THE MAMLUK CARPETS
in the MAK collection of oriental knotted carpets in Vienna
Angela Všlker

A STORY OF TWO SAFS
From Turkestan to Vienna
John Taylor

The Mamluk carpet collection in the MAK, Austrian Museum of Applied Arts in Vienna can as a whole be termed extraordinary not only on account of the sole surviving example in the world of a silk Mamluk carpet (p.13), but also because of the quantity of representative pieces and the excellent state of preservation - apart from parts that have been cut out - of all the Mamluk carpets.1 The five preserved Mamluk carpets were all originally part of the Habsburg household, where - like everywhere else - Oriental carpets were by no means regarded as collectors' items until into the nineteenth century. ...

Probably the first carpet to have been the subject of an entire book is a multi-niche prayer rug from East Turkestan: a so-called saf. It formed the basis of an obscure monograph by the Viennese Orientalist Josef Karabacek, published in 18811. The carpet was in the possession of Theodor Graf, a well-known carpet and antiques dealer with premises in Vienna. It is said to have been acquired in Cairo, and to have come originally from Mecca. Graf was at that time stationed in Egypt, trafficking heavily in papyrus and other antiquities, many of which later passed through Karabacek's hands and into public collections in Austria.2 In his book, Karabacek claimed ...

ICOC Down Under 2004 opened in Sydney, Australia, with a gala event on the evening of Thursday 16 September at the Powerhouse Museum. This regional International Conference on Oriental Carpets, the first ever held in the southern hemisphere, was a collaborative venture by the 24-year old Oriental Rug Society of New South Wales (ORS) and the Powerhouse Museum. Also declared open on that night were two exhibitions: Pathways through paradise: oriental carpets from Australian collections, and Bright flowers: textiles and ceramics of Central Asia, and the International Dealers Fair. ....