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

In his second book about Cuba, Jonathan Hansen describes a different Fidel Castro than I knew. A highly educated and sporting man whose vision of a liberal nationalism for Cuba with civil and political liberties which later disappeared. Great book and interesting op-ed in today’s New York Times.

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.

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.

While looking at Luca Brancati’s war rug Pinterest I discovered a
rug in the collection of the British Museum which was donated by Graham Gower in 2010.

The most similar rug, that I have seen, to the rug above is this beautiful rug from the second iteration of the Weavings of War show which traveled the US from 2005 to 2007.

Graham Gower donated some other gems too.

More
More object details are here.

More object details are here.

More object details are here.

The The rest of Graham Gower’s donation is here.
Succinct list view. The dates are compelling

The rug behind these guys is amazing. Would love to know more about it.

Source

The border looks a little like this rug:




From a different angle and era:

The Salt Lake Tribune says the rug is “1930’s era carpet depicting a map of Egypt.”

Contact us with questions or to make a purchase

Hadi Maktabi was introduced to me on Instagram, and he sells beautiful stuff. Canvassing his website, I came across this Bahktiar tribal portrait rug. Very wacky and cool:

A novel new art web site has launched today, and Kevin Sudeith is honored and excited to be included.  The site, At The Gates of the West, features context about artists and their work,  a rack of their artworks, and a dialogue with the artists.  It is fun and interesting.

Site shut down, and link changed in March 2024 to limit javascript and cookies