Italian to Turkish textiles, cardboard art, Susan Sontag and me t

Today there was a presentation from Hajji Baba and the New England Rug Society

The nice part about these programs is that the slides are captioned so you can see the age and usually location of the works.

Here Gerard Paquin was examining the transfer and borrowing of design, from Italian silk weaving to Turkish wool, and most of the slides show silk on the left, wool right. 

The idea was that wool is much less expensive a medium, so it was economical to borrow design and adapt it to purpose. Usually the silk pieces were wallhangings, the Turkish wool were  rugs, and later in the slides, cushion covers. 

I'll just run the pictures since I don't think we're vitally interested in the technical terms he was firing around.

This shows the sheer size of the interiors where textiles were hung.

He also showed a couple of Persian miniature paintings showing rugs in action. And he referred to book design as sometimes being inspired by these motifs.

He's a collector rather than a scholar, so the idea, to him, is to enjoy the designs rather than analyze the techniques and history.  So let's do that! It's amazing to have no-cost access to this kind of work, often in private collections and distant museums.

Nearer home I've been thinking and making cardboard based art.

First, thinking.  I found a paragraph on Susan Sontag's likes and dislikes, which amused me a lot. Quite a few are on my list, too!

I never knew how many preferences I had in common with her. The resemblance ends there, I think.

And I set to work on a cardboard artwork.

This is the divider from a Misfits box, opened up, to make the shape of a Japanese long narrow landscape.

It's corrugated, so I drew my design with a graphite stick, not easy to see here

Then I started carving off the top layer

And seeing the lovely contrasting textures happening

I've been wanting to do some of this carving and got a bit sidetracked. I kept all the pieces carved off, curly bits, because I may use them. This is a low-waste piece ss well as an artwork.

After I got to this point I was so tired I needed to stop, but first I went upstairs to empty the dryer. I found when I got there I literally had to sit on the floor to rest. After a few minutes I was able to get downstairs, where the kettle was boiling, make tea and rest on the sofa.  Art is an aerobic activity! Fine now.

And here's a very appealing artist I just found out about from Jacqueline Durban

Happy evening everyone, late getting here today, one thing and another. Enjoy art and making if you like making, or just looking. All good.

 

Hajji Baba scores again

Great presentation on Zoom this morning to an audience of scholars from all over the world, and people like me, who are interested in textiles.

Famous Florence dealer and collector, general authority on carpet trading in the 19th century

First he gave us an update on the lockdown in Florence, the pace of vaccination and his own, one dose down, one to go, status. He reminded us that the Florence museums and sites he discussed are closed as of now. So this was a chance at an otherwise impossible viewing.

Then he got into his subject, a work in progress, ongoing research into the trading and provenance of mainly oriental rugs, in the nineteenth century, with reference to the Bardini Museum and its founder, Stefano Bardini, a bit of a character by all accounts

Here's the neighborhood and 

Here are the desirable premises

A lot of rhe lecture was interesting more to serious scholars, but it had its moments.

Such as the explanation of the blue walls in the Gardner Museum in Boston. 

Isabella G had seen the Bardini Museum with its blue walls, then a startling new idea as a background for art, and persisted until she got a description of the mixture from Bardini, and a paint sample to use for her own collection.

I noticed how many of these pieces of Islamic art are lodged, in true colonial style, in western museums.  As here

But in recent years, the Doha  Museum of Islamic art has recaptured some. A good use of oil money, I'd say. It's their cultural capital,  anyway, they should have a say. 

And massive rugs were divided, separated and sometimes bits were clung to by various museums, presenting a kind of jigsaw effect to researchers and curators trying to reassemble them. 

Museums don't like giving up treasures as we all know, even if they were originally looted, don't get me started, you'll be listening to me shouting about the Elgin Marbles, even the name's a travesty, no, no, another time.

But such beauty of the spinner and weaver's art. A couple of the rugs are listed as S spun, interesting technical point. The convention now is to spin Z for singles, then ply S to create a two ply yarn . I need to find out why the single was spun S. 

Often researchers who are not spinners know the direction, and note it, but don't follow up on why. At least the presenters I've asked sort of coughed and shuffled their feet, maybe translating to don't ask me, I only work here.

Anyway a terrific experience in the company of scholars, for your humble blogger. They put us all on the screen, and people could ask questions directly as well as in the written q and a.  I listened to my betters!