MAN AND RUGS
Anthropomorphic depiction in Oriental textiles
Taher Sabahi

TWO FRAGMENTS OF ARDEBIL
Problems and questions concerning their history
Franz Sinderman
Georges Bonani

One of the most important conquests made by man during his long evolution is certainly that of language, of a code enabling him to communicate every discovery, every experience, every perception through a symbol: which may by a sound but also - often - a graphic representation, a drawing. The difference between the two is that the graphic expression, unlike the spoken or written word, knows no borders: if the image of an object resembles reality, anyone in the world, in any period, would understand what object the image refers to.
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Some ten years ago, one of the present authors acquired two carpet fragments from the former collection of the German carpet dealer Carl Hopf. Both fragments had, reportedly, been purchased by Hopf in the London auction market around the year 1910. One of them -
- was reproduced by him in his brochure of 1912 and his booklet of 19132),respectively and, again, in a book by Albrecht Hopf in 19613). From the captions of the figures in Carl Hopf's publications, it is evident that the picture of the fragment was selected to convey an idea of the London "Ardabil" Medallion carpet4). The second fragment is from a series of field and border fragments which are attributed to the same Mughal tree ( ... )

While I was in Kerman in the 80s and 90s searching for Afshari weavings, I ran into quite a few non-Afshari villages and camps, and found several groups of non-Afshari weavings. I bought some samples of their works both old and new, which I hope in the course of time to be able to publish. The present article is the first of a series which I plan to write on these interesting weavings.
Both in the rug market and rug literature all nomadic weavings from Kerman Province are labelled Afshar. In the two articles I wrote for Hali1 presenting the works of Afshars of Kerman, I pointed out the great number of non-Afshari works which erroneously are called Afshari. (...)