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 | Ipek:The Crescent & The Rose By Nurhan Atasoy, Walter Denny, Louise W Mackie and Hülya Tezcan Azimuth Editions and TEB Yayincilik ve Iletisim AS. English edition distributed in the UK by Thames & Hudson Hardback Price £95 plus £30.10 p&p CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT
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"It is the sheer splendour of the work that makes the impact: page after page of beauty, designs that have influenced textile designers the world over." Alistair McAlpine | ||||||
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The cover story of Cornucopia 23 was a special 24-page illustrated preview of The Crescent and the Rose. The following is an excerpt. Rapt in Silk William Morris and Mariano Fortuny familiarised the West with the sumptuous floral designs of Ottoman textiles. But few are aware of the bolder side of Turkish design: vibrant abstract patterns which are almost Japanese in their spareness. ‘Crescent and Rose’, an important new book on Ottoman textiles, redresses this balance. Drawing on the expertise of a number of contributors, it has tracked down the finest velvets, brocades and cloths of gold from Russia to Romania, and uncovered some of the Topkapi’s long-hidden imperial finery. Cornucopia examines this impressive book in a special twelve pages What the best-dressed diplomat was wearing... Siegmund von Herberstein (1486?1566) served three Holy Roman Emperors as ambassador and was a keen observer of dress. His illustrated autobiography, published in 1560, shows him dressed in the robes he had worn in the presence of or had been given by the rulers of Poland, Russia and Spain as well as Turkey. When Süleyman the Magnificent visited Buda in 1541, shortly after annexing most of Hungary, von Herberstein was representing the future Holy Roman Emperor, Ferdinand I, king of Bohemia and Hungary. He was dressed in a fashionable short Italian velvet gown with black stockings and shoes. These contrast strikingly with the robes of honour bestowed on him by the Sultan. This disparity greatly amused his successor, the diplomat Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq: “The Turks were quite as much astonished at our manner of dress as we at theirs. They wear long robes which reach almost to their ankles and are not only more imposing but seem to add to their stature; our dress, on the other hand, is so short and tight that it discloses the forms of the body, which would be better hidden, and is thus anything but becoming, and besides, for some reason or other, it takes away from a man’s height and gives him a stunted appearance.” Von Herberstein’s new robes are so accurately rendered that the draughtsman even shows the different heights of pile. The | inner kaftan is of Turkish velvet, and the outer, ceremonial kaftan is made of two types of Italian velvet, which was considered second only to cloth of gold and silver in luxury and prestige. Elsewhere Busbecq spoke of Turkish silks in rhapsodic fashion: “Now come with me and cast your eye over the immense crowd of turbaned heads, wrapped in countless folds of the whitest silk, and bright raiment of every kind and hue, and everywhere the brilliance of gold, silver, purple, silk and satinÉ A more beautiful spectacle was never presented to my gaze.” In the early eighteenth century Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, the great wit and letter writer who was wife of the English ambassador, was transported by the vision of a beautifully dressed Turkish woman of Edirne: “She was dress’d in a Caftan of Gold brocade flower’d with Silver, her drawers were pale pink, Green and silver, her Slippers white. On her Head a rich Turkish Handkerchief of pink and Silver. I have read somewhere that Women allways speak in rapture when they speak of Beauty, but I can’t imagine why they should not be allow’d to do so.” These and many other documents attest to the fascination exercised upon the European mind by Turkish silks. Later, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, European designers from William Morris to Mariano Fortuny brought their admiration for Turkish silks into the mainstream of European textile design, while the great European and American collections of applied arts acquired Turkish silks in vast numbers. Busbecq’s eloquent description of the role of textiles in expressing imperial splendour, and thus imperial power, goes to the core of how Ottoman woven silk fabrics impressed Turks and foreigners alike. Turkish silks reflected the ideology of power, and facilitated the projection of that power in the empire and beyond. Because of their role as diplomatic gifts, they came to symbolise the Ottoman imperium to foreigners, while within the huge empire they were a major form of artistic expression, an important vehicle for the transmission of artistic ideas, and a key factor in the economy. Silks played an important role in Ottoman public ceremonies and in upper-class culture. State officials could expect to be rewarded for their efforts in silk, such was the status it denoted. | Review by Alistair McAlpine of 'Ipek: Imperial Silks and Velvets' published in Cornucopia 24
Of all the world’s textiles, those of the Ottoman Empire are by far the most beautiful. Beautiful in the sense of obvious and understandable Beauty. These Ottoman textiles scream luxury; the depth of their colours, the complexity of their designs excite the eye and set both mind and heart racing. In the book Ipek: The Crescent and the Rose are page after page of imperial Ottoman silks and velvets, many of them illustrated in full colour. The first thing to say of this work, compiled by Julian Raby, is that it is brilliant. It is the first of its kind in a field that boasts many beautiful books an indispensable reference work for scholars in this field and a feast that will sate the hunger of a glutton for colour. It is the sheer splendour of the work that makes the impact: page after page of beauty, designs that have influenced textile designers the world over. The beauty of this book, however, should not detract from its scholarship. The textiles are drawn not only from the rightly famous Topkap? Palace Museum, but also from London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, Boston’s Fine Art Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the State Historical Museum, Moscow, and many other museums as well as private collections. There is also a technical analysis of selected textiles, a glossary of selected terms, ten large pages of notes, a considerable bibliography and an efficient index. This book is not just a pretty thing: it is also a vital tool of the textile dealer’s trade and a boon to scholars of Islamic culture. Here we have, illustrated and described, the source material that inspired so many art movements in the Western world in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Not only are the textiles themselves illustrated, but there is a description of how they were made, and why. Of particular interest are the descriptions of the wearing of these textiles. For example: on the death of his father, Sultan Selim, in 1574, “Murad appeared wearing a black long-sleeved robe [Nimtene] with frogging under a purple atlas outer robe [Dolama] and his head was bound by a woollen shawl”. Later, after changing into a robe of purple velvet (Butrakî kadife)... The description is reminiscent of a television commentary on a state funeral or wedding in the twenty-first-century Western world. Priceless fabrics were laid in the path of princes. One particularly beautiful description is of the heir apparent arriving [in 1582] at the palace of Ibrahim Pa?a, where serâser fabrics woven with silver and gold were spread on the ground under the hooves of his horse. “As the horses’ feet left the marks of their hooves and nails on these priceless fabrics, hundreds of stars and crescents appeared on the faces of the beautiful Dibâs [brocaded silk fabric], as if the Heavens had honoured these satins.” Useful, beautiful, a pure pleasure ? this book not only delights but chronicles a high point of Islamic art at a time when the standards demanded by the known world were at their very highest. Socially and economically important, these imperial Ottoman textiles played a starring role in their age. Alistair McAlpine | ||||||||
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