21 April 2007 The Conference began for real at 2 o’clock on Thursday 19 April with the opening of the Private Collections exhibition, which due to circumstances beyond the control of the exhibition organiser, Mehmet Cetinkaya, had had to be moved at the last moment from the Tophane to the Swissotel, the venue of the Conference. This hastily assembled exhibition, which was made possible thanks to lots of late nights from volunteers, was spread through various parts of the conference centre and acted as an apt backdrop to the ensuing lectures and Dealers' Fair. The opening address from the organising committee introduced the ideas and aims of the conference as well as, through the speeches from the sponsoring bodies and the representative of the Minister of Culture and Tourism, setting the context for the conference’s legacy for Turkey.
Indeed the opening lecture by Professor Walter Denny continued to contextualise the conference by providing a valuable insight into the role of Turkey in international trade and the importance of understanding the study of the wealth of its carpet heritage to a packed conference room.
The main reception of the evening was the opening of the Dealers' Fair in the hotel ballroom where the 36 dealers finally had the opportunity to sell some of the rugs and textiles that they had been saving for some time to the eagerly awaiting delegates. The mixture of the material was much as one would expect with a strong focus of Central Asian carpets and textiles, Turkish textile art and a splash of good Caucasian material (and very few decorative carpets). The long evening, the fair officially closed at 11.30pm, provided sales for many dealers to a mixture of trade and private clients, with some dealers reporting some major sales. Please see further updates over the course of the conference. |
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