Current Exhibition

For Tent and Trade: Masterpieces of Turkmen Weaving

December 15, 2007 - September 7, 2008
de Young Museum, Textile Gallery

For Tent and Trade features approximately 40 premier examples of Turkmen carpets and tent trappings from the Fine Arts Museums’ renowned collection, many of them recent gifts from H. McCoy Jones, Caroline McCoy-Jones, George and Marie Hecksher, and Wolfgang and Gisela Wiedersperg.

Carpets and other pile textiles woven by the nomadic and semi-nomadic Turkmen tribes of Central Asia are some of the most widely admired and passionately collected of all “oriental” rugs. They are also among the most challenging to study. The long political isolation of Central Asia, the geographic and linguistic remoteness of its people, the sheer number of Turkmen tribes and sub-tribes, and the complexity of their movements and interactions over time have been major impediments to understanding the history of these carpets. More

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