May
07
2008
Antique Kilims have had their ups and downs in the rug market. Once upon a time they were considered unfit for export. More a utilitarian item of daily life than a folk craft practiced for commercial profit, kilims had always been intended for domestic use rather than sale in foreign lands. The few fragmentary pieces that arrived in the West were used as wrappings to bail pile rugs. But as Westerners interested in Oriental rugs began to travel more in Turkey and the Caucasus, kilims gradually became known to collectors in Europe and America, and eventually they came to be appreciated for the masterpieces of village weaving that they are. Though produced in a simpler flatwoven tapestry technique, antique kilims represent an impressive rage of designs from the very small to the monumental (nos. 699, 3402, and 489). For sheer graphic force and quality of color, nothing can beat a good antique Turkish or Anatolian kilim. The only antique pile rugs that achieved such effects are the most sought after types of Caucasian Kazaks or the best Turkish village rugs (41428). Continue Reading »
Popularity: 4% [?]
Apr
22
2008
Marilyn Wolf and Jason Nazmiyal
During the weekend of April 11 through 13, New York witnessed a major antique rug event. A symposium sponsored by the Hajji Baba Club was held on Saturday at the New York Historical Society, along with an exhibition, From Timbuktu to Tibet, which open Friday evening, comprised of outstanding pieces from New York private collections. In conjunction with these events Nazmiyal was pleased to host an exhibition on Sunday, Early Anatolian Kilims from the Collecton of Marilyn and Marshall Wolf. Early Anatolian kilims have come to be widely recognized as some of the greatest artistic achievements of the Oriental rug weaving tradition, and the pieces from the Wolf Collection certainly attest to the validity of such opinion. These kilims, some twenty-five in number, represent a variety of designs and regional types from Anatolia or Turkey produced between the seventeenth and the nineteenth centuries. Continue Reading »
Popularity: 16% [?]
Apr
05
2008
Turkish rugs occupy an unusual position in the rug world. During the later Middle Ages and the Renaissance, they were the decorative rug par excellence, dominating the market in Europe and even in Middle East itself. As early as the late thirteenth century the famous traveler Marco Polo commented on the high esteem in which Turkish carpets were held. Throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the great master painters of Europe relied upon Turkish rugs as background props that could immediately suggest the status and prestige of the various personages they depicted. Only in the course of the later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries did Persian rugs and carpets attain the standing they now occupy as the pre-eminent or standard oriental carpet for home decor. Nowadays with the exception of Oushak or Sivas carpets, Turkish rugs are primarily attractive to collectors who eagerly seek out scatter sized rugs produced in the villages across Asiatic Turkey. Among such Turkish village production, a few types hold a special prominence for their exceptional color and their sense of nomadic or tribal design – the Yuruks of Eastern Turkey, the Konya and Karapinar rugs of Central Turkey, and the Melas and Bergama rugs of the western Anatolian region. Within such production Bergama rugs have a special place because of the high quality of their weave and the purity of their design, which has remained faithful to the types documented in Renaissance painting right into the nineteenth century, if not later.
The example shown here (40792) reproduces the so-called Ghirlandaio type, so named because they were depicted by the great Italian master Domenico Ghirlandaio (1449-1494). Though very probably produced in the mid nineteenth century, this example comes extremely close to the few carpets of this type that can be dated to the fifteenth century, as well as to the examples depicted by Ghirlandaio himself. The medallions consist of various segments or facets adapted from a classic type of Islamic architectural decoration known as “mugarnas.” The small indentations along the edges are elaborated by tiny squares with angular hooks. The medallions on this rug are an elaborated type where the muqarnas elements are expanded outward and grouped around a central square enclosing an octagon. The stepped cornerpieces also have muqarnas fillers and more of the little hooked squares within each step. The border consisting of radial clusters of four serrated leaves is also an early type attested among the oldest extant Ottoman rugs and in Renaissance paintings. Continue Reading »
Popularity: 28% [?]
Mar
24
2008
Baluch enthusiasts also appreciate that the fragility of their weave is no cause for contempt, but that it reflects the nomadic background of the rugs, which were made for use over felt mats on soft earth in or near tents. There they were walked on with sheepskin boots or slippers, not with hard leather shoe soles over wood or stone floors as they came to be used in the West. Nor are enthusiasts likely to criticize the delicate, soft, lustrous wool so widely used in Baluch weaving, despite its susceptibility to wear. And as for the charge that Baluches are derivative of the weavings from neighboring tribes or regions like Turkomans, so what. Turkoman rugs themselves are the result of a long evolution out of early forms inspired by classical Turkish and Persian rug design. Nowadays, knowledgeable enthusiasts of nomadic rugs can appreciate that they are all by and large the result of tribal adaptations or transformations of urban rug design. In so far as Baluches are derived from Turkoman or Persian designs or motifs, they always exhibit a characteristic change that gives them a distinctive quality, instantly recognizable as a Baluch. There are, in addition, a number of patterns or motifs that are original Baluch creations or transformations – tree of life patterns, geometric allover repeat designs, and diamond latch hook medallion patterns, to name a few. The condemnation of Baluches as derivative is on the whole a non-issue. And as to seeing them as inferior because they are cheap, the days of cheap antique Baluches are long gone. Continue Reading »
Popularity: 37% [?]
Mar
17
2008
While the very idea of woven decorative floor covering is virtually synonymous with the Oriental carpet, rugs have also been produced in Europe and the Americas for centuries. The foremost productions of this kind in Europe were the Aubusson tapestry rugs and the pile carpets of the Savonnerie manufactury of the eighteenth century, which virtually eclipsed the European taste for Oriental rugs until the 1880’s. For most of the twentieth century, however, circumstances were once again reversed. Aubusson and Savonnerie carpets, and their English cousins, the Axminsters, lived in the shadow Oriental carpets, although they continued to maintain a certain market niche. Aubussons became the quintessential symbol of traditional European décor. For those who still enjoyed the great period styles of Louis XV or Louis XVI, or their neo-classical successors, First and Second Empire, and English Chippendale, nothing could pull a room together more effectively than an Aubusson or a Savonneriet. Consequently, Aubusson, Savonnerie, and Axminster carpets tend to be associated with old fashioned, conservative taste.
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Popularity: 44% [?]
Jan
07
2008
The art of embroidery, especially that using silk as a long history in Oriental textile production reaching well back into the Islamic past into Central Asia, and ultimately to China, the source of all silk production. The early Seljuk Turks, when they first arrived in Persia and Anatolia between the eleventh and the thirteenth centuries, must have brought the art of silk embroidery with them from their Central Asian homeland. By the time the Osmanli or Ottoman Turks became a major power in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, silk embroidery was well established in Turkey as a luxury court production, often made within the harem of the sultan in the Topkapi Palace itself. Read more about this Antique Ottoman Silk Embroidery Textile, 18th century
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Antique Ottoman Silk Embroidery Textile
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Popularity: 85% [?]
Nov
16
2007
The term “nomadic” is often encountered in the rug world to distinguish weavings that were produced by the nomadic peoples of Central and Western Asia as opposed to the woven productions of urban centers. This distinction operates on multiple levels. Initially it simply identifies weavings that were produced by wandering, tent-dwelling peoples with a nomadic lifestyle, economy, and social organization, as opposed to those living in settled town or urban circumstances. But this involves much more than social distinctions. Nomadic weavings were functionally different than their urban counterparts. Both utilized rugs as interior furnishings, but while urban rugs are overwhelmingly floor coverings and less frequently cushions, nomadic rugs served a much greater range of needs, functioning as woven doors, structural tent reinforcements, horse and camel trappings, and storage containers of variable size and purpose.
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Popularity: 99% [?]
