NEWS & VIEWS
HALI Tour of Paris

Hali Magazine On-line

Thursday, March 24, 2005

Timothy Gerwin reports: To celebrate the Institut du Monde Arabe’s
momentus exhibition ‘Le Ciel dans un Tapis’ HALI organised a weekend
of carpet and textile events in Paris to coincide with a lecture
series hosted by the Institut on 11 March 2005. For those carpet
lovers who braved Paris’ most recent transit strike the events began
that afternoon, with a rendez-vous at Galerie Triff to preview its
suzani exhibition.

At the IMA the lecture series was opened by one of the carpet
exhibition’s co-curators, Roland Gilles, who interprets Islamic
architecture and art as a transliteration of heavenly bodies. He brings
the stars to ground in the constellations he perceives in the designs
of the carpets assembled for the exhibition, whence comes its title,
The Sky in a Carpet. Mr Gilles completed his imagery by suggesting
that the red medallion of a 16th-century Ushak (cat. no. 39) may be
meant to represent the Earth floating in the infinite space of the
carpet’s dark blue field. His neo-Platonist theory appealed greatly
to the French au dience.

Co-curator Joelle Lemaistre then questioned the dating of a compartment
rug fragment (cat. no. 33).  Her argument, based on related forms
and motifs in Chinese and Timurid art, pondered whether the carpet’s
origins lie in the late 15th century, rather than the early 16th
century. Ms Lemaistre points to the medallions of a later Turkish
rug in the exhibition (cat. no. 31) as possible descendants of the
fragment’s design. She persevered for her appreciative audience
despite the technical problems that plagued the slide presentations
of all the speakers.

Next Susan Day, whom HALI congratulated in the November/December
issue for her Louvre appointment as carpet advisor, spoke of the
new Department of the Arts of Islam. She elaborated on the project
to convert the Louvre’s Cour Visconti into new Islamic galleries to
house the expanded collection created by a long-term loan from Paris’
Musée des Arts Decoratifs. The winner of a concours to select the
project architect may be announced in April. The combined collection
of Islamic art will be amongst the world’s largest.

Ms Day previewed the combined carpet collection, illustrating the
collection’s history and honoring the Musée des Arts Decoratifs’
early 20th-century benefactor, Jules Maciet. She also announced her
hopes for a reunion of the 16th-century Paris-Krakow medallion carpet
in a Safavid exhibition for 2007, and her plans for a comparative
study of the many Indo/Persian carpets held in the museum. Susan Day
is authoring a catalogue raisonné planned for the opening of the
Louvre’s new galleries in 2009.

Concluding the lectures, Paris dealer Berdj Achdjian recounted tales
about a huge figure in the carpet world, a man well represented at
the IMA’s exhibition, Calouste Gulbenkian. “Monsieur Gulbenkian”,
as all knew him, said the works in his collection were like his
children; after 45 years spent gathering them their care was his
greatest concern. He insisted that repair work be done in his home
and met Berdj Achdjian’s father, a restorer, as he sat on the floor
of the Gulbenkian home working on a carpet.

A proud Armenian born in Kayseri, Turkey, Gulbenkian had no
formal education in art history. His wealth and good taste being
necessary but not sufficient, his collection’s richness is due to
Gulbenkian’s many connections with art dealers, art historians, and
related experts; he sought multiple recommendations before making
any acquisition. Fortunately for those of us who enjoy his legacy,
Calouste Gulbenkian was not cheap.

Next morning Achdjian welcomed Hali, collectors such as Betthany
Mendenhall, dealers like Mr Vrooyers from Antwerp, specialists,
including Marcel and Annettte Korolnik-Andersch, and the Louvre
to view an impressive range of North African weavings, including a
bold Moroccan Ahmar carpet. Everyone pored over three 19th-century
embroidered Tunisian silk marriage tunics, and the tour of Achdjian’s
inventory ran from a 15th-century Armenian brocade from Jerusalem to
a luxurious First Empire cape with ermine border.

After lunch under the Pyramid of the Louvre, the party ended with a
walk through the Islamic galleries.

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