Contents 12

In this issue Issue 195 Spring 2018

144

Compass 17Editorial Ben Evans muses on rediscovered Safavid masterpieces and new information, and anticipates a HALI celebration in 2019

25Dialogue Musée de Cluny’s Lady and the Unicorn tapestries at AGNSW, Sydney; V&A buys Bacchus at BRAFA; Tapestry at TEFAF; Newly-excavated Nasca in Zurich; HALI Japan Tour; Mete Mutlu and Carnig Minasian join forces in Chicago; Rajasthani textiles in Houston

28Diary HALI’s pick of the best international fairs, exhibitions and auctions for spring 2018

31Calendar International listings for the next quarter

32Thread of time Rachel Meek Two resist-dyed trade cloths: an Indian hanging in India and a skirt cloth made for Indonesia and now in the Netherlands

34Travellers’ tales Rachel Meek The first HALI Tour to India contextualised its world-class textiles, visiting courtly and private collections of Rajasthan and Gujarat

36Interview Manuela Schlossinger The Austrian collector Theodor Poppmeier, whose superb Anatolian kilim collection is going under the hammer at Rippon Boswell, has always been fascinated by colour and form

41Comment Marco Spallanzani The historian conducts detailed and illuminating scholarly research in Italian archives and historic inventories, shedding light on two rugs at San Gimignano

42Anatomy of an object Ralph Kaffel A close look at what may be the only known example of a Caucasian prayer rug with the ‘Boteh Khila’ design

Features 48Beginning again Hadi Maktabi For forty years, external circumstances prevented the Carpet Museum of Iran from revealing its treasures to the world. A major exhibition has revitalised the institution

58Figurative language An exhibition at the David Collection in Copenhagen challenges the widely-held belief that it is forbidden to create works that show human figures in classical Islamic art

62Hamamlu Herbert Exner A dazzling series of fine Shahsavan sumakh khorjin that the author presented at the recent Fifth International Symposium on Azerbaijani Carpets in Baku

74Safavid number games in Sarajevo Fatima Žutić Long hidden from view, Sarajevo’s inscribed and dated ‘vase-technique’ multiple-medallion fragments turn out to be from three near identical carpets rather than just one