D.C.‘s Magic Carpet Ride

Travel Blog  •  Julia Ross  •  02.12.09 | 11:37 AM ET

Photo by Julia Ross

My affection for Oriental rugs is as much aesthetic preference as childhood nostalgia. I grew up in a household padded with Bukharas and Isfahans, and I remember when my mom first showed me how to tell a hand-knotted rug from a machine-made doppelganger by flipping the carpet over to examine how the fringe is attached. As an adult, my taste has tended toward flat-weave rugs—Kilims and Soumaks—in dark browns, burnt oranges and blues, woven in tribal patterns that speak of dusty villages in Turkey and Iran. In fact, when I moved into a new apartment last spring, I treated myself to two Soumaks purchased from a weathered Afghan at a flea market outside Washington, D.C. I love them; they make the place home.

Rug lovers like me will find nirvana at an exhibit currently on show at Washington’s under-appreciated Textile Museum, in the city’s Dupont Circle neighborhood. Timbuktu to Tibet: Rugs and Textiles of the Hajji Babas, includes 90 rugs and other textiles—salt bags and bridal veils—collected by the 77-year-old Hajji Baba Club, a New York-based society of rug collectors. It’s a feast for the eyes and expansive in scope: deep pink diamond patterns from Uzbekistan, blazing tiger pelt motifs from Tibet, black and white checkerboard rugs from Mali. I spent a long time just letting the colors soak in, marveling at the hours spent in pursuit of beauty and wondering at the rituals—births, prayers, long journeys—that inspired such attention to detail.

Bloomberg TV reviewed the exhibit when it appeared in New York last year (video below), and the Washington Post has a recent review here, though neither do the rugs justice. See for yourself: Timbuktu to Tibet runs through March 8 in D.C.

Tags: Art, Museums, North America, United States, Washington, D.C., Shrinking Planet

Julia Ross is a Washington, DC-based writer and frequent contributor to World Hum. She has lived in China and Taiwan, where she was a Fulbright scholar and Mandarin student. Her writing has appeared in the Washington Post, Time, Christian Science Monitor, Plenty and other publications. Her essay, Six Degrees of Vietnam, was shortlisted for "The Best American Travel Writing 2009."


No comments for D.C.‘s Magic Carpet Ride.

Commenting is not available in this weblog entry.