Today Transylvania continues to be the repository of the richest and best-preserved corpus of Turkish carpets outside the Islamic world. Among them are almost four hundred examples attributable to the golden period of Ottoman weaving from the mid 15th to the end of the 18th century. They include many of the ‘classical’ types such as ‘Holbeins’, Ushaks, ‘Lottos’ and Selendis as well as ‘Transylvanians’.
Up to now most attempts to explain the presence of so many Ottoman rugs in the Lutheran churches of the German minority in Transylvania have ranged from the partial to the eccentric. This book is the first to provide clear answers to a number of key questions. Where did the carpets originate? How did they enter the churches? Why have they survived to the present? Based on thorough and detailed review of the historical and material evidence.
Colour images of more than 250 rugs, drawn from all the Transylvanian collections, are published together with technical analyses. The famous collection of the Black Church in Brasov is published in its entirely for the first time.
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