HALTThe International Magazine o f Antique Carpet and Textile Art
Editor Daniel Shaffer Deputy Editor Jill Tilden Assistant Editors Ben Evans, Abigail McCullough Editorial Assistant Sania Rahman Consultant Editors Michael Franses, Robert Pinner Contributing Editors Julia Bailey, Alberto Boralevi John Carswell, Steven Cohen Thomas Cole, Rosemary Crill Susan Day, Donald Dinwiddie Murray Eiland Jr, Anthony Hazledine Rina Indictor, Ralph Kaffel Alan Kennedy, Alberto Levi DeWitt Mallary, John Mills Vanessa Moraga, Thomas Murray Penny Oakley, Carlo Maria Suriano Wendel Swan, Parviz Tanavoli Markus Voigt, John Wertime
Designer/Art Editor Samantha Paton Assistant Art Editor Damon Ritchie
Publisher Sebastian Ghandchi
Advertisement Manager Ralph Ennnerson Scuiior Advertisement Executive Rosario Canada Advertisement Executive Karol-Ann Roberts
Production & Administration Manager Angharad Britton
Circulation Marketing Manager Alison Ronald Circulation Marketing Executive Fiona Hall
HALI PUBLICATIONS LIMITED St Giles House, 50 Poland Street London W1VTAX, UK Telephone +44 (0)20 7970 4600 Editorial answerphone +44 (0)20 7578 7223 Editorial fax +44 (0)20 7578 7222 Advertising fax +44 (0)20 7578 7221 E-mail bali@centaur.co.uk Website www.hali.com COURIER& HANDDELIVERIES 61 Berners Street, LondonW1P 3AE, UK SUBSCRIPTIONS HALI Subscriptions Department Tower House, Sovereign Park Latlikill Street, Market IIarborough Leicestershire LEI6 9EF, UK Telephone +44 (0)1858 438 818 Fax +44 (0)1858 468 969 BOOK&BACKISSUEORDERS Please contact Veronica Purdey on: Telephone +44 (0)20 7970 4564 AMember of the Centaur Communications Limited Group
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59 EDITORIAL
Research award for young and old, rugs and textiles for the 21st century.
61 LETTERS
A community of shared ideas and enthusiasms letters from correspondents in the US, Europe and Asia on aspects of the recent ICOC.
63 A TALE OF THREE CITIES
9tli ICOC Overview Your views and recollections, as well as some of ours, of events as they unfolded in Italy, from the balmy days of late September in Milan and Florence to a radiant Venetian interlude in the first days of October. Plus user comment on the academic programme.
74 SOMETHING OF A MIRACLE
Elizabeth Gill The traditional ICOC show of mgs and textiles from private collections, ‘Sovrani Tapped’(Palazzo Reale, Milan) offered a wealth of material that fuelled debates on matters of diplomacy and finance as well as taxonomy and tapetology.
THECOVER The Medici Mamluk Carpet, Cairo, Egypt, mid 16th century. Wool pile on a wool foundation, 4.09 x 10.88m (13l5"x 35'8"). This threemedallion, three-colour Mamluk carpet with an exceptionally complex geometric design is the largest example of the genre known to have survived. It was discovered in the early 1980s by Alberto Boralevi, together with an almost equally large Cairene floral carpet, in a storeroom at the Palazzo Pitti, Florence. Both carpets had been stored, unused and in near perfect condition, for some 350 years, first in the stores of the Palazzo Vecchio (until the late 18th century), latterly in the Pitti. Due to their size, it is possible to connect both carpets to specific entries in the Medici and later Florentine inventories. The Mamluk is first recorded in 1567, described as: “Tappeto Cairino lungo b.19 et largo b.7 mandato a Firenze a quella Guardaroba a di 29 di D icembre 1567,,’ ( ‘6.’ is an abbreviation of ‘b racciofiorentino\ a unit of measurement of 58cm). The carpet was first revealed in the 1983 ICOC exhibition ’The Eastern Carpet in the Western World’ at the Hayward Gallery, London (King & Sylvester, cat.21, p.61) and has been discussed by Boralevi in HALI 5/3, 1983, pp.282-3, and again in Oriented Carpet & Textile Studies II: Ca rpets o f the Mediterranean Countries 1400-1600, 1986, pp.205-220. Argenti Museum, Pitti Palace, Florence, inv.no. 5279.
79 FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE
Tony Hazledine Continuing the tradition of ICOC exhibitions of Turkmen material from Russian museums, ‘La Sposa Turcomanna’ in Milan showed rugs and trappings with wedding associations from the little known holdings of the State Russian Museum in St Petersburg.
82 INFINITY MADE VISIBLE
Ernst Grube This remarkable exhibition at the Fortezza da Basso in Florence brought together known and unknown classical carpets and fragments representing the ‘unsold stock’of the city’s great 19th century antiquarian and benefactor Stefano Bardini. Star of the show was the monumental early Mamluk carpet bearing the blazon of Sultan Qaitbay, but there was much more besides.
90 THE ART OF SILK
An outstanding selection of brocades and velvets from the collection of the Bargello Museum in Florence, representing over eight centuries of silk weaving in Islamic and related cultures from Central Asia to Arabic Spain.
93 DUCAL TREASURES
A new museum installation in Venice for the Doge’s silk ‘Polonaise’carpets, tapestries and other textiles, now part of the Treasury of St Mark's Cathedral.
95 BOOKS
Valentina Roccella on Luca Emilio Brancati’s Tappeti dei Pittori; Jonathan Hope reviews the catalogue of the Neutrogena collection, The Extraordinary in the Ordinary, edited by Mary Hunt Kahlenberg; Harald Bohmer on Indigo by Jenny Balfour-Paul; Rosemary Crill on Uncut Cloth - Saris, Shawls and Sashes by Nasreen Askari, Liz Arthur and Valerie Reilly; Splendeurs du Maroc reviewed by Alfred Saulniers.
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