The upcoming month promises a rich lineup of rug and textile exhibitions. From must-see displays coming to a close to exciting new openings, here is our pick of five rug and textile shows to visit this March. 1. ‘The Weaves of the Dragon – Chinese Carpets of the Imperial Dynasties’, MITA Cultural Centre, Brescia… Read more »
An online exhibition revisits the history of Art Deco carpets. In HALI 225, Ben Evans reviews this show hosted on Alberto Levi’s gallery website, which features fifty-six carpets from his collection. ‘Art Deco 1925-2025: A Century of Progressive Design’ highlights the place of these carpets in the development of modernism, revealing how tradition and innovation… Read more »
The career of Polish textile artist Tadek Beutlich MBE (1922–2011) was honoured in an exhibition at Ditchling Museum of Art + Craft from 18 January–22 June 2025. The artist lived in the East Sussex town of Ditchling in the late 1960s–early 1970s when he ran a weaving studio from his home, Gospels. This property had… Read more »
It has been quite the year for the George Washington University Museum and The Textile Museum in Washington, D.C, as it celebrates its centennial with a rich anniversary program, which we feature in HALI 224. ‘The star events of The Textile Museum’s centennial celebration are two major exhibitions featuring masterworks from the collection: ‘Intrinsic Beauty:… Read more »
This new issue recognises the significance of clothing as a vehicle for expressing identity and affiliation, displaying wealth, status and political views. We look beyond the lustre and surface of the cloth to explore these layers. There are the national and religious subtexts running through Safavid figurative textiles; the influence of Sikh rule on 19th-century… Read more »
ICOC-XV, the 15th edition of the International Conference on Oriental Carpets, held in partnership with the Istanbul Carpet Exporters’ Association (IHIB), will take place from 6–9 June 2024 at The Marmara Hotel Taksim in Istanbul. Click here to view the ICOC preview, featuring articles from the most recent issue of HALI. Academic sessions, exploring the oriental carpets of… Read more »
HALI has organised a series of special events in Italy to precede the two-day colloquium Kerman Carpets of the Safavid Period (1501-1736) in Genoa, organised in memory of Alessandro Bruschettini, the renowned collector of Islamic art. Conceived as a celebration of the wealth of antique carpets and textiles in Italy, a week of talks, guided museum visits… Read more »
Held in the Palazzo Rosso in Genoa, ‘The Magnificent Sanguszko Carpets’ presents the 16th-century Persian Kerman ‘Sanguszko-type’ carpets together for the first time. More than four hundred carpets from the Kerman region are known from the 16th and 17th centuries. The Sanguszko carpets are just one group from this region. Carpets from Kerman have been… Read more »
Kazak rugs from the western Transcaucasus have long been a concentrated interest for US specialist collector/scholar Raoul Tschebull, who authored a seminal exhibition catalogue, Kazak, in 1971, and an often-cited article on Kazak design in the third issue of HALI in 1978. In this HALI article he reprises the theme, focusing on three rugs from his collection, with comment extracted from his new book, Qarajeh to Quba.
Three quarters of a century have passed since an early south Persian chahar bagh design carpet of unprecedented size and complexity was discovered in the Amber Palace of the Maharajas of Jaipur. Stored in the city’s Albert Hall Museum, at long last we are able to publish this extraordinary Safavid ‘garden’ carpet in its entirety for the first time.
