Berber - Historic rugs from the High Atlas
House and Garden
Jozan
Twenty years ago I saw an exhibition that had an enormous impact on me – Feather Masterpieces of the Ancient Andean World at Thomas Gibson’s gallery on Bond Street. At the time it came as a shock to find such riches from so remote a culture on the walls of an Impressionist dealer. I had almost believed they were pieces of abstract art from a few decades ago.
Soon after, I began collecting old Berber rugs. Like the Andean feather cloaks, these were unfamiliar works of art with an ancient tradition of imagery suggesting a process of abstraction unnervingly close to the journeys made by so many 20th century artists.
Stubbornly distinct from the formal traditions of Turkish and Persian carpet makers, Berber work arrived in the modern era almost unchanged from its Neolithic roots. The method of making was also ancient. Instead of the great looms used in grand halls by the Persians, Berber rugs were woven by mothers and daughters on village floors. Their primitive apparatus rolled up the carpets as they progressed. To look back on your work brought bad luck so patterns had to be guessed at and remembered – the conscious and unconscious becoming equal partners, just as in modern Abstract Expressionism.
It was only in the early years of the last century that much attention was paid to the primitive arts, which explains why so few, genuinely antique rugs of this sort survive. Amongst the first to be influenced were artists such as Paul Klee, who drew inspiration from their broken lines and halting patterns. Architects Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier constantly featured Berber rugs in their interiors. There was a resonance to their minimalism and geometry that made them inborn accompaniments to modernism.
My own experience in forming this collection has been an addictive one – the obsessive hunt for the perfect rug. Every addiction though, requires its own coping mechanism – in this instance a catalogue. I hope it will be an introduction to a field of collecting that will fascinate you as much as it does me.