News & Events, 5 November

Exhibitions – ‘Constantinople to Istanbul: One City, Two Empires’ opens at the Victoria and Albert Museum tomorrow, 7 November. In the Netherlands, Museum Gouda is presenting ‘Wonder Walls, Woven Masterpieces’ until 29 March 2027, exploring the history and legacy of the city's 17th-century tapestry-weaving industry. Meanwhile, ‘Officina Bardini: Weaves Revealed’ is on view at Museo Stefano Bardini in Florence until 31 January 2027, and ‘Unseen Worlds: Southeast Asian Textiles from the Spancake Collection’ continues at the Crow Museum of Asian Art until 20 June 2027.

Articles – A recent article by Storied Rugs, ‘Oriental Carpets in Renaissance Paintings: Holbein, Lotto and the Table Carpet’, explores the appearance and significance of Oriental carpets in Renaissance art.

‘Oriental carpets turn up again and again in Renaissance paintings, and most of them are Turkish carpets from Anatolia. Painters in Italy and northern Europe showed them draped over tables and hung on walls, because to own one was a sign of wealth. Several carpet designs are still named after the painters who recorded them: Holbein, Lotto, Memling and Ghirlandaio. The paintings show what those carpets looked like and how Europe used them, and their way of drawing still links them to the Anatolian rugs of the last century.’ Article extract

Read the full article on Storied Rugs.

On hali.com – This week's Editor's Choice is a late 19th-century wedding phulkari from the Karun Thakar Collection, recently featured in the National Trust's ‘Journeys’ exhibition. Elsewhere on the site, an article explores a new exhibition at Museo Stefano Bardini in Florence, examining how art dealer Stefano Bardini and his children, Emma and Ugo, collected, traded and created textiles. The exhibition spans an eclectic range of works, from Borghese tapestries to a previously unseen carpet by Paul Follot.