Piotr Wesolowski

It can be thus argued that the Manastir weaves originated in the Balkans among the Turkic diaspora, somewhere west of the Bosphorus and in the historical area of Thrace.  Owing however to continuous migration of the nomadic tribes, these sparsely decorated works of tribal art are more bound by their shared sense of aesthetics and symbolism than the geographic area.

In the course of this paper, it is argued that the double-column design, popular in the 17-18 th centuries Ottoman prayer rugs and tapestries, may be linked to the 1610 Ahmed's I edict forbidding the sale of objects depicting sacred Islamic symbols including inscriptions. The author also attempts to investigate the presence of the Mughal multi-foil arch in a large spectrum of Chian silk works as unique to the Ottoman textile art of Chios Furthermore, a distinction is suggested between religious and secular works, including those from Chios, which is achieved by inclusion or exclusion of sacred calligraphy.

Poland is an important centre for rug scholarship and the sheer number of rare and antique rugs in museums across the country bears witness to the very fact
The carpet from the National Museum in Kielce commissioned by the aristocratic Ogończyk family is a testimony of the presence of an indigenous carpet industry in late Renaissance Poland, the country's strong links with both the Safavid and the Ottoman Empires and its even stronger openness to western European trends.

The origins of the Baluch remain unclear and though linguistically Persian, Baluch clans may differ in terms of their ethnic identity. Notwithstanding, over the centuries, they produced a uniform and characteristic body of work.

Their weaves show a variety of influences, but all display a unique style with minor Turkoman overtones adopted through the historic proximity of domicile.
All this may explain their irresistible attraction on the part of great many collectors in the Western world: Germany, France, Italy, and the United States

Ironically, however, possibly the most significant exhibition, at least in terms of sheer size, has been recently held at an abandoned mining station, now a museum, in the northernmost part of the European continent, Norway.

The Yağcıbedir rugs are named after the Yörük (Turkoman) Yayci-Bedirlu tribe which ventured into Asia Minor as early as the 11th century. They settled in the plains of Adana in Armenian Cilicia where they found abundance of pasture for their flocks. They thrived during the Seljuk reign and converted to Islam.

The Middle East provides the backdrop for Death on the Nile and Murder in Mesopotamia, but as I trudge my tired feet up the steep stairs leading to ad-Dair, a monumental structure that sits atop the highest elevation in Petra, I think of her Appointment with Death.

... while the ever-dexterous merchants continually unearth greater numbers of the so-called ‘earlier pieces’ that is those going back as far as the beginning or middle of the 19th century, the early 20th century Caucasian rugs whose production is well documented  seem to have completely disappear.

At the outbreak of WWII and following the devastating invasion of Poland by the allied forces of Germany and the Soviet Union; many Polish children, predominantly orphaned, found refuge abroad. The Iranian city of Isfahan stands out in this respect as a place of a particular importance.

It is suggested that the abstract motifs often displayed in Berbers rugs from Morocco evolved out the shamanic cosmology as old as the Neolithic Age.
Berber weaving arts survived till today almost unadulterated; they show little regard for commercial trends that swept the oriental bazaars and western courts of the past half millennium.
The Mogul Emperors, Persian dynasties, the Ottomans and later the Western courts sourced their opulent rugs with gold and silver thread in the bazaars along the Silk Road, the commercial routs criss-crossing Minor and Central Asia.

It is argued that the Modernist interest in the abstract patterns often found in rural weavings of north Africa was a reaction against the Orientalism which dominated art of the period. Deconstruction of the Orientalist myths and stereotypes projected in the 18th and 19th century western art marks the beginning of the modern perspective of the Orient spearheaded by Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, and others.

One textile, arguably much later however [the Marby Church rug] , attracts more curiosity than those in Viking collections.
It differs from the Persian and Byzantine silks found in burials across Scandinavia, and it closely resembles rugs seen in Italian Renaissance art, namely in works by Domenico di Bartolo and Bartolomeo degli Erri, and perhaps more importantly, in the world-famous Dragon and Phoenix carpet purchased in Rome by Wilhelm von Bode for the Museum of Islamic Art in Berlin.

The Yağcıbedir rugs are named after the Yörük (Turkoman) Yayci-Bedirlu tribe which ventured into Asia Minor as early as the 11th century.
They settled in the plains of Adana in Armenian Cilicia where they found abundance of pasture for their flocks.
They thrived during the Seljuk reign and converted to Islam.

The Yağcıbedir rugs are named after the Yörük (Turkoman) Yayci-Bedirlu tribe which ventured into Asia Minor as early as the 11th century.
They settled in the plains of Adana in Armenian Cilicia where they found abundance of pasture for their flocks.
They thrived during the Seljuk reign and converted to Islam.

A name that stands out in the context of Berber rug studies is that of the Swiss scholar, Bruno Barbatti. His seminal work Berber Carpets of Morocco: The Symbols: Origin and Meaning is a result of years of his field work in the Atlas Mountains. Barbatti's scholarly focus was the language of symbols, the enigmatic signs that appear in Berber textiles. The repeated motifs, believed to date to Neolithic era of human development, suggest clearly the presence of an ancient, complex system of meaningful symbols. Barbatti's scrupulous semiotic approach opened a gate to a world of magic, and suddenly, the decorative function of primitive floor coverings acquired another dimension. The Berber rug is a protector, a vessel of hope, a conveyor of wishful thinking, and a repository of pain and fear.

It is precisely the continuity of the easily recognizable motif of stylised birds standing symmetrically on either side of a tree that may place the Marby rug in the Scandinavian historical and artistic context.
While the allegedly early Ottoman Anatolian artefact remained hidden for centuries in the crypt of a church in a village in Jämtland, the identical motif seems to have been common in various textiles from the land of ‘fjord and forest.’

Iona Abbey Triclinium Carpet A young missionary nun leaves a remote island in the Scottish Hebrides to serve God in the Far East. It is a cold and windy day. The sea is rough, and the sky gone behind ominous clouds. The abbey vanishes from her sight before she's done with the first rosary. She first crosses to Mull-a mile through drizzly mist-and then safely to Oban, a town on the west coast of Scotland. She will be gone for many years. When she returns, with her, she brings a large carpet. It will be placed before the high altar in the chapel of St. Mary's Abbey on Iona This is a romanticized version of the provenance of the large turn of the century Qashqai triclinium carpet auctioned disappointingly in 2001 in Edinburgh. The story came to me in bits and pieces when I first saw the photo of the carpet and began my investigation as to its origin and later whereabouts. In reality, Margaret Roxburgh, a missionary, and a daughter of a founding elder of St Columba's Presbyterian Church in Cambridge, did travel to China. She returned to England in 1922s and, yes, she may have brought the carpet with her.