Tribal art: 100 carpets from around the world
All woven by women, Danny Mehra’s carpets belong to the early 19th and 20th centuries.
There isn’t any carpet like Aladdin’s magic one. But there sure are carpets that can tell you stories and take you to a whole new world.
You can see 100 of them at an exhibition this month.
Collector Danny Mehra’s tribal carpets from Iran, Turkey, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Kurdish enclaves in Syria are part of Carpet Stories. The show is a rare look at works from the early 19th to early 20th century all woven by women.
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“Just how women in India embroider together in their free time in the afternoon, tribal women [from Central Asia] would make carpets,” says Mehra, a former Wall Street executive who’s been building his collection for two decades. While the women weaved these carpets, men dyed them. “The designs were jointly improvised over two to three years and hence all of them have heart and soul.”
The pieces in the show are a small part of his personal collection, which he claims can cover an entire football field. “I am superstitious about disclosing the number,” he says. He sources his works from auction houses and from other collectors. “I pick each piece after going through hundreds of carpets and carefully studying each one.” He checks the colour, the quality, dateline, patterns of weaves, place of source and provenance.
Among the highlights of the show is a carpet numbered 717. It’s approximately 150 years old and comes from the one-time kingdom of Khorasan, in northeast Iran. The weaving style of the 6.5 feet by 12 feet carpet indicates that it was probably put together by a Kurdish weaver. “It’s unusually big for a tribal carpet usually made in a small workshop,” says Mehra. “This one was probably made for the tribe’s leader who lived in a big tent.”
The double-headed birds on the borders indicate that the weaver was influenced by the Shahsavan iconography, another carpet-making artistic tradition from Persia.
Another gem, number 664, comes from the conflict zone of Karbakh in Azerbaijan. One of the star attractions at Mehra’s show in Delhi six months ago, the carpet features a row of animals across the top and bottom. “These are either sheep or goats. Next to these is a human figure and the date 1313, indicating that the carpet was made then.”
Where: Cymroza Art Gallery, 72, Bhulabhai Desai Road, Breach Candy
When: September 29 to October 9, 10 am to 8 pm. Open on all days
Call: 2367-1983
Entry is free.
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