HALIThe International Magazine of Antique Carpet and Textile Art

Editor Daniel Shaffer Deputy Editor Jill Tilden Assistant Editors Nicholas Purdon, SheilaScott Editorial Archivist & Librarian Rachel Evans

Consultant Editors Michael Franses, Robert Pinner Contributing Editors Julia M. Bailey, Alberto Boralevi StevenCohen, ThomasCole RosemaryCrill, Herbert Exner AnthonyHazledine, RinaM. Indictor RalphKaffel, DonaldKing AlbertoLevi, DeWitt Mallary John Mills, VanessaMoraga ThomasMurray,AaronNejad PennyOakley,JamesW. Reid MariaSchlatter, PhilippaScott CarloMariaSuriano, ParvizTanavoli JohnT. Wertime

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HALI 88

Issue 88

6 3 E D I T O R I A L

The Salting debate will be fully aired during the 8th ICOC in Philadelphia, along with rug topics that include the fresh and the decidedly weary.

THE COVER Ottoman kemha (detail). Turkey, ca. 1565-70. Silk and metal thread weft-patterned brocaded lampas, 68.5 x 300cm (2'3" x 9 '10"), design repeat 68.5cm (2'3"). Offset rows of medallions on a blue ground contain the four flowers (tubp, carnation, rose, hyacinth) that characterise the style developed by court painter Kara Memi. The mature assurance of the drawing is very close to a floral miniature, also by Kara Memi, in a manuscript in the University Library Istanbul, dated March 1566. Structure: Ground, warpfaced satin of 5 , white, beige and blue silk warps and wefts, the wefts floating to create the figured weave together with brocading wefts of gilded silver, S twisted on a beige silk core; all wefts bound Z diagonal with white silk warps. The brocaded weft is always accompanied by the beige silk weft. On the reverse the wefts which are not raised to the surface are bound in 3/1 S twill by the binding warps. Selvedge: warpfaced satin of 5 : red and blue silk warp and ground wefts. Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence, inv.no. Carrand 2521.

6 5 L E T T E R S

Remarks at ACOR have unleashed a passionate debate on collectors and dealers; orvus and the feel-good factor.

6 7 F R A G M E N T S

Two reported sightings of bird ushaks; watch out for an archaeological prize; future rug treats at the Met; of codpieces and scarlet women.

7 1 F O R U M

A few doughty souls reasoned that they’d hear it from the horse’s mouth as they made their way to Turkmenistan’s capital

Ashgabat in May 1996. But the promised conference on Turkmen carpet weaving turned out to be a nostalgic paradigm of Soviet malfunction.

7 4 T E N T H O U S A N D A T A G L A N C E

Steven J . Cohen

Reflections on the dating of the ad hoc group of Mughal m illefleurs ‘prayer’ mgs, which are possibly neither for prayer nor even mgs. The author suggests a line of development by comparison with Kashmir shawl design.

7 8 L A N G U A G E O F K I N G S H I P T e x t i l e s i n t h e B a r g e l l o M u s e u m F l o r e n c e

Carlo Maria Suriano

The substantial and little known textile collection of the Bargello Museum includes Byzantine, Ottoman and European examples. The author looks at the way in which a group of medieval textiles draw on an international system of regal symbols, and goes on to trace the stylistic development in the formal iconography of a group of Ottoman lampas panels.

8 8 T H E A R D A B I L P U Z Z L E

U N R A V E L L E D

Donald King

S in ce the publication twelve years ago of a controversial article reassigning the ‘A rdabil’ carpets to the shrine of Mashad, doubts have continued to cloud all discussion of the two famous carpets. This article reassesses the available evidence, concluding that the presence of the carpets at Ardabil is beyond reasonable doubt, and that they were, indeed, precisely commissioned for one of the main buildings of the shrine.

9 3 E X H I B I T I O N S

A portrait of the passionate collector: Ignazio Vok completes another chapter in his continuing pursuit of aesthetic delight, unveiling his collection of Caucasian and Persian flatweaves in northern Italy; a unique opportunity to see some of the long-

hidden treasures of the Tiirk ve Islam Eseleri Museum in Istanbul will be offered this autumn as the museum presents a major exhibition of rugs from their own and other important collections; a rare exhibition of Japanese kesa organised by the

Art Gallery of Greater V ictoria; Russian archaeologists were not initially impressed with the rags and shards they excavated at a burial ground in the northwestern Caucasus, but these objects later turned out to include an extraordinary cache of luxury textile fragments gleaned from travellers in the 8th and

9th century, and now on exhibition in Munich.

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