Jim Allen has collected Turkomen weavings since the late 1970's along with other types of ethnographic art. He has been a guest of the Turkmanbashii, the supreme ruler of Turkmenistan, where he delivered a paper to the "Symposium on Cultural Affairs Concerning Classical Culture" in Askhabad, Turkmenistan, in October of 2000. Jim Allen published interesting articles in Hali and Ghereh magazines, Oriental Rug Studies V, and lectured at the International and the National Conferences on Oriental Rugs. He once played varsity football on full scholarship at Jacksonville State University, 1969-70 and graduated with honors from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, 1973. Mr. Allen became a popular poet at ABC NOREO, off Remsen Street, in the East Village of New York City. Later, with the help of Nobiko Kajitani and Kurt Munkcasi, he submitted a Turkoman weaving sample that was confidently dated to the mid 17th century by AJT Jull, via Carbon 14 analysis, at Arizona State University. This marked the beginning of a new era in Turkoman studies. Subsequently several others (Heckshure, Hoffmeister, Rageth, Munkcasi etc.) tested and identified classical era Turkoman weavings. Mr. Jim Allen is presently semi-retired living in pleasant Chattanooga, Tennessee.

 www.a-bey.com