THE SECRET KEY
Astronomy as a solution of the layout and design in carpet & textile art : the comb
Eberhart Herrmann
(translated by Jacqueline Simcox)

Discover the invisible through the visible!" is the task set by Solon, the Athenian philosopher and elder statesman (around 640 - 560 BC). This imperative is taken as the starting point for an examination of the comb motif in a nineteenth century Caucasian Akstafa prayer carpet, where it is prominently placed at the entrance of the niche (see cover and fig. 16).
On close inspection the comb is positioned at a slightly oblique angle to the horizontal line and has a noticeable upward slope to the left, so that altogether it is not placed in a right angle (Fig.1)...

If you were to ask a North European archaeologist and an art collector to describe an ancient textile, you would almost certainly receive two entirely different answers. The archaeologist would tell you about the wet, brown, tattered scraps which emerge from excavations in northern Europe and which are barely distinguishable from the mud in which they are found, while the art collector would call to mind, say, a medieval tapestry, an oriental carpet, or an embroidered vestment. Both are talking about something that has been spun, woven and dyed, and yet that is where the similarity ends. The archaeologist handles fragments of everyday clothing, which are recovered by the barrowload in some sites, and which are of technological interest but little beauty (Fig.001). The art collector - and also the curator of collections in fine art museums - deals with items which have artistic merit, and perhaps even ethnic or religious significance, one piece at a time...

Oriental rugs frequently enjoy the most extraordinary destiny, that of having lived and for long been used in the East or West, and to finish in a museum, apparently for ever, and so become the ever-lasting flags and symbols of the pomp of a dynasty, of former trade or of the technical and artistic skills of a country or period. The rugs arrive at this destiny in the strangest of ways; there are many museums around the world that have created collections of Oriental carpets and textiles, sometimes through an interest for the East, sometimes as a result of ethnographical interests, others because inherited. This is the case of the Vienna museum, which possesses one of the richest and important collections of rugs.
MAK is the abbreviated name nowadays preferred by the former Museum fŸr Angewandte Kunst, or Museum of Applied Arts, which now houses most of the works of art belonging to the Habsburg imperial family...