This 5 minute film links some work I already did on lemons and the Persian oak – see below.And also adds more on the English Oak. English oaks are – probably – even more entrenched in English folklore and history than Persian oaks are in SW Iran. Quercus robur is England’s national tree and there …
The Bakhtiari are one of the largest of all the Iranian nomadic tribes. I walked the migration (kuch) with the Faridgi family. Kuch traditionally takes place twice a year, when families walk their livestock over the Zagros Mountains, from the winter to the summer pastures. My pictures of this were exhibited at the Brunei Gallery, …
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 …
My Iran-related publications, teaching, conferences and lectures include: Tutor for ISEA Programme at Leighton House: Collecting and Display of Islamic Art. Lecturing on the 1910 Munich exhibition; the 1931 Burlington House exhibition; and Poland as a portal for ‘oriental’ trading in the seventeenth century. Oct-Dec 2014. Air pollution in Iran, British Medical Journal 2014; 348: …
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 …