOTS
First time at Milano Textile Art; the contemporary scene in Hanover and Atlanta; a flurry o f fairs in San Francisco.
168 |LAST PAGE
Is the apparent imbalance in favour of minimalism in Western taste really a fait accompli? Aaron Nejad looks at the maximal and minimal tendencies in Eastern and Western culture.
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