Event: Turkish Legacy in Anatolian Kilims

Event date: 5 September 2018 at 18:30

 

 

This lecture by Sumru Belger Krody, senior curator at the Textile Museum, Washington DC shows how nomadic Anatolian women, descended from Turkmen nomads, wove colourful, visually stunning kilims that reveal their culture’s aesthetic preferences for decorating their surroundings. Today, these kilims are the only surviving tangible evidence of their makers’ nomadic lifestyle – a poignant legacy given that women generally did not have an external voice in this patriarchal society. The exhibition A Nomad’s Art: Kilims of Anatolia will be open before the talk.

This lecture is free, but reservations are required. For more details of this event held at the Textile Museum, Washington DC, click here

 

Event: Reframing the Carpet – The Afterlife of the Ardabil Carpets in the West

Event date: Monday 13 November 2017, 6–7:45pm

Talk by Dorothy Armstrong, PhD candidate Royal College of Art and the Victoria and Albert Museum, UK.

We welcome back Dorothy, who last shared about her research on synthetic dyes in Persian carpets in an Asian Textiles article (number 56) and at an OATG talk in 2013. This time we will hear about her current research and how the West reinvented the Ardabil carpet as the world’s greatest carpet.

Dorothy is a visiting lecturer on the Victoria and Albert Museum/Royal College of Art’s History of Design MA, where she teaches Material Histories of Asia. She is also writing a PhD entitled ‘The Relationship between the West and “Oriental” carpets since 1840: Re-making, Re-purposing and Re-imagining’. Before she joined the Victoria and Albert Museum/Royal College of Art, she studied Islamic art at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), London.

Location: The Pauling Centre, 58a Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 6QS.

OATG events are free for members and £3 for non-members.

Should you require disabled access, please do get in touch beforehand to make sure the necessary provisions are made.

For more information, and to book a place at this event, visit the Eventbrite page.

Exhibition: A Tale of Two Persian Carpets (One by One) – The Ardabil and Coronation Carpets

Exhibition dates: 17 September 2017 – 8 July 2018

Dating to the first half of the sixteenth century, LACMA’s two spectacular Persian carpets, both the gift of J. Paul Getty, have only rarely been exhibited due in part to their size and sensitivity to light. Now, these large and sumptuous carpets will be shown sequentially, affording visitors the opportunity to see two of the world’s most renowned Persian carpets and to learn of their fascinating history before and after they left Iran. The Ardabil carpet will be on view from 17 September 2017 – 19 February 2018, and the Coronation carpet will be exhibited from 24 February – 8 July 2018.

The large number of carpets surviving from sixteenth-century Iran compared to earlier periods reflects not only a high level of carpet production but also perhaps a change in the nature of their manufacture. During this period, carpet weaving evolved from a rural, nomadic craft to a national industry and an internationally acclaimed art form, as the first shahs of the Safavid dynasty (1501–1732) established royal factories in cities such as Tabriz, Kashan, Kirman and Isfahan. The two great Persian carpets presented here belong to this period of cultural, political and religious flowering.

For more information, visit the website of LACMA, Los Angeles, USA.

Event: Reframing the Carpet – The Afterlife of the Ardabil Carpets in the West – Talk by Dorothy Armstrong

Please note that the event scheduled for the 30th of August, a talk by Dorothy Armstrong entitled ‘Reframing the Carpet: The Afterlife of the Ardabil Carpets in the West’, has had to be rescheduled to Monday 13th November 2017.

For more information on the OATG events programme, please visit our website.

Event: London Antique Rug and Textile Art fair (LARTA) 2017

Event dates 24–29 January 2017

The London Antique Rug & Textile Art fair (LARTA) was launched in 2011 and is the only specialist fair dedicated to the appreciation of antique rug and textile art. Our event brings together quality decorative pieces and interesting collectors’ items presented by some of the UK and Europe’s most dynamic and knowledgeable dealers.

Our aim is to promote this vibrant art form to a wide audience. The scope of our interest is broad, and includes weavings from the Far East, Central Asia, Persia, India, Turkey, the Caucasus as well as from Europe and Africa, and from all periods up to the early twentieth century in Europe. Clients include collectors, interior decorators and designers, private buyers and international dealers.

The quality of the exhibitors at LARTA guarantees an event of high artistic significance and cultural merit. Many of our dealers exhibit regularly at important international antiques fairs and specialist symposiums. Several have written expert articles and books, travelled extensively to learn about the material culture and traditions of the weaving regions, and celebrated this extensive subject through exhibitions in their galleries.

When you visit LARTA, you will be able to choose from thousands of pieces at all price levels in a range of materials, techniques, colours and styles. There will be eye-catching showstoppers as well as affordable furnishing pieces and collectible rarities. In 2017, LARTA has broadened its offering to include exceptional twentieth-century carpets by modernist and art deco designers, and a very select choice of contemporary designer rugs. In addition, there will be a select presentation of Islamic art and objects. Your visit to LARTA will be a seductive feast of colour, form and texture, a truly memorable experience!

For more information, visit the LARTA website.

Exhibition: Woven Paradise – A Journey through the Anatolian Textile Craft of the 18th and 19th Centuries

Exhibition dates: 23 October – 3 December 2016

Collector Martin Posth, author of Collected Beauty, a highly respected book on Anatolian rugs and kilims published in 2014, is presenting a selection from his extensive collection in an exhibition at Berlin’s Studio Bumiller. Forty-three Anatolian rugs and thirteen kilims from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries will be shown at the exhibition entitled, Woven Paradise: A Journey through the Anatolian Textile Craft of the 18th and 19th Centuries.

The exhibition highlights the centuries-old history of carpet knotting and the influence that diverse cultures have had on the Turkish-Anatolian region. At the same time, it offers an overview of the different types of Anatolian rugs and kilims, introducing the viewer to their world of colour, ornamentation, variety of design and symbolism. The exhibition displays prayer rugs and nomadic rugs, funeral rugs, rugs from Anatolia’s Christian communities, and full-pile carpets that served as beds.

The bridging of Islam and the followers of other faiths (Christians and Jews, Armenians and Kurds) is a hallmark of the Ottoman Empire, and with this in mind, the exhibition aims to promote, and contribute to, a constructive exchange between cultures. ‘The exhibition can help facilitate a better understanding of our fellow citizens of Islamic heritage, thereby allowing us to encounter them more respectfully’, says Martin Posth.

The exhibition is accompanied by a comprehensive and high quality catalogue, presented both in German and English: Woven Paradise – A Journey through the Anatolian Textile Craft of the 18th and 19th Centuries, self-published by Dr. Martin Posth.

For more information, visit the website of Studio Bumiller, Berlin, Germany.

Event: REMINDER – Talk by Author and Specialist Chris Aslan Alexander – A Carpet Ride to Khiva

Event date: Thursday 13 October 2016, 6.15 – 8pm

This is just a reminder about the OATG event taking place next Thursday, in which Chris Alexander will be speaking about carpet weaving in Uzbekistan. Chris has also recently let us know that he will be bringing carpets and other textiles for a show and tell session after his presentation for attendees of the event to see.

Chris Aslan Alexander established two workshops in Khiva in Uzbekistan, recreating fifteenth-century Timurid carpet designs from forgotten illuminations and reviving silk carpet weaving, natural dye-making and suzani embroidery. To find out more about Chris, and about the book he has written on this subject, visit his website.

Location: The Pauling Centre, 58a Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 6QS.

Admission is free for members, and £3 for non-members.

There are still a few places remaining at this event, so please book yours now if you’d like to come.

For more information, and to book your place at this event, please contact the OATG events organisers (oatg.events@gmail.com).

Event: Talk by Author and Specialist Chris Aslan Alexander – A Carpet Ride to Khiva

Event date: Thursday 13 October 2016, 6.15 – 8pm

Chris Aslan Alexander established two workshops in Khiva in Uzbekistan, recreating fifteenth-century Timurid carpet designs from forgotten illuminations and reviving silk carpet weaving, natural dye-making and suzani embroidery. To find out more about Chris, and about the book he has written on this subject, visit his website.

Location: The Pauling Centre, 58a Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 6QS.

Admission is free for members, and £3 for non-members.

For more information, please contact the OATG events organisers (oatg.events@gmail.com).

Event: A Show and Tell of Tribal and Village Weavings from Iran and Central Asia

Event date: Monday 18 July 2016

Oxford Asian Textile Group have organised a show and tell evening in Oxford with Angela and Christopher Legge of tribal and village weavings from Iran and Central Asia. There are 15 places available for this event. If you would like to attend, please RSVP to oatg.events@gmail.com to confirm your place.

Location: Legge Carpets & Textiles, 25 Oakthorpe Road, Summertown, Oxford, OX2 7BD.
Time: Arrival from 7.15pm to start at 7.30pm.
Free for members, £3 for non-members.

For more information about Legge Carpets, please visit their website.

Exhibition: Kum Kapi Carpets at the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon

Exhibition dates: open until 19 September 2016

Kum Kapi carpets owe their name to a district of Istanbul where, in the nineteenth century, various Armenian master carpet makers settled to create their rich knotted carpets of silk, with metal threads, inspired by the classic Persian carpets of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Hagop Kapoudjian (c. 1870–1946) was one of the most famous Kum Kapi master carpet makers, and created three of the carpets included in this exhibition, taking place at the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon, which are placed in dialogue with works by the contemporary artist, also of Armenian origin, Mekhitar Garabedian (b. 1977, Aleppo). Two artists from different times and places who share a common past that, in a way, is connected to the life story of Calouste Sarkis Gulbenkian himself.

The exhibition establishes a dialogue between tradition and contemporaneity, continuity and reinvention, showing in surprising ways the relationship between the carpet and the journey that is, here, more than ever, linked to the Armenian diaspora.

There is also a free lecture taking place at the Gulbenkian Museum in connection with this exhibition, on Wednesday, 29 June, on Armenians and rug weaving.

For more information, visit the website of the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon, Portugal.