Frontlines

News: SCATA Leipzig and Hoff meister/Tsareva Turkmen questions arising; Classical carpets in Paris sale; LARTA; Parcours Paris; Navajo First Phase blanket smashes all auction records; Material Culture enters the auction fray

Profile: Conceptual Art advocate, bibliophile and textile collector Seth Siegelaub

Benchmarks: Setting standards for Turkmen embroidered bokches and Shekarlu rugs

Forum: The ‘Lotto rugs of the Bistri/a Lutheran Church in Transylvania

Features

Beasts of the Imagination  Steven Cohen

The Burrell Collection in Glasgow owns approximately a hundred carpets and fragments bought by collector Sir William Burrell, four exceptional examples of which were at the heart of a recent exhibition

Polish Relations: The Vasa Silk Kilims  Caroline Mawer

The Armenian merchant Sefer Muratowicz’s epic 1601 journey to Persia to buy silk kilims for King Sigismund III Vasa of Poland, opens a window into a fascinating important carpet story

Kabuki: Costumes, History and Techniques  Aurelie Samuel

Much of the dramatic impact of Kabuki theatre, which emerged in Japan around 1700 and rapidly became the country’s most popular performance art, depends on complex and imaginative costumes

Life And Death  Annelies Valgaeren

The Museum aan de Stroom in Antwerp contains the renowned collection of more than four hundred pre-Columbian works from the Paul and Dora Janssen-Arts Collection

Speaking Volumes  Craig Wallen

Two unusual inscribed Anatolian yastiks are potent documents of recent Armenian history

In Pride Of Place  Daniel Walker

Known for its Arts and Crafts collections, CrabTree Farm near Chicago houses early English room settings that include classicalTurkish rugs presented in period taste

Choice Varied Flowers  John Guy

A painted cotton textile, probably made on the Coromandel Coast of India, perfectly captures the sentiment evoked in a 9th-centuryTamil hymn of praise by a Shaiva poet-saint.

Women’s Magic  Jonathan Hope & Daniel Shaffer

A major presentation of superb textiles and jewellery from Indonesia at Rotterdam’s Wereldmuseum

Context

Exhibitions: ‘The Sultan’s Garden’ at The Textile Museum, Washington DC; Alighiero Boetti’s ‘Game Plan’ at Tate Modern in London; the New York Met’s ‘Byzantium and Islam: Age of Transition’, previews of ARTS in San Francisco and the Sartirana Textile Show

Calendar: Auctions, exhibitions, fairs and conferences worldwide

Auction Report: The sale of a Kashmir moon shawl at Skinner in February 2012

Auction Price Guide: Record prices at recent sales in Europe and the USA

Books: Geknupfte Kunst. Teppiche des Museums fur Islamische Kunst by Anna Beselin; Masterpieces of Orientalist Art: The Shafik Gabr Collection; Titles Received

Parting Shots: From Kuwait, Sibiu, London, Leipzig, Rotterdam and Sulawesi

Last Page: The reunification of the fragments of an inscribed 8th century woven silk