The lack of intelligent discourse on many internet websites is a given, however, on turk0tek dot com the frequency of idiocy witnessed there boggles the mind.RK is banned from participating, with good reason, as our ability to disprove the moronic opinions expressed by participants has embarrassed and ridiculed them to no end.
RK has beaten these fools like a stubborn mule and shown their ideas to be nothing but senseless pigslop and worse.
Here is a post written by one of their more knowledgeable cretin concerning a comment RK made in our RK examines Anatolian kelim discussion.
Here is our comment:
"By 'seriously old' RK means kelim appearing to have been made well before the orientalist craze created foreign demand and the ensuing beginning of commercial production that began in the late 1880s to satisfy that demand."
Why anyone would pick this simple statement and attempt to criticize it amazes us.
But no figuring how the mini-mind of a moron works, so let's just take this attempt on face value.
Here is what one of the pick of the pigsloppers, marla aka mz muffins mallet, said with our rejoinders interspersed in bold type:
"The commercialization and export of knotted-pile carpets was certainly given a major boost by the Orientalist Craze in the 1880s--both in the US and in Europe. But kilims were not a part of that commercialization, and remained largely unknown in the West until quite recently."
One could write reams about the convergence of economic, social, political, and technological determinants inherent in the how and why oriental carpets became popular in the 1880-1910 period.
While it is very true the kelim, or palas as they were called, were not nearly as well-represented in the thousands of bales of weavings imported into England, Germany and America at that time, they still were imported in numbers that were significant enough to mention, particularly compared to previous periods.
This is the essence of our point, and to try and discount it, or even deny it, raises questions of reason, agenda and motive, not to mention ignoring the facts.
Plus, using the word recent leads one to believe within the past 10 years, or maybe even 20, and to believe kelim have only been popular since 1989 is not only stupid, it is patently idiotic.
"Senneh kilims, 16th and 17th century silk Kashan kilims, and large Caucasian soumaks were among the few types well known in the West."
Again here is someone shooting the mouth off without connecting their brain to their tongue.
How many "16th and 17th century silk Kashan kilim" were well known? And among what group(s) of "knowers" were these incredibly rare weavings "well known?"
Again here is more blithering BS and nonsensical spin passed off as fact -- too bad it ain't fact to anyone who knows anything about these weavings, a position the participants on turk0tek dot com surely can not claim.
True, there clearly were some Persian"Senneh kilim and Caucasian soumak" but there were just as many, if not more, two-panel Karaman, Rehanli and Alleppo Turkish kelim sold in the west as furniture accessory.
Again mallet's statements twist fact to present an agenda far from factual.
"When Anthony Landreau and Ralph Pickering mounted a Textile Museum (Washington) exhibition in 1969 and published a catalog FROM THE BOSPORUS TO SAMARKAND: FLAT-WOVEN RUGS, nomadic flatweave pieces were new to most people."
Like who is mallet lumping in the blanket "most people" reference?
The lay public?
Surely not collectors, as RK was collecting kelim in the late 1960's and we knew a number of people who were interested in, and had, them as well.
Another foolish statement by mallet, one that also calls into question what she is trying to do, and where she is trying to go with all this bluster.
"Of the 112 pieces in that catalog, only 10 kilims and bags were Turkish. "
We could debate that number but we agree Turkish kelim were not as plentiful among the show's examples or in the hands of other 'collectors' but RK's original comment, which mz muffins is after all attempting to discredit, had nothing to do with collectors -- RK was talking about people who were using kelim as furniture accessory.
Clearly mallet can't read or is just totally bent on trying to critique what we said. Either way her position is as full of holes as a 100 pound box of dunkin' donuts, probably her preferred brand.
"A great many pieces in the catalog were erroneously identified, because so little was known about them, and question marks appeared routinely in the labeling. Caucasian and NW Persian pieces dominated the exhibition, especially small soumak bags from the Caucasus and NW Persia. Pieces at that time had been gathered up by a few collectors only; they were strictly ethnographic items, just as were the wooden farm tools, spinning wheels, etc. that they also collected."
What this has to do with the subject at hand is as unfathomable as the rest of mz muffins diatribe.
Perhaps is she just trying to show how much she knows, or is it doesn't know?
"Ethnographic museums in Europe were also beginning to put together collections. Josephine Powel, for example, gathered materials for Amsterdam's Instituut fur den Tropen and Rotterdam's Ethnographic Museum."
Ahh, the great collector Josephine Powell. RK had some nice talks with Josephine, who deserves credit for her ambition and stamina to travel the back roads of Turkey where few westerners, let alone women, went.
But as far as as being a knowledgeable and savvy collector ms Powell is surely not going to be remembered for that part of her legacy -- well at least not among those who are expert enough to differentiate a mid-period kelim from an early one.
Additionally, what does Powell and European ethnographic museums have to do with ms muffin's desire to prove RK wrong?
Maybe we're biased but really now, mallet, get a grip, woman, and quit grabbing at every straw in your flea ridden mattress.
"In May of 1977 David Black and Clive Loveless opened an exhibition of kilims in London and published a catalog, THE UNDISCOVERED KILIM. It included 55 kilims--Persian, Caucasian and Anatolian. It was an eye-opener for most of us."
While it might have been an "eye-opener" for mallet, a nobody then as well as now in the world of kelim collectors, it surely wasn't for RK and many other on the scene collectors we knew.
Once more, what does this have to do with RK's statement?
"They stated in their introduction that they had often paid ten to twenty pounds for each, because in the trade, kilims were considered inferior. Bales of pile carpets were shipped to the West in the nineteen hundreds wrapped in old kilims, and these pieces were often unraveled to use for re-piling old knotted carpets."
For the umpteenth time here is mz muffins motoring on to nowhere with her wheels spinning uselessly.
After WWII, few people were decorating with oriental carpets, or kelim, and of course that fact is responsible for the possibilities to purchase oriental rugs and kelim for peanuts.
But kelim were, in numbers, extant here in America and Europe, and that's the point mallet is trying so desperately to discount, and failing so miserably to accomplish.
"Old kilims turned up during these years only in odd places in the US. I occasionally encountered a piece in the back of an Armenian rug dealer's office--a curiosity that he had picked up on his travels. I remember seeing a Caucasian kilim in the background of an old photo of sculptor Louise Nevelson. I, myself, bought a large crock for $15 in a Minnesota auction in 1964 that had an ancient Caucasian kilim stuffed inside. In about 1975, I found a very ragged northeastern Anatolian prayer kilim in an Atlanta flea market. But these were rare events. Rug dealers, for the most part, knew nothing of kilims. Shortly after that, I found a Turkish rug dealer and a Persian dealer in New York who had private collections of old kilims, and who were starting to sell a few late 19th century kilims. But there was, at that time, NO commercial kilim production on the market."
In light of our statments of fact above, and reading mallet's words, it should become clear to anyone with enough sense to strike a match without setting themselves on fire mallet's verbosity is as misplaced as her trying to prove RK's comment as incorrect.
Here's the Merrian-Webster dictionary definition of commercialize:
"1. to develop commerce in
2. to exploit for profit"
Nowhere does the word commercialize mean to produce, and RK's comment is perfectly in keeping with that definition and, no matter how hard mz muffins tries, she is just digging the hole she's fallen into deeper and deeper.
And remember, we wrote "beginning of commercial production" and there is no doubt, in places like Karaman, Rehanly and Allepo there were made-for-market kelim being produced in the period 1880-1910.
"David Black, himself, says , "I first came upon them (kilims) in Greece in the sixties when I had just left school. I stumbled upon them almost by accident, walking through the flea markets of Athens at a time when I was experiencing an increasing and I suppose, somewhat romantic attraction for the Orient." He goes on to say, "I did not find a great quantity of kilims there. They were few and far between. Moreover one often had to seek them out in some very unlikely places such as the haunts of Gypsy traders who crisscrossed the countryside exchanging new for old, in an age when the cult of the acrylic blanket reigned supreme! However, the kilims one did find there were usually very good. A quirk of history, namely the influx of immigrants from Turkey in the twenties, meant that a number of wonderful kilims found their way to Greece. "
Who cares about kelim in Greece? Obviously only a greasy jerk like mallet whose straw-grabbing has now reached a level lower than an ant in a wheel rut.
To call mallet's discourse, aimed at critiquing RK's simple statement, a wind bag of flatulence, is giving her more credit than she deserves.
"David Black continued (in the 1977 catalog), "Very few collections of kilims exist, and most of these have been built up in the last ten years. In Tehran they were not considered luxurious enough to be put on the floor of town houses."
As a point of fact, RK was very friendly with David Black and Clive Loveless during this period, both before the White Chapel show and publication of their book and after.
We can also, without any doubt, say their work did not, for us or anyone RK knew, blaze the kelim trail.
That trail had already been well-trodden, though clearly not by an upstart like marla mallet.
And, we will agree, for a nobody on the kelim scene, like mallet, they might have been guru but for us and others they were exploiters of kelim, salesmen doing a show and book to sell kelim from their shoppe, surely not guru.
To use the vernacular malet is full of shit and her attempt to sully us has done nothing but smear that excrement all over her porcine body and ugly kisser.
Period, end of discussion.
"When I first went to Turkey in 1980, there were plenty of crude, ugly synthetic-dye kilims available, but NO commercial production. I visited semi-nomads in the countryside who were still producing a few kilims for their own use--mainly for sedir covers and wall hangings. Commercial production only began a few years later when a couple of Turkish entrepreneurs started very small productions of natural-dye kilims, usually with small prayer-rug formats, in an attempt to cash in on the new interest in kilims in the West. Harald Bohmer tried to interest women in the Ayvacik area to weave brocaded cicims for his DOBAG project in the 1990s, but he was only able to find one elderly woman willing to do so. She is pictured on my website; one of her cicims is on the floor of that photo. Others complained that brocading was too difficult and too time-consuming.
To sum up, there are indeed lots of crude, synthetic-dyed kilims now on the market--pieces made in the 1900s. But these were ethnographic pieces made by nomads and villagers for their own use, not for commerce--because there was virtually no market for such things until recently. We do better to speak of Pre-Synthetic Dye Kilims, rather than Pre-Commercial Kilims."
Here are our last words: Where does asinine mallet think all those " synthetic dyed kilims now on the market -- pieces made in the 1900's" fit in any "ethnographic" showcase?
And who does mallet think made them?
And for what purpose were they made?
RK says they are showcased nowhere other than her pathetic and totally miserable commercial website where she peddles mediocre and less kelim as ethnographic item.
This type of kelim was made in Turkey, by women weavers from many different villages.
And many, if not most, of this type of kelim was made for, and ultimately destined for, market.
And that's our point, one mallet seems to have forgotten about, or is it just tries so desperately to avoid agreeing with?
Let's all remember marla mallet plagerized Irene Emory's seminal work The Primary Structures of Fabrics to make her classic comic-book quality work for idiot collectors too stupid and lazy to consult the original.
Mz muffins, is nothing but a marla-come-lately on the kelim scene; and while her critique of Mellaart's errors was justified, her impertinence in branding Mellaart a liar and cheat, and her self promotion in that effort, stinks and smells to high heaven.
Ass-wipe crap like marla mallet isn't, and never will be, worthy to clean up James Mellaart's diarrhea.
Only in rugDUMB, and on a sandbox for amateur rug ding-dong poseurs like turk0tek dot com, could a person of her calibre be anything but the butt of laughter and ridicule.
