NERS Kilim

The NERS has just assumed a whole new role: foster parent. We've adopted a beautiful old kilim from western Anatolia.

This latest bit of charity is in response to a clever fundraising program called Adopt-a-Kilim conceived by NERS members Bethany Mendenhall and Charles Lave, the ultimate beneficiary of which will be Josephine Powell's planned Anatolian Cultural Heritage Center in Istanbul, Turkey.

Josephine, whom many NERS members will remember from her fascinating talk on 11/15/96, has amassed an important collection of Anatolian rugs and textiles, along with thousands of photographs documenting the life of Turkey's nomadic tribes. Fundraising is now underway to create a facility where these priceless artifacts and visual records will be permanently housed and displayed.

In the meantime, there are many important kilims in Josephine’s collection that require cleaning and restoration. and that is where the Adopt-a-Kilim program comes in. Prospective donors are invited to look through a book of kilim photographs, each marked with the donation needed to restore it, and make their choice. When the piece is finally hung on display, the donor's name will be inscribed on its placard.

At ACOR 6, the NERS made a $300 donation and adopted the beautiful old Yuncu kilim ¹ shown in the photograph above. Its field is a rich, deep, abrashed red surrounding a dramatic medallion done in ivory, brown and midnight blue. Size is 4'9" x 6'3".

This is an extremely important program that warrants participation by all of us, and we urge individual NERS members to consider adopting a kilim as well. You can get all the details on this website. Be generous; it's for a wonderful cause!

Update on 06/07/02 - Mark Hopkins provides the following information:
The piece is also very similar – in fact almost identical – to a kilim fragment published as Plate 54 in Jürg Rageth’s book Anatolian Kilims & Radiocarbon Dating. Carbon dating of the piece puts its age at 145 years plus or minus 45 years. The calibrated age at 95% confidence limits is: AD 1671-1783 (44.3%); AD 1794-1899 (38.1%). The kilim resides in the Vok collection, and is described by Jürg as a sofreh or eating cloth.

1. Bethany Mendenhall adds "...the NERS kilim is a Yuncu type, from the Balikesir area in NW Anatolia. You can see another closely related one from the Galveston (i.e., Bartels) collection in plate 12 of the second Petsopoulos kilim book, Kilims, Masterpieces from Turkey (pub. in the US by Rizzoli, 1991 -- this book is based on an exhibit in Munich called '100 Kilims')."