On 30 June 2013, The Cleveland Museum of Art opened its new North Wing galleries with an inaugural exhibition ‘Luxuriance: Silks from Islamic Lands, 1250-1900’, which reveals the museum’s exceptional oriental textiles collection to the world for the first time in almost a decade
Material Culture in Philadelphia offers visitors a unique sample on its old and new rugs and textiles on the 4th July weekend at huge discounts
Timed to coincide with the last day of the London Masterpiece Fair, Sotheby’s prestigious evening sale on 3 June 2013 of Treasures, Princely Taste, consisting of 49 well-provenanced works of art from the Renaissance to the 20th century, totalled £9,218,850. Among the successful lots were two well-known Classical period Oriental carpets consigned by the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection.
There are just over two weeks left to visit the textile exhibition Command Performance: Kuba Cloths from Central Africa at The Honolulu Museum of Art, till 21 July 2013.
Don’t miss your chance to see From the Exotic to the Mystical: Woven Treasures from the Permanent Collection, at the de Young Museum, San Francisco, on show till 4 August 2013.
To mark the 75th anniversary of the Cloisters in New York and 75 years of the Unicorn Tapestries being a focal point of that collection, the Cloisters is currently holding an exhibition ‘Search for the Unicorn, An Exhibition in Honor of The Cloisters’ 75th Anniversary’
Netherhampton Salerooms’ auction of Carpets, Rugs and Textiles in Salisbury, England on 10 July 2012 includes the the second part of a European private collection of kilims, mainly Anatolian.
For over a millenium, plant motifs in the form of vines, leaves, flowers, fruits, and trees were among those most frequently used in the art of the Islamic world. Many of these works were created in the hot, barren regions of the Middle East, and the lush Paradise as described in the Qur’an would have appealed to the Muslim artists.
Sotheby’s New York sale of Important 20th Century Design totaled a strong $4,738,940, almost reaching its pre-sale high estimate of $5 million.
The world record setting Clark sickle leaf Kerman carpet, the massive Lafoes Esfahan, and the extraordinarily rare and beautiful Cairene round carpet, have hogged the headlines, but there were also another 22 lots sold for astonishing prices in Sotheby’s 100% successful sale of Classical Persian, Egyptian and Indian carpets in New York on 5 June.
