HALTTheInternational Magazine of Antique Carpet and Textile Art
Editor Daniel Shaffer Deputy Editor Jill Tilden Senior Editor Nicholas Purdon Editorial Archivist & Librarian Rachel Evans Assistant Editor (German liaison) Jenny Marsh Editorial Assistant Emily Roberts
Consultant Editors Michael Franses, Robert Pinner Contributing Editors Julia Bailey, Alberto Boralevi John Carswell, Steven Cohen Thomas Cole, Rosemary Crill Herbert Exner, Anthony Hazledine Rina Indictor. Ralph Kaffel Donald King, Alberto Levi DeWitt Mallary, John Mills Vanessa Moraga, Thomas Murray Aaron Nejad. Penny Oakley James W. Reid, Maria Schlatter Philippa Scott, Carlo Maria Suriano Parviz Tanavoli, John Wertime
Art Director Liz Dixon Art Editor Anderida Hatch
Publisher Sebastian Ghandchi
THE COVER Silk ikat wall hanging (detail), Bukhara, first half 19tli century. Warp-faced plainweave, five panels, 1 .37 x 1 .89m (4 6" x 6 2"). The detail shows an abstracted jewellery motif from a complex repeat which also incorporates floral and scorpion elements. Such ikat hangings (or pardah, literally meaning curtain or veil) are typically composed o f between four and six narrow panels. See Kate Fitz Gibbon and Andrew Hale, Ikat: Silks o f Central Asia, 1997, p.255, pi. 143. Guido Goldman Collection, Boston & New York.
Issue 93
55 EDITORIAL Further reflections on the ‘science’of radiocarbon dating carpets and textiles; trouble at the Topkapi Sarayi with curators on the move and scholarly access to the collections under threat; Taliban’s uncertain conquest of northern Afghanistan.
57 LETTERS
Probable, possible or just plain confusing - C-14 dating results are a lot less simple than they seem; colour-coded Assyut shawls for sacred and profane occasions; distinguishing a
Silesian damask from a Schleswig linsey-woolsey.
59 FRAGMENTS
Trompe l'oeil extraordinaire as Nureyev rests under a fittingly theatrical Caucasian rug; an absolutely fabulous beast at the Met; Indianapolis throws a welcome party lor the Boucher Baluches;
a Formula 1 prayer kilim; Evergreen grace and favour in Baltimore; Chairman Mao and carpets as propaganda.
63 FORUM
Egyptian noblewoman Resti is remembered four thousand years after her burial, as her painted linen shroud takes shape once more in the British Museum conservation laboratories.
68 POSTCARD
Shortly before the fall of the Uzbek warlord General Dostum,
old Afghan hand Tom Cole returned to Mazar-i Sharif in northern Afghanistan. He found life there on the streets and in the bazaar remarkably unchanged in spite of war, political upheaval and economic chaos.
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HALI 93
72 THE CHIHIL SUTUN ‘PARA-MAMLUK’ PRAYER RUG
John Mills
Despite being known to carpet scholars for decades, an unusual small prayer rug preserved in the Chihil Sutun Kiosk in Esfahan has only latterly been recognised as a so-far unique example in prayer format of the ‘para-Mamluk’group of early
East Mediterranean carpets.
76 LESSING’S CHAMELEON
Charles Grant Ellis
First spotted by Julius Lessing in the 1870s, a small oval ‘paraMamluk" fragment from the Kunstgewerbe Museum, Dresden,
excited considerable interest during the Hamburg ICOC. The late C.G.E. sent us this account of his research into the piece while on rug safari in Europe more than a century later.
78 DOING THE BALUCH BEND
Mark Hopkins
Baluch prayer rugs have an immediately recognisable rectangular niche which is formed, uniquely, by a redirection of the rug’s main border system. Weavers however play many subtle variations on the ‘Baluch bend’, some of which are charted here across a sample of two hundred rugs.
84 KIRGHIZ FELT CARPETS
Stephanie Bunn
To coincide with the British Museum's focus exhibition on the felts of Kirghizstan, this article looks at the cultural background of the felt-makers, the techniques of producing ‘bright’and mosaic felts, and the ideas that they embody within the lives of individuals and of the community.
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