Transylvanian carpets

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The term Transylvanian carpets summarizes a world-wide unique cultural heritage in Transylvania in today's Romania . In about 60 churches of the Transylvanian-Saxon Evangelical-Lutheran and in about 50 Reformed churches of the Hungarian part of the population , a total of more than 600 Anatolian knotted carpets from the late 15th to 17th centuries were preserved, some almost intact.

"Transylvanian" carpets of the "Lotto" and "Vogel" types in the Ev.-Luth. Schäßburg Monastery Church , Romania. North wall of the main nave.

background

“Lotto” carpets in the fortified church of Honigberg . The left carpet is cut through about half of its original length, traces of wear in a similar place on the right indicate its earlier use on the pew.

Three conditions are held responsible for the accumulation of "Transylvanian carpets" in the region, which have not been preserved in such quantities anywhere outside of Anatolia:

  1. The geographical location of Transylvania between the Kingdom of Hungary , later the Habsburg Monarchy , and the Ottoman Empire meant that Transylvanian cities such as Kronstadt , Sibiu , Bistritz and Medias were conveniently located on a major trade route that ran from south to north via Damascus , Bursa , Akkerman to Lwów and from Transylvania further west.
  2. From the 1520s on, trade between Western Europe and the Levant and, across the Black Sea, with the Ottoman Empire increased significantly. As early as the 14th century, Transylvanian cities had tax and trade privileges such as customs and stacking rights . Knotted carpets reached the Transylvanian trading cities in large numbers as easily transportable luxury goods of high value, where they were either cleared and transported on or stayed there.
  3. The Transylvanian “church carpets” were only rediscovered at the end of the 19th century at the suggestion of the Viennese art historian Alois Riegl . The fact that the carpets also had considerable material value only became apparent to the communities when outside traders tried to buy carpets. As their numerous illustrations on Renaissance paintings show, oriental carpets had also served as precious jewelry in Western European churches since the 13th century. In Italy in particular, antique carpets were removed from churches in the second half of the 19th century. Art historians like Wilhelm von Bode were able to acquire important pieces cheaply. The “Transylvanian carpets” were simply forgotten until their art-historical and material value was recognized.

Types of carpets

The carpets preserved in Transylvania include those with classic Anatolian patterns such as " Holbein ", " Lotto " and the so-called "white-ground" or "Selendi" carpets . The term “Transylvanian carpets” specifically describes three different types of carpets.

Single niche carpets

Left picture: Pieter de Hooch: Portrait of a family making music, 1663, Cleveland Museum of Art Right picture: Carpet of the "Transylvania type" 17th century, National Museum Warsaw Left picture: Pieter de Hooch: Portrait of a family making music, 1663, Cleveland Museum of Art Right picture: Carpet of the "Transylvania type" 17th century, National Museum Warsaw
Left picture : Pieter de Hooch: Portrait of a family making music , 1663, Cleveland Museum of Art
Right picture : Carpet of the "Transylvania type" 17th century, National Museum Warsaw

Carpets with a prayer mat pattern are characterized by a single mostly ocher-colored, occasionally also red-ground niche, white gussets with a wave-shaped, curvilinear stem that carries various flowers and flower buds, and ocher-yellow borders with curvilinear patterns. Usually the field is empty, without additional ornaments, with the exception of small floral ornaments close to the edge or instead of a mosque lamp in the top of the niche. The top of the niche has pattern types that are also known from Ottoman prayer rugs in Anatolia: The "head-and-shoulders" pattern emphasizing the highest arch tip, with serrated or stepped outlines. The similarity of the samples with Anatolian comparison pieces allows them to be assigned to certain Anatolian places of manufacture such as Miles or Gördes. The pattern is similar to the prayer rugs of the Ottoman court manufactories of the second half of the 17th century. A carpet of this type is shown in Pieter de Hooch's painting Portrait of a Musical Family from 1663.

A small group of rugs with remarkably similar prayer rug patterns is very similar to the double niche type with a vase motif, except that it has only one niche. The decor of the field, the niche profile, the pattern design of the gussets and borders distinguish them from other preserved carpets with prayer carpet patterns.

Double niche carpets

Double niche carpet from a church in Kronstadt County, Transylvania, Romania
Single niche carpet with two columns. Brukenthal Museum , Sibiu.

About a hundred double-niche carpets have been preserved in Transylvania. Usually they are small in size. Their borders are designed with elongated, angular cartouches that enclose stylized, alternating plant motifs. Occasionally, shorter, star-shaped rosettes or cartridges alternate with the elongated cartridges. Carpets with such borders first appeared in Dutch paintings in the early 17th century. The portrait of Abraham Graphaeus by Cornelis de Vos (1620), Thomas de Keyser's Portrait of a Man (1626) and the portrait of Constantijn Huyghens and his secretary (1627) are among the oldest Western European paintings depicting Transylvanian carpets with double niches. Such carpets are first mentioned in Transylvania documents around 1620. The oldest surviving carpets with date inscriptions date from the years between 1661 and 1675.

Among the double niche carpets, a smaller group has a niche or arch shape at both ends, which is composed of two separate corner medallions. These are decorated with interwoven arabesques, which look similar to the pattern design of Uşak carpets with double niches, only that their pattern looks a little stiffer. The majority of the Transylvanian double niche carpets, however, are characterized by more stylized corner pieces, which can be viewed more as a gusset of a niche, as the two corner ornaments appear to be fused into one another. A larger rosette is often knotted in the center of this gusset, the remaining space is filled with rather coarse ornaments. Her field sometimes shows two pairs of vases with undulating motifs in contrasting colors. Its field is decorated with small floral ornaments, which are fine and curvilinear in older pieces, but in later pieces they are more rigid and stenciled. The patterns are always arranged symmetrically around the vertical axis. In Transylvanian double niche carpets with a central medallion, this is sometimes very similar to the medallions of Uşak carpets. In other, probably more recent, carpets, the field pattern is condensed into medallions of concentrically arranged diamond shapes and rows of eight-petalled flowers. The latter are connected by stems with curved leaves. Central medallions of this type often have a central, cross-shaped element. The basic color of the field is yellow, red, or dark blue.

The observation that corner patterns appear in two different forms in the field does not necessarily mean that one type must have developed from the other. It is discussed that the double niche pattern could have arisen from the single niche pattern through symmetrical reflection along the central horizontal axis: In some double niche carpets, for example a carpet from the middle of the 17th century in the collection of the Black Church (inv. 257 ), one niche is more richly executed and ornamented than the other. Its tip is accentuated by a “head and shoulders” pattern that has no equivalent in the niche opposite. In some examples, the directional pattern is emphasized by inserting a transverse panel

Pillar carpets

Column carpets are characterized by column motifs that carry an architectural element, usually one or more arches. In more recent examples, the architectural patterns go through a stylization process and take the form of decorative elements such as floral ribbons or rolled ornaments. This process can be clearly demonstrated in the pattern development of carpets by the Ottoman court manufactories, which have undergone a comparable development in the course of their adoption into the pattern repertoire of rural or nomadic carpets. The Transylvanian column carpets are similar to those from Anatolian knotting centers such as Gördes, Kula, Ladik and Karapinar. The arched gussets of column carpets with a niche consisting of a single arch are often decorated with stalked flower patterns on an ivory-colored background. The arch itself is round or toothed. Pieces with more than two columns are also known. Usually the plinths are carefully drawn. The field is held in red or ocher and the borders have floral patterns.

Historical and cultural context

Transylvania’s role in long-distance trade with the Ottoman Empire

Despite political rivalries, there had been close trade relations between the Ottoman Empire and eastern Central Europe and southern Germany since around 1400. The Hungarian kings Ludwig von Anjou and Sigismund had concluded trade agreements with the Republic of Genoa in the middle of the 14th century . This allowed them to acquire goods from Pera on the way across the Black Sea and the Danube ports faster and cheaper than their most important competitor in the Levant trade, the Republic of Venice . The Ottoman conquest of Wallachia and northern Bulgaria in 1393 therefore had significant economic consequences for both the Kingdom of Hungary and the Ottoman Empire. When peace was restored in 1429, the Wallachian voivode Dan II immediately ensured that the Kronstadt merchants could resume their activities. From the middle of the 15th century, Ottoman merchants, usually called saracenos in the Kronstadt documents , stayed in large numbers in the Danube ports.

Merchandise was shipped via the so-called "Bursa-Kronstadt Route" across the Black Sea and the Danube to the transshipment ports of Brăila (which was first mentioned in a document in 1368 in a trade privilege for Kronstadt merchants), Silistra , Rusçuk , Nikopolis , Widin (where The Kronstadters had first received trade privileges during the reign of Tsar Ivan Strazimir ) or Smederevo . Wallachian or Transylvanian traders brought the goods further across the Carpathian Mountains to Kronstadt and beyond. The Transylvanian city developed into an important trading center in the oriental trade in the 15th century. As early as the end of the 15th century, the value of goods to be declared was registered there not only in Venetian florins , but also in Ottoman Akçe , which shows the importance of long-distance trade with Anatolia for the Transylvanian economy.

View into the central nave of the Black Church in Kronstadt.
Robert Feke, family portrait of Isaac Royall . Boston, 1741
Value of goods paid for in Kronstadt in Florin, 1484–1600
year all in all Export and transit goods Goods in transit from the east
1484-85 65,000 - -
1503 167,000 60,000 85,000
1515 100.0000 - -
1542 80,000 23,000 41,000
1550 70,000 19,000 20,000
1554 82,000 23,000 32,000
1600 60,000 - -

Carpets from Asia Minor have been known in Europe since the Renaissance period : They have been shown on Western European paintings since the 14th century. A customs register from Caffa in the Crimea for the period from 1487 to 1491 mentions carpets from Uşak as a commodity. An Istanbul price register (“ narh defter ”) from 1640 already lists ten different types of carpets from Uşak. A carpet with a characteristic border on Robert Feke's painting Family Portrait of Isaac Royall , painted in Boston in 1741, shows that at least individual pieces reached North America in the 18th century.

The first known document from Kronstadt relating to the carpet trade was drawn up between 1462 and 1464. Customs registers have been preserved in various cities in Transylvania and show the large number of carpets that reached Europe via this region alone. The Braşov Customs Register from 1503 documents that over 500 carpets from the Ottoman Empire were transported through this city this year alone.

Islamic carpets in the culture of Transylvania

"Siebenbürger" double niche carpet with embroidered inscription, Ev.-Luth. Church of Rosenau
Inscription (ink) on a carpet in the Schäßburg monastery church: "TESTAMENTVM ..."

Anatolian carpets were also valued as objects of great value in Transylvania itself and were collected by the communities, guilds and individual wealthy citizens. Preserved records prove that they were given away for celebrations or in honor of their recipients. Inscriptions on some carpets show that these were given to the churches in the will or during the lifetime of the donors. There they marked the places of important parishioners as a support for the pews or were used as wall decorations. Their storage in the churches ensured that they were preserved for centuries.

Carpets were used as church decorations, rarely as floor coverings, but rather as decorations for galleries, walls and the choir stalls. In research, the fact that the group of "Transylvanian" carpets with a single niche have the classic pattern of a prayer rug has met with particular interest . In some cases, Islamic religious inscriptions in Arabic calligraphy are woven into the carpets , which they clearly assign to a Muslim context. On the Ottoman side, the edict issued by Sultan Ahmed I to the town of Kütahya in 1610 , which banned the sale of carpets with "depictions of mihrab, kaaba and hat (calligraphy)" to non-Muslims, citing a fatwa from Şeyhülislam , shows that one was aware of the cultural context. In contrast, the term “prayer carpet” or a reference to the religious and cultural significance of the carpets in their country of origin has not yet been proven in the Transylvanian sources. What is certain is that their material value as a luxury good and their purely ornamental design made the carpets appear as suitable jewelry, especially for the Reformed churches. A report of the great fire of the Black Church in Kronstadt in 1689 mentions among the lost items a large carpet, which "according to the legend of the Apostle Paulus (who was a carpet weaver) was made by himself". There is much to suggest that Kurt Erdmann's statement that the oriental knotted carpet remained an “exotic foreign body” in European culture also applies to the art treasures that have been preserved in Transylvania.

In 2019, the Kronstadt researchers showed Á. and F. Ziegler on the basis of new source studies on the fact that Ottoman carpets in Transylvania were not always visible in the church, in order to compensate for the horror vacui of sacred spaces that were robbed of their ornamental and figurative decoration as a result of the Reformation iconoclasm in the 16th century . Until the 19th century “the communities of the Transylvanian Saxons adhered to the moderate pictorial theology of Martin Luther and did not carry out any radical iconoclasm.” According to this work, the “church carpets” were not present as constantly visible decorative elements in the church. They were more likely to be brought out on special occasions, such as Sunday services, to decorate the church interior. For example, a carpet could be hung behind the sermon pulpit to give the sermon, which is central to the Protestant service, a solemn background. Contemporary wills and inscriptions on the carpets themselves also show that the craft guilds jointly acquired their own carpets. The church pew belonging to the guild was decorated with it on Sundays and holidays. The carpets thus underlined the social status of their owners. The use of the carpets in the context of social events such as baptisms, weddings and funerals is also well documented. At least for the Kronstadt Black Church it has been proven that a knowledgeable cleric, the “Warner”, made sure that the decoration of the celebration was strictly based on the social rank of the family. The result of this study is the image of an art object that has been detached from the cultural context of its region of origin, that found its way into another culture in dynamic use and that could create identity in this new context.

Research history

In the 19th century, the Austrian art historian Alois Riegl recognized the historical and artistic value of the carpets preserved in the churches of Transylvania. Ernst Kühlbrandt was the first to describe it in 1898. At Riegl's advice, an initial inventory of the carpets was made; these were cleaned and re-issued.

The term “Transylvanian carpets” was first used in literature in 1906 by Neugebauer and Orendi. At the time it was not clear that the carpets were of Anatolian origin; a local production was up for discussion. A major exhibition in Budapest in 1914 showed 354 Anatolian carpets, 228 of which were loaned to the Transylvanian communities. In 1925 Végh and Layer published an album in Paris under the title "Tapis turcs provenants des églises et collections de Transylvanie" For a long time the work of the Transylvanian Emil Schmutzler was the most extensive description.

The renewed interest in “our church carpets” (Kühlbrandt) was related to a general rediscovery of their own cultural heritage by the Transylvanian Saxons at the turn of the 20th century. During this time, the cultural heritage served to strengthen one's own identity in the region of Transylvania, which was historically shaped by ethnic diversity, but has been influenced by Romanian nationalization efforts since 1918.

Collections

Important churches like the Black Church in Brasov , the Margaret Church in Medias , the fortified churches of Hero village or Biertan , but also museums like the Brukenthal Museum in Sibiu today retain Transylvanian rugs. To protect against theft, carpets and other art-historically significant objects were brought from smaller, partly abandoned village churches to larger churches. For example, the carpets from Tobsdorf have been in the Mediasch Margarethenkirche since 2005.

When the Saxon community from Bistritz was evacuated in autumn 1944, community members also took the more than 50 church carpets with them and loaned them to the Germanic National Museum in Nuremberg in 1952 . There they are today - not accessible to the public - in the depot. Since October 2017 the museum has been investigating as part of the DFG priority program “Transottomanica. East European-Ottoman-Persian Mobility Dynamics “the carpets with regard to the place of manufacture, trade routes and their role in the Transylvanian-Saxon culture.

  • Brukenthal Museum in Sibiu

  • Black Church in Kronstadt

  • Margaret Church in Mediasch

literature

  • Emil Schmutzler: Old Oriental carpets in Transylvania , Anton Hiersemann Verlag , Stuttgart 2010, reprint of the 1st edition from 1933, ISBN 978-3-7772-1015-5
  • Ferenc Batári: Ottoman Turkish Carpets. The Collections of the Museum of Applied Arts Budapest and the Helikon Castle Museum Keszthely. Dabasi Nyomda Rt., Budapest 1994, ISBN 96304-9212-4 .
  • Alberto Boralevi, Stefano Ionescu (eds.); Andrei Kertesz: Ottoman carpets in Transylvania. Museum of Islamic Art. Berlin State Museums and Brukenthal National Museum in Sibiu, Rome 2006.
  • Stefano Ionescu: Antique Ottoman Rugs in Transylvania . 2nd Edition. Verduci Editore, Rome 2005.
  • Stefano Ionescu (ed.): The Ottoman carpets in Transylvania. On the occasion of the exhibition in Berlin, Museum of Islamic Art (October 26, 2006 - January 7, 2007), Rome 2006, ISBN 88-7620-753-8
  • Stefano Ionescu (Ed.): Kobierce anatolijskie z kolekcji muzeum narodowego Brukenthala W Sibiu / Anatolian carpets from the collection of the Brukenthal-Nationalmuseum national museum in Sibiu . Gdansk 2013.
  • Stefano Ionescu (ed.): The Margaret Church in Mediasch . Verduci Editore, Rome 2018, ISBN 978-88-7620-928-4 . - with a description of the collection.
  • Ágnes Ziegler, Frank-Thomas Ziegler: God in honor and the praiseworthy guild for ornament and use. The Ottoman carpets of the Black Church . Foton, Kronstadt 2019, ISBN 978-6-06858255-9 .
  • Stefan Rohdewald, Stephan Conermann, Albrecht Fuess (eds.): Transottomanica Eastern European-Ottoman-Persian mobility dynamics . tape 1 . V&R Unipress, Göttingen, ISBN 978-3-8471-0886-3 ( limited preview in the Google book search).

Web links

Commons : Transylvanian Carpets  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i Stefano Ionescu: Antique Ottoman Rugs in Transylvania . 2nd Edition. Verduci Editore, Rome 2005.
  2. ^ Halil İnalcık, Donald Quataert: An Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire, 1300-1914 . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK 1994, ISBN 978-0-521-34315-2 , pp. 1-7 .
  3. ↑ Ernst Kühlbrandt: Our old church carpets . In: The Carpathians . 10, No. 17, 1907, pp. 521-531.
  4. ^ Wilhelm Bode: Near Eastern knotted carpets from an older time . In: Jean Louis Sponsel (ed.): Monographs of the arts and crafts . Hermann Seemann successor, Leipzig 1902, p. 1 : "[...] while the carpets in Spain, southern Germany and especially Italy at very low prices (they were regularly excluded from churches or palaces because of their more or less damaged condition) [...] occasionally in some museums found willing buyers. "
  5. ↑ Stefano Ionescu, Beata Biedrońska-Słota (ed.): Kobierce anatolijskie z kolekcji Muzeum Narodowego Brukenthala w Sibiu = Anatolian carpets from the collection of the Brukenthal National Museum in Sibiu . Muzeum Narodowe, Gdańsk 2013, ISBN 978-83-63185-64-0 .
  6. ↑ a b Onno Ydema: Carpets and their datings in Netherlandish paintings: 1540-1700 . Antique Collectors' Club, Woodbridge 1991, ISBN 1-85149-151-1 , pp. 48-51 .
  7. ↑ a b Wilhelm von Bode, Ernst Kühnel: Vorderasiatische Knüpfteppiche . 5th edition. Klinkhardt & Biermann, Munich 1985, ISBN 3-7814-0247-9 , pp. 48-51 .
  8. ↑ Stefano Ionescu: Early single- and double-niche 'Transylvanian' rugs . In: SN Verlag Michael Steinert (Ed.): Carpet Collector . No. 3, Hamburg, 2014, p. 76.
  9. ^ A b Halil İnalcık, Donald Quataert: An Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire, 1300–1914 . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK 1994, ISBN 978-0-521-34315-2 , pp. 295-304 .
  10. ↑ History Braila on the website of the prefecture , accessed on January 2, 2018 (Romanian).
  11. ^ Halil İnalcık, Donald Quataert: An Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire, 1300-1914 . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK 1994, ISBN 978-0-521-34315-2 , pp. 297 .
  12. ↑ Kurt Erdmann: History of the early Turkish carpet . 1st edition. Oguz Press, London 1977, ISBN 978-0-905820-02-6 .
  13. ↑ Inalcık, Oriental Carpet and Textile Studies, 2, Carpets of the Mediterranean countries 1400−1600. London, 1986, pp. 39-66
  14. ↑ Kütükoğlu, MS: Osmanlılarda Narh Müessesessi ve 1640 Tarihli Narh Defteri. Enderun kitabevi, Istanbul 1983, pp. 178-9
  15. ↑ Christie's (ed.): The Bernheimer Family Collection of Carpets. Auction catalog . London February 14, 1990, p. 110 .
  16. ↑ Ion Bogdan: Documents privitoare la relaţiile Ţării Româneşti cu Braşovul şi Ţara Ungurească in sec. XV-XVI . Bucharest 1905.
  17. ^ Stefano Ionescu: Antique Ottoman Rugs in Transylvania . Verduci Editore, Rome 2005.
  18. ↑ Stefano Ionescu (ed.): The Margarethenkirche in Mediasch . Verduci Editore, Rome 2018, ISBN 978-88-7620-928-4 , p. 88 .
  19. ↑ Stefano Ionescu: Early Transylvanian niche and double niche carpets . In: Carpet Collector . SN Verlag Michael Steinert, Hamburg 2014, p. 71 .
  20. ↑ Ernst Kühlbrandt: Our old church carpets . In: The Carpathians. Semi-monthly publication for culture and life (10), 17 . 1907, p. 42 .
  21. ↑ Kurt Erdmann: The oriental knotted carpet: attempt to represent its history. Ernst Wasmuth Publishing House, Tübingen 1955
  22. ↑ Stefano Ionescu (Ed.): Kobierce anatolijskie z kolekcji muzeum narodowego Brukenthala W Sibiu / Anatolian carpets from the collection of the Brukenthal-Nationalmuseum national museum in Sibiu . Gdansk 2013, p. 36 .
  23. ↑ a b c d Ágnes Ziegler, Frank-Thomas Ziegler: God to honor and the praiseworthy guild for ornament and use. The Ottoman carpets of the Black Church . Foton, Kronstadt 2019, ISBN 978-6-06858255-9 , pp. 14-22 .
  24. ↑ Ernst Kühlbrandt: The old oriental carpets of the Kronstadt ev. Parish church . In: Correspondence sheet of the Association for Transylvanian Cultural Studies . 21, No. 8-9, 1898, pp. 101-3.
  25. ↑ Ernst Kühlbrandt: Our old oriental carpets . In: The Carpathians . 1, No. 1, 1907, pp. 40-43.
  26. ^ R. Neugebauer, J. Orendi: Handbook of Oriental Carpet Studies . 2012th edition. Karl W. Hiersemann, Leipzig 1920, ISBN 978-3-86444-955-0 , p. 81-82 .
  27. ↑ Károly Csányi, Sándor Csermelyi, Károly Layer: Erdélyi török ​​szónyegeck kiállitasanak leiró lajstroma: Turkish carpets from Transylvania . Budapest 1914.
  28. ^ New edition 1977: Marino Dall'Oglio, Clara Dall'Oglio: Turkish rugs in Transylvania; Gyula Végh and Károly [Charles] Layer . Crosby Pr., Fishguard 1977, ISBN 978-0-903580-20-5 .
  29. ^ Emil Schmutzler: Ancient oriental carpets in Transylvania . Anton Hiersemann (new edition 2010), Leipzig 1933, ISBN 978-3-7772-1015-5 .
  30. ↑ Ágnes Ziegler, Frank-Thomas Ziegler: God to honor and the praiseworthy guild for ornament and use. The Ottoman carpets of the Black Church . Foton, Kronstadt 2019, ISBN 978-6-06858255-9 .
  31. ↑ Stefano Ionescu (ed.): The Margarethenkirche in Mediasch . Verduci Editore, Rome 2018, ISBN 978-88-7620-928-4 .
  32. ↑ Stefano Ionescu (Ed.): Kobierce anatolijskie z kolekcji muzeum narodowego Brukenthala W Sibiu / Anatolian carpets from the collection of the Brukenthal-Nationalmuseum national museum in Sibiu . Gdansk 2013.
  33. ^ Stefano Ionescu: The Ottoman rugs of Bistrița . In: HALI (160) . 2009, p. 36-37 .
  34. ↑ Project description on the GNM website , accessed on January 2, 2018.