room for debate?

See this extraordinary photograph in context at the NYT.

Nancy Hatch Dupree: an interview

Listen with Philip Adams on the ABC’s Late Night Live

cold war art

I read somewhere that artists in The West were not producing images about war or the arms race. I thought “that can’t be right?”  Then I remembered this Sydney University Art Workshop poster, designed by Nigel Lendon and printed by Pam Debenham. Never been translated into a war rug!

souvenirs from the front

a recent sighting of War Rugs on the boardwalk at Kandahar Air Field…

“….War Rugs sighted on a stall on the boardwalk KAF next to Tim
Hortons, Burger King,  Pizza Hut, stalls with cheeky t-shirts, one stall
carrying fur goods and then a spa of sorts.  The centre of the boardwalk
area also sports a hockey arena.  The rugs were 3ft x 5ft in general,
some had English writing but often misspellings and they cost only
$30US!  One rug had Chinook helicopters on it and a (blue) Canadian
flag.  Chinooks are used by the Joint Task Force and six more were
bought by the Canadian Government and arrived in March.”

goat’s hair selvedge theory

One of the folk tales which is told by dealers as a means to identify an “authentic” Baluch carpet – which since 1980 is a questionable concept anyway – is that a coarse goat’s hair selvedge is said to prevent scorpions from wandering onto a carpet. Well, maybe, but it also works for snakes! Here’s a photograph from a 1994 issue of Hali where herpetologist and Baluch authority Jerry Anderson proves his theory! But did anyone ask: what’s to stop them creeping and crawling on to the carpet from the fringe ends? I’m sure the dealer would have an answer… Read the whole Tom Cole interview on his site here…

HALI: We have heard that during the recent troubles the Baluch peoples in northern Afghanistan were either killed or driven out by the local population, who resented them. Who are they? JA: They are a mixture of Baluch and Arabs, and also Lokharis, who do not weave piled rugs but instead make those dark, dark kilims which often have tufts of wool inserted on the flatweave, and are woven in two pieces and joined in the centre. There are also Brahuis in that area who are called Baluch. There is a book written by a Russian that tells of the whole distribution of the Brahuis in Khorasan, Transcaspia, the Bukhara area and the Mazar-i-Sharif area. So many different peoples are called Baluch, or call themselves Baluch. In Farsi, the word means beggar. It also has the sense of nakedness, a person living in a tent and clothed in rags. Now the word -luch means a parasitic type of person. Ba means ‘from’ or ‘of’, so the name Baluch has bad connotations in Farsi… [The] Sistani tribal lifestyle was essentially intact until about 1980, nomads moving around in the same locales as they had for centuries. But then the Sarbandi and many other Sistanis were displaced during the Islamic Revolution.

war carpets as inspiration

See the blog of  the Chicago artist Barbara Koenen who re-makes war carpets in a surprising material…

like grasping smoke

Negotiating with the Taliban (as suggested by President Obama) is “like grasping smoke”. So says the ANU’s Professor William Maley, on the ABC today. Let’s hope the O’s comment was a throwaway line…

Puppet Master

Well there were many. But this cartoon of Yuri Andropov is the kind of political imagery we surmise was the origin of the “Puppet Najibullah” carpets.

vale Rob Fyke

from Michele Hardy:

I am very sad to announce the passing of Robert Fyke, a long time war rug collector and researcher on January 21, 2009.  I met Rob when I took up a position at The Nickle Arts Museum at the University of Calgary in 2005.  Rob approached me with the idea of curating an exhibition of war rugs and introduced me to some of the most enigmatic examples of textile art I have come across.  I was hooked and we became close friends and colleagues.  Rob conducted an extensive review of the available literature on war rugs, probing the dark recesses of the Internet and library for obscure references and historical information.  He was a regular visitor to the Rugs of War Blog, keeping me abreast of upcoming exhibitions and where in the world Nigel Lendon was.  In 2006 we mounted “Made in Afghanistan:  Rugs and Resistance, 1979-2005” at The Nickle Arts Museum.  The exhibition included twenty-five war carpets along with photographs by Luke Powell, selections of poetry by Khallilulah Khalili, and music by Farhad Darya.  It was Rob’s vision to create an exhibition that spoke to the complexities of the political turmoil in Afghanistan.  It was a wonderful exhibition and I was privileged to work with Rob.

As saddened as I am with his passing, I am pleased to announce that his collection of carpets, as well as his research and books, have been donated to the Nickle.  I look forward to engaging students with this material and continuing to research and exhibit it in the future.  Thank you Rob for your friendship, your enthusiasm, and your generosity.  I will miss you.

Michele A. Hardy
Curator of Decorative Arts
The Nickle Arts Museum
University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada

Iranian motifs in an Afghan war carpet

This carpet has all the characteristics of a first generation war carpet, and the central motif of the Azadi Monument (in Tehran) suggests it was made by one of the million Afghan refugees who fled to Iran in the early years of the Soviet invasion. We have never discovered the meaning of the “HEB or BEH” logo – or why it should appear in Roman script – was it a logo? or political acronym? Any suggestions welcomed…