| Dear folks - This salon had two main purposes. The first was to
rectify a bit, the regretful situation that occurs when Rug and Textile
Appreciation Morning programs at Washington's Textile Museum include
direct access to materials in the Museum collections: namely, that very
often they are seen by only the number of folks who can fit into Mr.
Myers' former living room (about 75). This is particulary unfortunate
since Museum materials are seen in Rug Morning sessions much less
frequently than they were formerly and very often the pieces shown have
not been exhibited for many years and may not predictably be seen again in
the near future. I have argued that the TM does not get sufficient mileage
out of its very useful, and entirely free, Rug Morning programs and that
since they now have a web site, there is the technological opportunity to
share these sessions and materials with a much larger audience. So this
salon was first, a kind of demonstration of what could be done. (Since
they have the slides on most of these pieces they could actually do it
quite a bit better and we are actively conspiring to help them do
something additional in this particular case.) Second, the momentary
concentration here in Washington, at the moment, of quite a bit of Ottoman
material made it seem appropriate to examine the textiles produced in a
regime that enjoyed uninterrupted rule for 600 years. The desire of the
Ottoman sultans to create for themselves god-like personas, the
centralized character of Ottoman organizatonal modes and the proclivities
of the Ottoman bureaucrats with regard to recordkeeping, combine to
provide a rich harvest of textiles and of records. Daniel, was
particularly helpful in this salon and in truth provided much of the
useful detail, mining a book he has on the textiles we presented. Among
the things I learned were: how complex some of these structures were; that
the designs on some of these opulent textiles did sometimes get
transferred to rugs; the liklihood that the Ottowman sultans frequently
over-ate, since many of these caftans are remarkably large; and that the
word that the author of Daniel's book offered as "cintamani," is presented
by most other references as "chintamani," this later spelling signaling
more literally the correct pronounciation. I want to thank those who
offered their thoughts in a salon focused on materials with which most of
us are not well acquainted. Regards, R. John Howe |