Photo Album: Azerbaijan & Georgia, October 2017

Azerbaijan & Georgia, October 2017

104 images

The third HALI Tour to the Caucasus included Azerbaijan for the first time and was timed to begin straight after the 5th International Symposium on Azerbaijani Carpets (ISAC 2017) in Baku.

: ISAC speakers and HALI Tour guests, Hadi Maktabi and Jeff Spurr lead the group in Baku’s Icherisheher (Old Town)

: Fuad Jabrayilov and Ruslan Huseynov present the FR Collection, Natavan Gallery, Baku

: FR Collection, Baku

: FR Collection, Baku

: Kalaghayi silk scarves, FR Collection, Baku

: Comb holder, Natavan Collection, Baku

: FR Collection temporary exhibition at Natavan Gallery

: HALI Tour group at the FR Collection exhibition, Baku

: Azerbaijan Carpet Museum, Baku

: Contemporary Art in Carpets installation by Butunay Hagverdiyev, Azerbaijan Carpet Museum, Baku

: Stone Chronicles Museum, Baku

: Artist, Faig Ahmed with tour guest and ISAC speaker, Alisa Baginski and his weavers

: Faig Ahmed with tour guest and ISAC speakers, Orit Shamir and Anna Beselin, Senior Textile Conservator at Berlin’s Islamic Art Museum

: Faig Ahmed’s weavers at the loom working on another commission, Baku

: Faig Ahmed’s weaving workshops, Baku

: Soundweaving artist, Zsanett Szirmay at Faig Ahmed’s weaving workshops, Baku

: Faig Ahmed explains his latest work

: Faig Ahmed’s latest work fresh off the loom

: Gautama from the Liquid Series by Faig Ahmed

: Gautama from the Liquid Series by Faig Ahmed

: Kaitag embroideries in the ISAC temporary exhibition ‘Silk Treasures’ at ANMA, Baku

: ‘Silk Treasures’ at ANMA, Baku

: Embroidery in ‘Silk Treasures’ at ANMA, Baku

: ‘Maiden’s Tower’, Baku

: Shepherds and flocks as seen from the coach leaving the city

: Chelov village weaver’s home loom

: Chelov village weaver’s completed rugs

: Chelov village weaver’s home loom

: Chelov village, Azerbaijan

: Chelov village, Azerbaijan

: Chelov village, Azerbaijan

: HALI Tour guests Hadi Maktabi and Sheila Fruman, Chelov village, Azerbaijan

: Chelov village, Azerbaijan

: Dated flatweave (detail), Chelov village, Azerbaijan

: Yeddi Gumbaz Mausoleum

: Wax resist dying of kalaghayi silk scarves, Baskal Silk Center

: Baskal Silk Center

: HALI Tour guest, Noemi Boralevi tries her hand at batik, Baskal Silk Center

: Baskal Silk Center

: Chief dye producer, Baskal Silk Center

: An impromptu stop off for fresh bread at a roadside stall, Azerbaijan

: Roadside bakery, Azerbaijan

: Sweet Shop kitchen producing seasonal hazelnut nougat, Sheki, Azerbaijan

: Sweet Shop kitchen, Sheki, Azerbaijan

: The walk to the Khan’s Summer Palace, Sheki, Azerbaijan

: The summer palace of the Sheki Khans, built in 1797 by Muhammed Hasan Khan

: The summer palace of the Sheki Khans

: The summer palace of the Sheki Khans

: HALI Tour guests Daniel Chorzempa and Gerald Crowson are given a demonstration of local musical instruments, Sheki

: Tar, musical instrument in the making, Sheki

: A discussion about silk rugs in a Sheki shop

: The Caucasus Mountains seen from Azerbaijan

: 15th century defensive walls, Sighnaghi, Georgia

: View from the hotel, Sighnaghi, Georgia

: Cathedral restoration at the Monastery of St Nino, Bodbe, Georgia

: Nathan from the Pheasant’s Tears winery explains how natural wines are produced in qvevri vessels

: Ryan Smith welcomes the HALI Tour to Karachopt village, an Azeri village in Georgia and one of the places his reWoven weavers live

: Karachopt village

: reWoven weaver Terlan Mamedova’s family small holding, Karachopt village

: HALI Tour group outside the house of Terlan Mamedova

: The house of Terlan Mamedova and the family dog (compared to a Tour guests’ pet) drawn up to be incorporated into a carpet design at her request

: Terlan Mamedova inspects Vicki Fraser’s work

: Terlan Mamedova with the HALI Tour guest and weaver behind the California Rug Project, Vicki Fraser

: ReWoven rugs in the sun

: Ryan Smith of reWoven

: Gerald Crowson and Barry Bartron, reWoven

: reWoven rugs

: HALI Tour group, Karachopt

: reWoven Star Kazak design

: reWoven Star Kazak rug

: reWoven rug and vines

: Lunch preparation, Karachopt

: Lunch, Karachopt

: Tbilisi Old Town

: Simon Janashia National Museum of Georgia treasury

: Borchalu rug (region of southern Georgia), Simon Janashia National Museum of Georgia stores

: Simon Janashia National Museum of Georgia stores

: Boteh on a late 19th century Qashguli rug, Simon Janashia National Museum of Georgia stores

: Rasht embroidery, Simon Janashia National Museum of Georgia stores

: Rasht embroidery, Simon Janashia National Museum of Georgia stores

: Rasht embroideries, Simon Janashia National Museum of Georgia stores

: Rasht embroidery detail, Simon Janashia National Museum of Georgia stores

: Kashmir shawl detail, Simon Janashia National Museum of Georgia stores

: Kashmir Moon Shawl detail, Simon Janashia National Museum of Georgia stores

: Kashmir shawl boteh detail, early 18th century, Simon Janashia National Museum of Georgia stores

: Kashmir shawl boteh detail, early 18th century, Simon Janashia National Museum of Georgia stores

: Mitre, 16th-17th century, East Georgia, Simon Janashia National Museum of Georgia

: Freedom Square, Tbilisi

: Georgian kilim, State Museum of Folk and Applied Arts

: Straume archive, State Museum of Folk and Applied Arts

: State Silk Museum

: Director of the State Silk Museum, Nino Kuprava

: Giorgi Chitaia Museum of Ethnography

: Giorgi Chitaia Museum of Ethnography

: Tushetian kilim, Giorgi Chitaia Museum of Ethnography

: Svanetian embroidery, 15th century, Shalva Amiranashvili Museum of Fine Arts

: Soviet era kilim, Dry Bridge Antiques Market, Tbilisi

: Dinner at Arzaphesha, Tbilisi

: Polyphonic singers at Arzaphesha, Tbilisi

The third HALI Tour to the Caucasus included Azerbaijan for the first time and added a new dimension to our understanding of the rugs and textile traditions of the region. The eight-day tour began on 21 October 2017, the day after the Fifth International Symposium on Azerbaijani Carpets ended in the country’s capital, Baku. The timing meant that half of our twenty guests attended both the symposium and the HALI Tour.

A packed schedule in Baku included a morning walking tour of Icherisheher (Old Town); a temporary exhibition organised by the passionate young collectors Fuad Jabrayilov and Ruslan Huseynov, owners of the FR Collection; special access at the Azerbaijan Carpet Museum with Director Shirin Melikova; an exclusive visit to the weaving workshops of internationally-acclaimed artist Faig Ahmed, with an indigo-dyeing demonstration by the artist himself; and a private view of the ISAC exhibition, ‘Silk Treasures’.

On the second day, the tour travelled north to other regions of Azerbaijan, visiting weavers in the village of Chelov, whose work represents the continuation of a home-weaving tradition and reflects the widespread influence of Latif Karimov (1906-1991). Completed rugs were borrowed by admiring neighbours to act as cartoons for their next piece, demonstrating the spread of popular designs among the local community in action. A hands-on insight into Azerbaijani resist-dyed silk scarves (kalaghayi) was given at Baskal Silk Center, run by Rena Ibrahimbeyova and Jalil Tariverdiyev, who served tea in the garden accompanied by apples plucked fresh from the trees. The beautifully restored summer palace of the Sheki Khans, stunning under clear blue skies, provided a valuable context to the complex history of the region’s powerful khanates before an rough and almost non-existent road delivered us to the Georgian border at dusk on the third day.

In Georgia, wine flowed and the sound of polyphonic singing accompanied evening meals. The sleepy fortified town of Sighnaghi was the setting for a little relaxation before we journeyed to the capital city of Tbilisi (historic Tiflis). The route took us via Lambalo, a sub-village of Karachopt, which is one of the Azeri settlements in Georgia that has seen a renewed interest in weaving historic designs of late, thanks to the input of American expatriate Ryan Smith. His reWoven project provides naturally-dyed Iranian wool and Caucasian designs to home weavers with the skill to create quality rugs which he then tries to sell on the international market. His introduction to the extended family of weaver Terlan Mamedova and their very genuine village production (and lunch) was for many the highlight of the trip.

The Simon Janashia National Museum of Georgia treasury delivered world-class gold work and its curator, Irina Koshoridze, treated us to a special storeroom viewing of antique carpets, Rasht embroideries and Kashmir shawls in the national collection. The following day, we met Irina again in her other guise as director of the State Museum of Folk and Applied Arts, which holds an incredibly important and attractive archive of 19th-century photographs, field drawings and paintings by researcher Jūlijs Straume that definitively place known rug types in the geographic locations they were discovered at that time. The director of the State Silk Museum, Nino Kuprava, then welcomed us into the building that once housed the Caucasian Sericulture Station, established by the Russian Empire’s Caucasian Kustar Committee as a result of the research conducted by Straume and his contemporaries.

We would like to extend our heartfelt thanks to everyone named above, our local guides Elba and Merab, the organisers of ISAC Baku, Togrul Efendiyev, Isa Mammadov and all those at the Azerbaijan Ministry of Culture who assisted in our exploration of weaving practices past and present.

HALI Tours expect to return to this region in the future. A ‘Decorative Arts of Georgia’ programme is being developed for autumn 2018. To register your interest, email [email protected].