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Fourth Conference on the Art of Azerbaijan Carpets
March 2007

An improbable venue (Paris) and a somewhat odd gathering if viewed from the outside -- a one day proceedings in a huge UNESCO auditorium complete with microphones, earphones, simultaneous translation, and no attendees beyond those on the program or associated with them.� Not, however, the least bit strange from an Azeri perspective. �

A minor unintended consequence of the affair was the bringing together of the handful of Europeans and Americans who were at the first conference in Baku in 1983.� A nice reunion for those individuals.

Fourteen formal presentations were very different in nature and can be grouped as follows: three were a bit far out, two seeing parallels between the carpets and an Azeri musical/poetic form (mugham), and one which spotted the Mother Goddess in the floral borders of certain pileless carpets; three were re-hashes of prior work, two by outsiders and one by Togrul Efendi and Academician Rasim Efendi, a pr�cis of their knowledgeable recent book on Kazak district (the Efendis are Kazaks); two presentations were standard for rug conferences, one (Herbert Exsner) having to do with bags, another (Wendel Swan) reviewing structural aspects of so-called Shah Sevan pile products; and a remainder on quite dissimilar topics. �Among these one stood out: fresh material by Ivan Szanto (Lorand University, Budapest) describing Heris then (Il Khanid period) and now (the popular late 19^th c. carpets).

The clear purpose of the meeting was celebration of the 100^th anniversary of the birth of Latif Kerimov, the towering 20^th c. figure in the art of Azerbaijan carpets, and considerable homage was the order of the day.� The symposium also was the occasion for distribution of a slick two-volume publication, the one hagiography of the maestro, the other, the conference papers (Roya Taghiyeva, ed., Proceedings of the 4^th International Symposium on Azerbaijanian Carpet Art, February, 2007, Paris). ��In addition, the meeting gave Azerbaijan�s Minister of Culture Gariev an opportunity for announcing construction ground-breaking of the new carpet museum in Baku, and the scheduling of the next conference to coincide with the museum�s opening.

In sum, this event was driven by goals internal to Azerbaijan and was a considerable success in those terms; and, for those interested persons outside the country its publication is an uneven but nevertheless useful addition (in Azeri, Russian, and English) to the literature on Azerbaijan carpets.