The Krefeld Catalog Cover Girl

Dear all,

I want to tell you something about my experiences with those “reconstructions”, Michael mentioned before, because I really learned a lot by trying it.

Some years ago we found a real good half kilim from east Kappadokia, and although we liked the colours, the structure, the design … we hesitated to buy this piece.



We knew that this was half of a double-niche kilim and we should look at it vertically. But vertical, this half looked really “half”, and not at all as pretty as looking at it horizontally. Horizontal it nearly looked complete. We did not have the feeling of a fragment, but now we looked at a kind of saf-kilim.

In the end we decided to keep the kilim.



At home we washed and mounted the piece and hung it in our room like a saf kilim. We got used to this picture and we really liked it.

By starting to play with those electronic “reconstructions”, of course we tried to find the “complete” kilim, so we doubled our piece.



At first we were dissatisfied with the result. The kilim looked strange to us. And of course we recognised now, there were at least 2 niches missing. We learned that we had less than a half kilim.

At last we tried to find out what colours our missing niches might have had, but we really could not find any idea. We took a picture and minced it in 7 niches. Than we displaced the pieces. Anyway, we could not find a better combination than we had before and we could not find completely harmonious combination with 9 niches.

So we learned, the woman who wove this beautiful kilim must have really been a good artist. She was able to find the only possible harmonic combination and I am sure she found it at least for 9 niches.

The kilim now is hanging in the exhibition in Krefeld as a saf-kilim, but accompanied with the picture of the reconstruction. The half piece now decorates the cover of the catalog to the exhibition - our "Cover Girl".

Harry Koll

Mr. Koll -

You certainly made the right decision in buying this nice, wonderfully colorful fragment and your display of it horizontally was imaginative and does really make for a more satisfying view of it.

And your computer reconstruction is also very interesting. Some other folks have done similar things here from time to time. As you say, there are definitely things to be learned in this way.

I'm probably a little "thicker" than usual here this morning but say a bit more about how you know that there were nine niches in this piece?

Regards,

R. John Howe

Dear John Howe,

Of course I can not declare with exactitude, that 2 or 3 or more
double-niches of this kilim are missing. But I am sure that the kilim is not complete, at least on one side. At the left side we can see the proof of an additional niche with aubergine and yellow colours. The proof is very small and you might not see it on the picture; there are only a few threads. Moreover we saw in the reconstruction that the proportion of height and width is not harmonious.

If you have seen very many kilims, either original or in pictures, you can recognize the usual proportions. We believe that there were 9 double-niches because most kilims show an uneven number of niches. From double-niches kilims with an comparable graphic we have seen certainly pieces with only14 double-niches (2 x 7). But the niches are clearly smaller in those.

In our case we took the real measures in cm to indicate that the original kilim had 9 double-niches. The kilim in our reconstruction is 295 x 160 cm.
With 9 double-niches it might have had about 400 x 160 cm. This is a usual size for this kind of kilim.

regards,

Harry

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