A new couple that had its outing in 1999 with the publication "Kultkelim" and the exhibition in Cologne under the same title in 1999 are Sabine Steinböck and Harry Koll, the latter being a ceramic artisan, who mount their flatweaves themselves. It was accompanied by a collector's meeting and there, for the first time, people began to discuss kilims, started to look for and to develop measures for quality. It started with an unusual early Ermenek kilim fragment (1, pl. 16 ; 2, pl. 28, "reconstructed" electronically): is this an unusual creative weave or a mishappened one? Of course there was no generally accepted conclusion, Harry Koll and Sabine Steinböck voting for the first, Peter Andrews and I (M.B.) opting for the second possibility. But it was the first serious public discussion of this theme in Germany.

Now, after 3 years and after enjoying the success of their book (1) they prepared one exhibition more, bigger and more courageous, in the Deutsches Textilmuseum Krefeld. The catalogue includes 60 colour plates of excellent  print and colour rendition quality and a longer text, where general aesthetics are discussed (Harry Koll, Heinz Meyer), a particular type, kilims composed with stripes is introduced (again Harry Koll, Heinz Meyer), a distinct group from a mountainous areas southwest of Konya is dissected (Michael Bischof) and camelid wool in flatweaves is viewed in detail.

Out of view for the normal visitor is the fact that all these major exhibitions have been initiated and prepared by private collectors -   no dealers (1), no museums.  The latter gave space - in this way one should express it. And now, after for more than 20 years the worlds leading museums and ethnographic departments of the Western countries leading universities did not develop anything mentionable (8) it seems that it will be the again the "private sector" of collectors and supporters which will research the background of ethnographically important valuable flatweaves. Strange ...

What is so special about kilims?
The exhibition in Essen and this one mark a new level: until recently hunting, collecting and researching kilims was a non-mainstream pioneering effort. Its first phase one may call "primary accumulation". Of course, while doing it, it was essential all the time to collect and digest all data and develop a kind of picture in the own brain: one cannot run wild and hope to jump into spheres that were hitherto unknown. Hunting and collecting both need an educated, well informed "vision" of the object and its "frames". Only then is it possible to develop an idea where further search might be fruitful.

There were no public discussions about these issues, however,leaving some hot and embryonic talks about the meaning of motives aside. Exhibitons showed acquisitions; "Mr. Miller proudly presents ... ", this type. That is over now. The number of great pieces that surfaced per year did not increase. The saying that prices soured are talks in vain: just the unlucky pieces that did not sell well circulate quicker, some "new" piece in Istanbul had been on offer in Southern Germany a year before ...,  and such items that the target people did not want to buy or that have some inherent problems, known only to insiders, command lower prices now. This is not an entirely new feature.

Kilims have one primary advantage over pile rugs: their degree of authenticity is much higher! Pile weaves are no nomadic habit anyway, a kind of "derivative" exploit of the superior knowhow on sheep, wool, fibre processing and weaving that these Turko-Mongolic cultures developed and therefore a major trading object. But for the own use they are secondary. And: they are much more subject to marketing influences even at very early times.

R. John Howe describes a recent exhibition in Washington and cites Walter B. Denny on some early rugs: "And third, are the few recently discovered carpets that can be conceivably dated to the 13th century. He also makes much of vertical to horizontal knot ratios as a likely indicator of age, with those close to 1:1 estimated as both older and closest to other design sources (e.g., ceramics, bookplates, etc.) from which the designs in carpets may have been transferred." - For those readers who could manage to come close to the making of rugs the net content reads then like this: this 1:1 ratio is the most easy available way to transfer alien motives to carpets - but leads to weaves of a much lower degree of sophistication, much less appropriate, than a gabbeh type of weave with a highly asymmetric ratio and many very fine wefts (as shown as early on some porcelain camel figurines of the T'ang dynasty in China, together with some Turkic camel drivers - we mean this extreme flexible but highly stable kind of weaves that one could put over a camel) would have been. So even in the 13th century there is documentation of alien design sources of carpets. The younger carpets (14th-17th century) are more evolved then and, as our guess is, in future evaluation in a textile art discussion frame would rank higher!

In the 13th century a kind of evolution started (but did not yet reach its peak!). Flatweaves like kilims or other utility weaves in flatweave techniques have not been subject to such commercial considerations. It is easier for the weaver to "invent", or change, the design at work - so there is a much higher degree of command that the artist has: from a textile art point of view an upmost desirable status (2). Even with quite old village rugs it is very difficult to sort out such alien influences. And a coarse village adaption ("absteigendes Kulturgut") of a court design we propose to place lower in any evaluation scheme, however handsome it might appear at a first glance.

Kilims therefore are much closer to the primary source of this textile art tradition and, in the long run, impress especially people with a very long "textile education", including early classical carpets as well as plain beginners who are shocked off by the late pile carpets and their contemporaneous carpetoid followers. This keeps their attractiveness high although most of them have one disadvantage: they are too big for normal sized appartements. Why this interest is so much higher in Europe than in Northern America, where it had a splendid start at the ICOC in San Francisco, we do not know. Maybe this success killed the ambition of potential collectors who thought they could not equal the high quality seen there? Erroneous: the following years did not give witness for such thoughts, just the opposite - but the great pieces went mainly to Europe. The most comprehensive reference books for the "leading kilims" are (3) and (4) and contain mainly material that is in European collections.

Collecting early kilims is still a kind of pioneering enterprise. As such it brings much more chances for the collector when compared with walking on well known and established paths - but, of course, also additional risks. No risk, no gain. There are serious "holes" in what we shouldknow about kilims in order to go on with better "educated" collecting. As a matter of fact, and with certain good reasons, all the important kilims have not been in auctions and have been purchased and "processed" on a kind of side track, apart from the established trade. This way of dealing with this matter posesses quite new risks that we had mentioned here before.

In a flatweave the wool must be of quite higher quality than in a pile weave. One views nearly the whole length of the fiber. Therefore the dyes must be much more saturated and clear to display a striking beauty - with a pile rug a more mediocre quality might still achieve a good result. Because of this factor, leaving aside any design considerations, the pure sensorial pleasure of colour is quite higher with striking kilims.

As kilims are more close to the originalenvironment of a weaver and in most cases woven for the own use the amount of self-made supplemental dyes is in kilims much higher than in piled pieces. This is an ambivalent situation: as far as we could find out the valuable primary dyes in all antique pieces had been made by professional dyers, not by the weavers themselves, so these must have been costly in the pre-synthetic era. In order to save money or, may be, just because this dyer was half a day or even further removed in the next township but certain dyes were used up, own dyes were applied.

Here we have a problem: though, theoretically, any motivated person can develop to be master dyer even without any technical or scientific background (3) very often "minor" dyes were made (4) and woven into kilims. Sometimes this can result in gorgeous and skillful colour combinations (where the minor dye is used to highlight the major dyes in a sophisticated way) or increase a certain "naive charm" (by enhancing abrash), but very often this lowered the aesthetical quality of the flatweaves. Especially the common walnut browns are not very fast against light oxidation and fade to some quite ugly "faecal" brownish-green-grey - big areas of this particular dye make the piece look "flat" then (compare 2, pl. 56 and pl. 60, late stripe kilims, for this effect of "minor dyes"). Therefore, much more than with piled weaves, the rule is: the unique piece is unique...

Early kilims from the Southern Central Anatolian Toros Mountains
The earliest (?) and most important flatweave from one of later mentioned "lots" is this kilim with a bold and "archaic" appearance. It is the oldest dated Anatolian kilim ( 1178 = 1765 AD.). Its graphic is unique as well. One "hook" is approximately 70 cm (!) in height.

(1) Ermenek kilim, 334 x 123 cm (2 , pl. 29)