HALITheInternationalMagazineof Antique Carpet and TextileArt

Editor Daniel Shaffer Deputy Editor Jill Tilden Senior Editor Nicholas Purdon Editorial Archivist & Librarian Rachel Evans 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, Murray Eiland Jr Herbert Exner, Anthony Hazledine Rina Indictor, Ralph Kaffel Alan Kennedy, Donald King DeWitt Malian. John Mills Vanessa Moraga, Thomas Murray Penny Oakley, Carlo Maria Suriano Wendel Swan, Parviz Tanavoli John Wertime

Art Director Liz Dixon Art Editor Sam Paton

Publisher Sebastian Ghandchi

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IIALI97

Issue 97

59 E D IT O R IA L

Ears are burning? Someone out there is discussing you. Plus the De Young’s ongoing good fortune; Turkish congress plans; the bureaucratic tendency.

61 LETTERS

The revival ol natural purple. Michael Bischof puts the record straight; partial reviewing; rugs in the Esfahan Treasury; gaining access to the V&A study collections; more Tsars for sale.

63 FRAGMENTS

Orientalist responses to Eastern culture mediated through brush and lens; German ruggies gather in Munich; the robe of a god passes to a lesser mortal; preserving Macclesiield’s Paradise Mill; feasting in Tbilisi. 67 FORUM

Ulrich Ahlheim asks why. flying in the face of the evidence, none of the likely candidates in the Philadelphia ICOC exhibitions and catalogue were designated as Kurdish.

71 POSTCARD

Tony Hazledine is transported back to the days of Byzantium as he visits the monastic community of Mount Athos and journeys to Thessaloniki.

72 M AM LUK BLAZON CARPETS

Carlo M a r ia Suriano The great court carpets of the Mamluks are among the most monumental and extraordinary works of textile art ever produced. Of the three known examples which carry the heraldic blazon of Sultan Qaitbay, the fragmented Bardini carpet has only recently re-entered the public domain. To mark the occasion, this article focuses on the blazon carpets as products of an Islamic culture both conservative and international in spirit, their geometricity fully representative of the Girikh or geometric mode in currency throughout much ol the Islamic world in the 15th century.

THE COVER The detail is from this north Indian scrolling vines and blossoms carpet fragment, Kashmir or Lahore, ca. 162025. Pash mina wool pile on si lk foundation, 1.25 x 5.70m (4'1" x 18'9"). Purchased by Calouste Gulbenkian from M. kahyaian, London, in 1926. The carpet is probably the earliest surviving example of the pashmina group, made late in the emperor Jahangir's reign. Two other fragments are known, one in a European private collection, the other in the Met, New York. Museu Calouste Culbenkian, Lisbon, inv.no. T 72.

82 THE K R EM L IN ICONOSTASIS

Natalya V ju eva & M a r in a Kuznetzova One of the strangest works ol Russian Orthodox art, the screen in the Crucifixion Chapel ol the Moscow Kremlin is atypical in both technique and iconography. The icons it carries are mixed media images combining paint and textiles, using a range ol imported luxury silks from both East and West.

86 BALUCH STYLE

Thomas Cole Students ol Baluch rugs have been hung up lor a while on tribal origins. The author proposes a simpler and more visual approach, identifying a number of broad regional aesthetics.

92 E XH IB IT IO N S

Pueblo, Navajo and Hispanic weavings will feature at ACOR 4 in Denver, as will Caucasian prayer rugs and the textile arts ol the Tibetan realm; Jacqueline Simcox

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