Articles, reports & dispatches.
Long-form scholarship and short news from the HALI editorial desk — published continuously between the four print quarterlies.
Masterpices at Austria Auction Company
Austria Auction Company’s Masterpieces V sale on 23 October offers 55 antique rugs and textiles, including a silk Yarkand saf, an iconic Tekke bird asmalyk and an unusual South Caucasian carpet.
Grogan & Company, Boston, 1 October 2026: sale review
A Salor wedding trapping made $87,500, more than double its low estimate, as Grogan & Company's sale of three collections totalled $890,000.
Ben Evans · 5 min
The XXXIVth Biennale Internazionale dell’Antiquariato di Firenze, 2026
A rare small medallion Uşak and a well-travelled ‘bird’ Selendi rug led the carpet offering in Florence, alongside Tang tomb figures and Vittorio Zecchin’s zoomorphic mosaics. HALI Chairman Michael Franses reports.
Michael Franses · 12 min
Highlights from the Christopher Legge Collection
As part of Christopher Legge's collection comes to sale at Mallam's in Oxford, HALI has picked out a number of pieces that have attracted our interest
What stands out at Austria Auction Company’s September auction?
Austria Auction Company’s September sale offers Turkmen carpets, tiger rugs, Anatolian prayer rugs and kilims, with highlights from the Hans Sienkneckt estate among its 215 lots
Whitehawk Antique Indian & Ethnographic Art Show
The Whitehawk Antique Indian & Ethnographic Art Show has been a Santa Fe tradition for over 48 years. Here are a few pictorial highlights
Rugs from James D. Burns’s collection headline Bonhams Skinner’s antique carpets sale
Of the 340 lots on offer, 259 are carpets, including 33 from the esteemed collection of stalwart rug collector James D. Burns.
HALI sponsors Whitehawk's 'The First Moderns'
HALI is pleased to be sponsoring 'First Moderns', one of two special exhibitions being held as part of the upcoming Whitehawk Show
'Polonaise' Carpets: Inside Three Decades of Record-Breaking Persian Carpet Auction Prices
'Polonaise' carpets have dominated Persian carpet auctions for decades, from King Umberto II's silk carpet to the record-breaking Pommersfelden rugs. This review traces their unrivalled price history — one glimpse into HALI's rich archive of sale and provenance data.
Past and present veneration
Milan's Galleria Moshe Tabibnia has just announced that it will exhibit at Frieze Masters in London this October — prompting us to look back at HALI's last review of the gallery, originally published in HALI 214.
A market for Modernist carpets
A recent sale in Paris featured several carpets and rugs designed by Ivan da Silva Bruhns for the Maharaja of Indore. Using this auction as a starting point, Daniel Shaffer looks at the high end of the market for artist-designed Modernist carpets
Kum Kapı rugs at auction
‘Sultans of Silk’, a potential buyer’s bonanza of rugs from the George Farrow Collection at Christie’s in April, prompts Daniel Shaffer’s overview of the genre