Karapınar Tülü Carpets

The first Turkish art to be "discovered" by occidentals was carpet weaving, and from the 15th century onwards Turkish carpets were sought after by Europe´s wealthy aristocrats to furnish their chateaux and palaces. The prominent place accorded to these carpets in contemporary paintings reflects their status as prized works of art. As interest in Turkish carpets snowballed, impressive collections were formed in Western Europe (and from the 19th century onwards in the United States), and they became a stock-in-trade of ethnographic and Islamic arts museums. There accumulated a correspondingly large body of literature on the Turkish carpet and-from the 1950s onwards- the kilim... (Önsöz´den)