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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: 20% [?]

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: 32% [?]