Compass

Editorial: What are the implications of the sale of the record-breaking Clark Kerman carpet?

Dialogue: The launch of a new Austrian auction house; a Royal Textile Museum for Thailand; what’s new on www.hali.com; HALI visits Transylvania.

Diary: Ten must-see events recommended by HALI.

Calendar: Auctions, exhibitions, fairs and conferences taking place this season.

Thread of time: The mantle of Powhatan, Tsenacommacah Indian chief and father of Pocahontas, in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford provides a path for a design that can be linked back to the ancient kingdoms of Mesopotamia.

Travellers’ tales: Editor Ben Evans gives us a taste of HALI’s recent tour to take in the special sights of Transylvania and Bukovina in Romania.

Interview: Inspiring words and textiles from the queen of Central Asian ikat, Pip Rau, whose collecting passions began while travelling overland to Asia in the 1960s.

Comment: Differences of opinion about interpreting Qaraqalpaq history are aired between authors and reviewer.

Anatomy of an object: Aspectacular shadda or flatwoven cover in the Russian Ethnographic Museum in St Petersburg, has an intriguing provenance that raises questions about where and in what circumstances it was made.

Features

Dual advocacy: Debra Bricker Balken

The founding of a dichotomous collection: carpets and American Modernist paintings from the carefully-selected collection of Deborah and Ed Shein.

Global exchange: Amelia Peck and exhibition curators

‘Interwoven Globe: The Worldwide Textile Trade, 1500–1800’, which opens this autumn at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, explores the global textile trade that emerged in the wake of European maritime navigational feats and territorial expansion beginning in the 16th century.

On silk street: Penny Oakley

Suzani embroideries of Central Asia from the Romain Zaleski collection are the focus of an exploration into subtle regional variations.

Unravelling the mysteries: Patricia J. Knobloch

The secrets of Wari culture come to life through
an examination of the intriguing and intricate nature of Wari cultic cloths and ceramics from this ancient Andean nation.

The 99 names…: Elena Tsareva

The recent exhibition ‘Ninety-nine names of God’ at the Pushkin Museum in Moscow comprised 99 works of Islamic art dating from the 9th to the 19th centuries from Russia’ leading private collection of Islamic art.

Reviews

Exhibition reviews: The current exhibition ‘Making the Invisible Visible. Conservation and Islamic Art’ at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York uncovers some discoveries about items from the Museum’s collection of Islamic art.

Book reviews: The collection of Southeast Asian textiles carefully assembled by Bangkok law firm Tilleke & Gibbins, has a story of its own and is presented in Art of Southeast Asian Textiles. The Tilleke & Gibbens Collection. Mattiebelle Gittinger reviews Linda S. McIntosh’s book.

Market Feature: Sale of the century – Judith Glass comments on Sotheby’s New York’s recent mind-blowing sale of carpets from the Corcoran Gallery, including the record-breaking Bacri-Clark Kerman sickle-leaf carpet which sold for an astonishing $33,765,000.

Auction Price Guide: From New York, Boston, Wiesbaden, Stuttgart and London.

Last page: The top ten carpets and textiles at auction; the ultimate suzani book list and an exclusive look at HALI’s autumn issue.