Span 110cms; embroidered band width 14cms, not including tassels. Embroidery on cotton, probably all vegetable dyed.   

uzbek-hanging1.jpg (view at 150-200%)

uzbek-detail.jpg (close-up)

This hanging is part of another story, that of my relationship with Turkey, which goes back a long way, and I’m not sure where I should begin it. I lived in Turkey for a year before it was swarming with Europeans; learnt Turkish and acquired a connection with the country and its culture which I have never either developed or entirely lost. Let’s say that Turkey has remained always somewhere on my distant horizon, even though I have not been back these many years, and have lost the language.

As a boy, I was brought up in a strictly philistine  decor, and it was my first girlfriend, with whom I lived in Turkey, who first opened my eyes to the world of aesthetics. I was not in any frame of mind to collect Turkish or any other objets d’art in those days, or I should by now, I imagine, have a wonderful and valuable collection.

I have not been back to Turkey, but sometimes Turley has come to me, not least since I became interested in antiques. Within that very general category, it has taken time for textiles, including rugs, to precipitate out - to use a figure of speech - as my predominant interest. One reason for that is that our small flat is full to bursting with furniture, and there is nowhere for anything more. I have to admit that there is no more wall space either, and I already have some textiles packed away waiting for us to move somewhere larger! But where the rugs are concerned, I have tended to narrow my focus to replacing the bog standard items I acquired in my early collecting days with pieces which, if more expensive, at least have the merit of real distinctiveness. In my case at least, this process tends to be driven forward by the way my taste develops. Something that I embraced enthusiastically ten years ago because I had never seen anything like it may now be something of which I have seen many very similar examples, or something which, relative to an equivalent item of real character and distinction which I have come across inthe meantime, now seems common and even vulgar. For example, I have just acquired a Persian kilim which seems to have been woven by a disciple of Matisse - I’ll post it at some stage. The point is that I have had to see hundreds of kilims over the years in order to be able to say, the moment I set eyes on this one: ‘this is absolutely special’. The item in question I find to be visually stunning, for sure. But ten years ago, I would not have bought it because I would have had no means to tell that an item 5 or 6 times the price of the basic common or garden variety could be excellent value for money. Nor would I have been able to appreciate its exceptional qualities - I had to see those 500 ordinary kilims first. 

Let me come to the point! Uzbekistan is part of the area of Turkic language speakers which stratches all the way to, I believe, Mongolia, whence came the original founders of the Ottoman Empire. When the Soviet bloc fell apart in the early 1990s, traders gained access to the central Asian former satellites of the USSR, and of course traders from Turkey were ideally placed, not least linguistically, to penetrate East into the likes of Uzbekistan to buy local textiles. one of these traders, having at some stage become involved with an English girl, moved some of his business from Istanbul to the south coast of England, fetching up in a resort just down the coast from us. Mehmet, as I shall call him, has a real knowledge and love of Turkish carpets, and has been a great source of inspiration to me. I managed to buy two old carpets from him, both of which took me moths to pay off; then I dropped by and found them in the middle of a sale. After spending an hour or more crawling all over he shop trying to figure out what to take advantage of at the sale prices, above all as this time I was not going back into the long, slow installment payments routine, I decide to forget rugs and go for the Uzbek hanging featured here. Mehmet’s assistant, who happened to be officiating that day, looked at me. ‘You have good taste’ he said. When a dealer is him/herself a connaisseur, you know that you have chosen well when you sense, as here,  a feeling of regret that hard economics alone obliges them to part with the item which they are selling to you.