HALIThe International Magazine o f Antique Carpet and Textile Art

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HALI 74

CONTENTS Issue 74, Volume 16, Number 2

65 EDITORIAL The Sanguszko carpet: New York’s loss is Japan’s gain.

67 LETTERS

Charles Grant Ellis on the Bistri^a Transylvania rugs; Richard de Unger regrets an opportunity missed in Vienna; the British Ambassador in Ankara reports on a new and deadly strain of ASS.

THE COVER “Coupled Column Prayer Rug with Eight Columns. Konya District. This 16th century prayer carpet is related to the large group of coupled column prayer rugs. However it is more primitive than the typical carpets of this type, has an entirely different weave, and an entirely different design feeling, closer to the abstract Seljuk tradition than to the floral Ottoman tradition which inspired most of the group. Its peculiarities lie in the very large spandrel wliich dominates the area above the prayer niche; the number of columns; the drawing in the panel above the mihrab; and the drawing of tendrils within the spandrel. All in all, the carpet has impact mainly because of its scale and boldness - a feeling of strength and massiveness...” 1 .23 x 1.84m (4 0" x 6 0"). From Christopher Alexander, A Foreshadowing o f 21st Century Art: The Color and Geometry o f Very Early Turkish Carpets, pp.240-242. Photograph courtesy the Center for Environmental Structure, Berkeley, California.

71 FRAGMENTS The international dyeing community unite in Brussels;

textiles in the Japanese tea-ceremony.

73 FORUM

How many tent poles fit into an ook-bash? Tony Hazledine considers weighty matters arising from the Jon Thompson

Turkoman catalogue; Ralph Kaffel takes a closer look at Turkoman ‘diamond' gtils.

76 IN MEMORIAM An appreciation of the great pioneering textile conservator Sigrid Miiller-Christensen, by Mechthild Flury-Lemberg of the Abegg Foundation.

80 WEAVING AS LITURGY The Alexander Collection: Part I

John Eskenazi

A two-part special feature on this recently published collection begins by asking why Alexander's early Anatolian rugs provoke such extreme and polarised responses. The author believes that the source of their often mysterious designs can be found in the age-old connection between cult and weaving.

86 A CARPET IS A PICTURE OF GOD

The Alexander Collection: Part I I

Ian Bennett

In both presentation and content A Foreshadowing o f 21st Century Art is one of most idiosyncratic carpet books ever published. That carpets are a picture of God is Alexander’s own summation: how valid are his ideas on the role of Sufism in the production of these weavings? What justification is there for his highly individual ideas on dating?

96 THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA?

Gerd Gropp

Eberhart Herrmann’s study of the relationship between oriental carpet design and Zoroastrianism is reviewed by an expert in the field of Iranian religious and linguistic studies.

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102 EXHIBITIONS In the USA: ethnographic rugs from Midwestern collections in Chicago; Sehna mgs at Cincinnati; Ottoman textiles in Boston; Caucasian flatweaves at The Textile Museum; Islamic decorative arts at Harvard; textiles of the world at St Louis. In London; the Ortiz Collection at the Royal Academy; Hindu art at the British Museum; Navajo blankets at the Museum of Mankind. Elsewhere in Europe: Coptic textiles in Brussels;

Flemish tapestries in Antwerp; Islamic textiles from the Bouvier Collection in Geneva; Mongol art at the Musee Guimet in Paris; embroidery in Stuttgart. And finally, Arts and Crafts Movement textiles in Adelaide, Australia.