I put this Salon together as part of an ongoing effort to introduce what we might call "non-mainstream textiles" to the group. I didn't anticipate much discussion, and I didn't get surprised in that respect.

If we compare the contents of Turkotek (or most of the other "rug" websites) with that of, say, HALI, it's hard not to be struck by how narrow the web venues have remained. We seldom stray beyond western and central Asia.

Yet, there's a big, beautiful world of textiles - even if we only count ethnographic textles - and discovering some of them can be gratifying. The T'ai speaking hill tribes of Laos have a tradition of textile art second to none (in my opinion, at least) in terms of aesthetics, ethnographic significance and technical factors. I hope I've persuaded some of you of this. To the others, at least being unimpressed with them is no longer because you had no idea what they look like.

Steve Price