New finds from Anatolia, October 2014

Kilims and rugs found on a three week trip to Anatolia and Cappadocia

We are just home from a three week trip to Turkey, starting in Antalya and working our way up to Cappadocia via Konya and Aksaray. This time we also managed to have some time off looking for interesting kilims and did some sightseeing, visiting Mevlana mosque, home of Rumi, and the carpet museum with its ancient rug fragments. In Cappadocia we enjoyed cooler but mostly fine weather and explored some of the ancient valleys flanked by fairy chimneys, rock cut homes and churches with pigeon houses cut high up into the cliffs.

Here is a selection of the one hundred or so kilims and rugs we found. Antique textiles, including some beautiful Syrian and Cappadocian silk weavings from Urgup, I will post later. If you would like to see more of the finds from this trip, please visit www.kilim.ie

Antique yoruk nomad small rug from the village of Yavuz Eli between Gaziantep and Adiyaman in south east Anatolia.

A large antique Taspinar yoruk nomad kilim with stunning colours and design.

A 1900s long Sivas 9 saf prayer kilim with a design going back to the 18th century.

A very finely woven 19th c. Anatolian kilim with Adana like centre and Aksaray border; stunning colours and drawing!

Large east Anatolian Kurdish rug

A fine 19th century Malatya Sinan village kilim

An antique Aydin Cine kilim from west Anatolia

A beautiful antique kilim from Adana with great colours

A mid 20th century saf kilim from Sivas

A rare small antique kilim from Alibey Huyugu near Cumra close to the ancient site of Catal Hüyuk in the Konya region associated with the Anatolian mother goddess.

A very well woven 20th century prayer kilim from Erzurum

A fine antique Malatya prayer kilim from Porga Village, Yeşilyurt including metal thread

An early 20th century Sarkoy kilim in excellent condition

Antique Uzbek kilim from Ghudjeri, Akingilem, excellent natural dyes with small nomadic repairs with pieces of tent bands

A very rare antique prayer rug from the Kurdish district of Konya. There is one example in the Mevlana Museum, Konya.

A very large old Konya Hotamis kilim in excellent condition (photo taken under artificial light).

An old Karapinar saf kilim

An antique Manastir yastik kilim from the Mihaliccik area of west Turkey

A rare and beautiful yoruk nomad woman's prayer rug woven on goat hair from the Gaziantep region.

A large antique prayer kilim from Yahyali

An excellent example of a small Konya village kilim from Akviran

A rare old kilim horse cover with piled rug decorations from Nidge in Cappadocia

Early 1900s embroidered silk purse/evening bag

A charming silk lady's evening bag/purse from the late Art Nouveau period

Made from beautiful embroidered silk textile in a camomile/daisy design, made by Chinese embroiderers in Gujarat, India producing textiles for the Parsee community in Bombay in the 19th century. The bag has a very well made grained imitation ivory clasp with button catch in an early bakelite type material, two rings with attached strap in the same embroidered fabric. The bag is in excellent condition with the inside professionally relined in green silk. So although antique, the bag is suitable for use or display. Size excluding strap 17cm x 15cm.

For more details and photos see: www.tribal-art.org or www.kilim.ie

An antique Syrian double silk shawl/robe from Aleppo

A stunning Syrian Ottoman period woman’s silk shawl/robe

 Estimated to have been woven in the 1920s, this shawl/robe and is in remarkably good condition for its age as result of being stored in a cloth bag inside a wooden chest. The two parts were originally stitched together with about a 10cm overlap, as in the first composite photo below and was worn as a large shawl/robe as in the second photo. The antique box with mother of pearl inlay in which the shawls were stored in is shown in the final photo. The shawls were woven in Aleppo, Syria near the border with Turkey and the town of Gaziantep. Each shawl is 214cm x 100cm

For more information and photos see www.tribal-art.org or www.kilim.ie

Rare 19th century Hungarian Matyó embroidery

Rare 19th century Hungarian Matyó embroidery

Hand embroidered silk thread on a woven silk fabric foundation, the back almost as good as the front. 180cm x 50cm excluding tassels of approximately15cm long.

In 2012 Matyó embroidery, practiced as a communal activity, was made a UNESCO Intangible Cultural World Heritage. See http://www.unesco.org/culture/ich/RL/00633 for more information. The Matyó settled in the Mezőkövesd area of N. E. Hungary after Turkish invasions in their original homelands. They established themselves as a distinct ethnic group in the late 1800s and are believed to be descended from bodyguards of King Matthias whose Renaissance court inspired their embroidered textiles.

For more photos and details see www.tribal-art.org or www.kilim.ie

Young woman from Mezőkövesd in N. E. Hungary 1928, wearing traditional costume.

West Cork catch of the day from India

Antique Indian Silk Saree

Just arrived from India, a beautiful antique classical saree from the 1920s/30s with a green ground, deep burgundy red stripes, high quality dyes and a delicate block printed pattern. For more photos see www.tribal-art.org or www.kilim.ie

190cm of the 540cm saree folded behind

Dramatic Tibetan Thangka Painting of Mahakala

Large Tibetan thangka painting of Mahakala Shadbhuja

A wrathful manifestation of Avalokiteshvara, bodhisattva of compassion and principal protector of the Gelugpa and Shengpa Kagyu lineages of Tibetan Buddhism, Mahakala Shadbhuja is the ‘Swift-Acting Lord of Pristine Awareness with Six Hands’ in Tibetan mGon-po phyag drug-pa, མགོན་པོ།.

The finely detailed thangka is painted in the ‘nag thang’ style using gold pigment on a black background. This technique is principally used to portray the fierce deities in the Tibetan Buddhist canon. Its effect is to convey the dynamic energy of the illusory appearance of form over an inner core of emptiness; the fearless state of lack of ego and complete unselfishness to which one aspires in the Buddhist practice and experience of complete unconditioned awareness.

On the back of the thangka is the dedicatory mantra oṃ āḥ hūṃ and there is a good explanation of it HERE. In short, oṃ (or aum) represents the body and essence of form, āḥ speech and the essence of sound, and hūṃ represents thoughts and emotions and the essence of mind. The repeated recitation of the mantra is a meditation practice for purifying these physical, energetic and psychological realms.

The thangka was painted in the 20th century and is 124cm x 88cm including a 5cm black border.

For those who are interested, I have begun explaining the different objects held by Mahakala and describing the different figures appearing in the thangka; Vajradhara, bodhisattvas, yogis/ madsiddhas, bardo beings and devi. 

For detailed photos and descriptions see www.tribal-art.org or www.kilim.ie