As I started to visit Iran, I started to meet Iranian craftsmen – often high up on rudimentary scaffolding. I also started to realise how little is understood about their impressive skills and knowledge. With many master craftmen (ustads) relatively old, and relatively few young men now wanting to undergo the lengthy, often dirty, and …
This is one of the better books I’ve read on Iran. But It drove me mad with all: – the lists (actual, and cleverly disguised by stringing them together with commas / semi-colons). It’s great to do research, but maybe he didn’t need to put all of it in? – the whining about cab drivers …
The Clark-Corcoran carpet may be the most expensive Persian carpet ever – but when Rupprecht of Bavaria unexpectedly found some (much less expensive) kilims and carpets in the back rooms of his castle, he decided to instigate the first block-buster exhibition of Islamic art objects. The Munich 1910 exhibition “Masterworks of Muhammadan Art” set the …
Here’s Mary-Jo Otsea selling the Clark- Corcoran carpet in June 2013 at Sothebys in New York for $33.7 million. This carpet is named after Senator William Clark, “the richest man west of the Mississippi” in the 1890s. Apparently no-one attempted to compete with his buying power in his lifetime – though, of course, the American sanctions …
And here’s a video of Mary Jo Otsea, the lead on carpets at Sothebys, selling the most expensive Persian carpet (so far). Look out for her slip at 1 minute 40 seconds: she mixes up $16 million and $16,000 – a much more usual price for her – as she says “Hello! Excuse me, I’m …
This is the most expensive Persian carpet ever purchased at auction: the Clark-Corcoran sickle carpet – sold for $33.7M in Sotheby’s New York Here’s what Sotheby’s said about it. And here’s more details in my blog posting Image credit: artsjournal
Lots of the work on Safavid Isfahan sees it as it is now – and not as the work-in-progress that many of the Isfahanis, and the European travellers, saw when they visited thoughout the seventeenth century. This is surely wrong! This section aims to bring out some of this – focusing especially on some less …
I have tried in this part of the website to give a flavour of the impressive maydan that Shah Abbas imagined within the Safavid architectural ensemble in Isfahan. Archaeological and textual sources make it clear that this maydan was constructed in two distinct phases: first in 1590 and then, over a decade later, in 1602. …
One of the ways that Herbert made his observations intelligible – and appropriately splendid – was by comparing the locales he visited in Persia with places that were already known to his audience. Persian authors did this too: Natanzi, for example, declared the 1590 Isfahani qaysariya “like one that was [once] in Tabriz”[1]. While Persians …
Herbert’s later editions had lots of ‘scholarly’ additions (as well as the occasional poem). Following on what he described as his “poore [sic] reading”[1] Herbert started referencing other – and especially classical – authors[2]. This approach was shared by many Europeans: Pietro della Valle, for example, did the same. Although this has been described as …