Author Archives: Kevin

About Kevin

Kevin Sudeith is an artist and the creator and curator of the war rug collection seen on warrug.com. Beginning as (and remaining) a collector, he began selling war rugs to learn as much as possible about the rugs. Later he sold what he calls "regular rugs" to better study rugs and their historical origins. Sudeith learned how war rugs related to traditional Afghan tribal and workshop rugs as well as the broader Turkmen and Persian rug traditions.

Luca Brancati Book!

Im a rare treat and a historic piece of war rug history, Luca Emilio Brancati has published a book. He has a unique and historic collection, so this book promises to be fascinating. It is available here, but American shipping is not yet available.
Order his book here (embed removed to prevent ugly and unwanted javascript from running on our page)

I am super excited to see it, and I expect to learn a great deal. Very exciting!

Cityscape in Springtime Rug

This is a rug that was sold before being properly inventoried, and recently I found these photos from 2004. If you happened to have bought this rug from me at the showroom in Long Island City, please contact me, for it would be good to get better quality photos.



What makes this rug so great? First, its depiction of spring in a city. The colors are lively and fresh. Second, it is a well drawn and clear Modern City Landscape, and maybe a key to identifying the location. Third, the drawing is very good with wonderful details: the plane, the motorcycle, the blooming trees. Fourth, the border is festive with strong rhythm. Enjoy!

Marled and Checkered Colors in Afghan Rugs

Afghan tribal rugs use two techniques to create “halftones”. The techniques are “checkered” knots and “marling”. Marled and checked colors function particularly well in landscape backgrounds.

CHECKERED COLORS
When individual knots alternate between colors (both vertically and horizontally) the result is a checkered color, like these examples:


^ Rug #1065 ^



^ Rug #840 ^


^ Rug #355 ^

MARLED COLORS
Marled is two colors spun into one thread then woven into a carpet. It is more irregular and “blurry” than checkered colors.



(verso) ^ Rug #779 ^


^ Rug #1484 ^


^ Rug # 1454 ^



^ Rug #41 ^


^ Rug #49 ^


^ Rug #55 ^

American Foreign Service Legal Defense Fund

To honor their oaths, some American civil servants are taking considerable risks and expense to describe the machination of the American government. Specialized legal council is important for these civil servants, but such expenses are not built into civil service salaries, so a fund has been set up to help civil servants with these expenses. More info here:

https://www.afsa.org/donate

Info about Temple Exhibition

Temple has put together an informative website about the show of war rugs they hosted in 2016. The present a good inventory the rugs, and an interesting commentary.

The Libraries and the Intellectual Heritage Program present an exhibition of Afghan War Rugs, traditional hand knotted carpets that combine ancient practice with the latest in the daily lives of the weavers. Many of the rug designs originate in antiquity, but since the 1980’s now incorporate the war that spans from the Soviet invasion through today’s battles with the Taliban. The weavers have witnessed epic historical events, encoded them in their traditional art, and wrought important contemporary art

Here is our inventory of the rugs warrug.com loaned them for the show.





The Jacques Cadry Collection

In 2017 there was an exceptional auction in Australia, which I just learned about from Luca Brancati’s Pinterest, of the Australian rug dealer and expert Jacques Cadry’s collection.

Here is a fine Kirman pictorial rug showing a scene familiar to fans of Afghan Pictorial rugs showing a garden scene with a woman pouring wine in a scene taken from Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat.


Here is an Afghan take on the same subject:


Some of the Soviet figure rugs and war rugs sold looked familiar from the work of Nigel Lendon and Tim Bonyhady. If you know the location of that resource, please contact me.





Here are some fascinating rugs. The price estimates looked good, so I regret missing the opportunity to bid.



This one is amazing, with Alexander of Macedonia’s citadel.

There were four Baghlani rugs in the auction, each one unusual and cool.

There were also a few examples of so-called Diamond Herati designs, which are the famous Herati design from Herat area.



Finally, there are a couple rugs which provide a unique and important perspective on an Turkish war rug from around the time of World War I


Available, please stay tuned for better photos.