and 1555 and reported that in theOttoman Empire: “...foreign merchantsfrom Poland, from Hungary and from theland of the Wallachs may freely travel inand out to ply their trade...only the customsduties are to be paid by them to theSultan...”.9 After 1568, the SublimePorte established a Levantine mono-poly of trade within the OttomanEmpire, but there are records of rugsimported by local merchants. Theyshow that trade in carpets, carriedout both in the Kingdom ofHungary and in Transylvania, mainlyby Turkish, Greek and Jewishmerchants, intensified during the17th century.

The large number of incomingmerchants and the great volume ofimported goods can be appreciatedfrom two surviving 17th centuryprice lists for Turkish and Persiancarpets. In 1627 Gabriel Bethlen(1580-1629), King of Hungary andPrince of Transylvania, dispatched adocument to every region settingdown The Limitation of Goods to beImported by Turkish, Greek and JewishMerchants. In this list the price of afairly large carpet was fixed at 16forints, a smaller “common tablecover carpet” at 9 forints, whileother items “of lesser value” were 8forints.10 Another list, The True Priceof Turkish Merchandise, dated 15 January 1651, fixed the followingprices: “a Persian carpet, good, 50forints; a Turkish rug, 10 forints; amulti-coloured ‘keche’, good, 20forints; a camel’s hair ‘keche’bedspread, 6 forints; a camel’s hair‘keche’ horse-rug, 6 forints.”11

We know from archival evidenceas well as from inscriptions that carpets were used in many moreways than they are today. Theseranged from enhancing the pomp ofstate occasions to adorning and inc-reasing the comfort of homes orpalaces. The royal chaplain GeorgeSzerémy (1484-1453) describes in hismemoirs the meeting between thevictorious Sultan Süleyman II andthe new Hungarian King John atMohács: “Along the short mile the Kingtraversed to go to the Emperor, Turkish andvarious fine carpets were laid on the earthas far as the tent of the Emperor”.12

A 1629 inventory of one of Gab-riel Bethlen’s palaces lists 155 Eur-opean tapestries, 154 Persian and 105Turkish carpets among the furnish-ings. A further 39 pieces are men-

tioned without any indication ofprovenance, but most are likely tohave been Turkish carpets.13 Bethlenhad other similarly furnished palaces.

Of the large numbers of carpetsimported into Transylvania betweenthe 16th and 18th centuries, somebeautiful examples passed into

church ownership as a result of pious donations. Several examplescarry added inscriptions recordingdetails of their donation, ranging indate from the mid-17th to the end of the 18th centuries. For instance, a Hungarian inscription added to a 17th century double-niche

Small-pattern Hol-bein rug, Ushak,west Anatolia, mid-16th century. 1.54 x2.20m (5'1" x 7'3").HMAA 14.785

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The 1914 Budapest exhibitionwas the fourth great orientalcarpet-only exhibition,1 fol-

lowing those held in Vienna (1891),2

Stuttgart (1909),3 and New York(1910).4 Of the four it was the first tofocus on a single theme, and thevery first Ottoman Turkish carpetexhibition in the Western world.

It is no mere coincidence thatthis extraordinary event took placein Budapest. Hungary had played animportant part in the continentaltransit trade of oriental goods, including carpets, from the 15th tothe 17th century. The earliest carpetdocumentation focused on theirimportation through the Saxon-inhabited southeastern border townof BraÎov,5 where customs registersfor January to November 1503 showat least five hundred commercially

traded carpets entering Transylvaniathrough a single town.6 Of course,such imports were not restricted toone town, nor even to the easternterritory of Hungary.7

As early as 1483, a peace treatybetween King Matthias Corvinusand Sultan Beyazit II regularisedcommercial relations betweenHungary and the Ottoman Empire:“...the merchants of the said HungarianKing...shall come and go in my victoriouslands, shall do business, their persons andriches shall not suffer damage by the inhab-itants of my lands. My merchants shall

likewise come and go and shall not sufferill-treatment and damage from anybody.”8

After the defeat at Mohács in 1526and the fall of the capital Buda in1541, the central region of Hungarybecame subject to Ottoman rule andwould remain so for 150 years. TheTurkish Empire thus penetrated farinto Central Europe, bringing theoriental carpet market closer to theheart of the Western world.

Hans Dernschwamm (1494-1567),who was in charge of the Fugger-Thurzó Society’s Hungarian depots,travelled to Istanbul between 1553

Above: The Hungar-ian Museum of App-lied Arts (Iparmü-vészeti Müzeum),Budapest. Water-colour by J. Bischof,1896

Left: Kula prayerrug, west Anatolia,18th century. 1.29 x1.69m (4'3" x 5'7").Museum of AppliedArts, Budapest,7.959

The First TurkishCarpet Exhibitionin the WestFERENC BATARI

Ninety years ago, just before the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the HungarianNational Museum of Applied Arts in Budapest organised a huge exhibition of OttomanTurkish carpets with no less than 352 exhibits. The majority of the rugs shownbelonged to Saxon, Hungarian Lutheran, and Calvinist Protestant churches in the thenHungarian province of Transylvania, complemented by pieces from museum andprivate collections. To mark the anniversary, the current curator of carpets assessesthe history of rug collecting in Hungary and its former Transylvanian domains, now partof Romania, and the work of his predecessors in staging the ground-breaking show.

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help to prevent further sales abroad. Jenö Radisics de Kutas (1856-

1917), the then director of the Buda-pest Museum of Applied Arts, supported Teleki’s initiative andacted on his suggestion to solicit theloan of carpets to the museum witha view to a public presentation. As well as bringing closer therealisation of the book Teleki hadbeen planning, this opened up thepossibility of organising a majorpioneering exhibition that wouldadvance scholarship in the field aswell as providing aesthetic enjoy-ment and contributing to thegeneral culture. Károly Csányi(1873-1955), Chief Curator at themuseum, was put in charge of collecting and preparing the carpetsand organising the exhibition.

His task was made easier by pre-existing information about Turkishcarpets in Transylvanian museumand church holdings, and in privatecollections in Budapest. In addition,to pull in more material for theexhibition, Csányi and Telekitravelled throughout Transylvaniaby carriage, motor car and train,focusing chiefly on the more remotenorthern region. In gathering theexhibits Csányi made a first trip ofsix weeks (1912) and a second ofthree weeks (1913). With the assis-tance of Béla Kenessey, Bishop ofthe Transylvanian Calvinist ChurchDistrict, Friedrich Teutsch, Bishop ofthe Transylvanian Lutheran ChurchDistrict, and Victor Roth, Lutheranminister and art historian in Sibiu,they managed to record about sixhundred carpets.15 This survey can-

not be taken as comprehensive, asthere were certainly more Turkishcarpets in circulation at the time.

Of the carpets chosen for theexhibition, half came from Protest-ant churches, thirty per cent wereprivate loans and twenty per centcame from museum collections. Themost important examples wereamong the latter group, with thoseof the Budapest Museum of AppliedArts itself heading the list with 31rugs.16 Next came the BrukenthalMuseum in Sibiu with 25 carpets.

The material borrowed fromprivate collections was also sub-stantial. Teleki himself lent 18 itemsfrom the rugs kept in his castle atGornesti, near Târgu Mures in Tran-sylvania.17 Unfortunately the TelekiCollection was never published,although its richness can be guessedat from a few pieces now in theHungarian National Museum and inthe Budapest Museum of AppliedArts, among them a 17th century

Ushak medallion carpet fragment(numbered 1292 in the TelekiCollection inventory!).18

At the beginning of the 20thcentury the finest Hungarian privatecarpet collections were to be foundin Budapest. The exhibition featuredeleven rugs from the collection ofMrs József Keszler, eight from thatof Lajos Beer, and six each fromthose of Count Gyula Andrássy, DrKároly Bakonyi and Gejza Kiszely.Among provincial collections, afterthat of Domokos Teleki the richestwas probably that of Baron KárolyKuffner, who loaned five rugs.

Most of the carpets borrowedfrom Transylvanian churches werethe property of Lutheran Congre-gations, who accounted in all for157 items.19 The Calvinist churchesloaned a further 27 carpets and onewas borrowed from the UnitarianCollege in Cluj-Napoca.

The exhibition opened to thepublic early in 1914. Csányi divided

Right: WestAnatolian prayerrug, Gördes orKula, mid-17thcentury. 1.28 x1.76m (4'2" x 5’9").HMAA 7.952

Below left: ‘Tran-sylvanian’ double-niche or opposed-arch rug, Ushak,west Anatolia, mid-17th century. 1.20 x1.70m (3'11" x 5'7").HMAA 7.961

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‘Transylvanian’ rug from the TelekiCollection reads “This carpet wasdonated to the Adámos UnitarianCongregation by Lady MártonnéFóris, born Kata Gáspár, 1800”.

In the churches of the German-speaking Protestant minority inTransylvania, where carpets weretreated as valuable assets, they ser-

ved for the embellishment of other-wise stark interiors. Here, sparedthe wear and tear of everyday use,their chances of survival were morefavourable than elsewhere and earlyoriental carpets survived in largenumbers in this environment.

Contrary to conventional belief,oriental rugs were not exclusivelyused to decorate Protestant chur-ches, and their widespread use wasnot restricted to Transylvania.14

Archival material suggests that oriental carpets were also to befound in some numbers in RomanCatholic churches. Within the terri-tory of modern-day Hungary, asurvey of the carpets of the Calvinistchurches in County Borsod, basedupon inventories compiled in 1735and 1757, shows that the 147 churches in the county had 247carpets in their possession.

In Europe, the popularity of oriental carpets declined between1750-1850, the period of rococo andneoclassicism, but then revived whenromanticism brought a generalrenaissance of interest in oriental

art, including carpets. Public andprivate collections were formed inthe second half of the 19th centuryand the science of ‘owners tapet-ology’ was born too at that time.

A relatively large number oforiental carpets, mostly made inOttoman Turkey, survived in Tran-sylvania. In the early 20th centurynews of this wealth of orientalcarpets brought agents and collec-tors into the remote villages of theregion, where they bought up manyof the old carpets that had beenpreserved there. Many of thesegoods left the country.

Count Domokos Teleki (1880-1955), a Transylvanian landownerwho was also a carpet collector andscholar, drew public attention tothis threat to the rugs of Transyl-vania, which primarily endangeredthe more impoverished Calvinistand Unitarian church collections.He proposed sponsoring a publica-tion on Turkish carpets in Transyl-vania, hoping that the interest itwould arouse would contribute tothe conservation of the carpets and

Left: Five fragmentsof an OttomanCourt prayer rug,Istanbul or Cairo,mid-16th century.Originally 1.15 x1.60m (3'7" x 5'3").HMAA, 15.691

Right: Gördesprayer rug, westAnatolia, late 17thcentury. 1.25 x1.77m (4'1"x 5'10").HMAA 7.951

Below left: ‘Tran-sylvanian’ prayerrug, Ushak, westAnatolia, first half17th century. 1.17 x 1.92m (3'10" x6'4"). HMAA 14.911

Below right: Countand CountessDomokos Teleki.Photo courtesyCount KalmanTeleki, Budapest

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the carpets into groups, describedthe history of their evolution andtook great care with the aestheticsof the display. He also includedpaintings featuring carpets. A Hun-garian language catalogue of 136pages accompanied the exhibition.This included 21 black-and-whiteimages and descriptions of 312 of the352 items. The foreword, a briefhistory of oriental carpets, waswritten by Radisics, while Csányiwrote the short essays introducingthe carpet groups. Descriptive texts

on individual pieces were writtenmainly by Csányi with some con-tributions from Curator SándorCsermelyi and Assistant CuratorKároly Layer. These individualentries were extremely thorough,including catalogue number, type,description of the colour anddesign, inscriptions (if any), knotcount, dimensions, classification ofthe carpet and details of ownership.

Csányi’s dating and his classifica-tion of Ottoman Turkish carpetsinto thirteen groups are still broadly

accepted to this day.20 He tended touse the term ‘Transylvanian’ exclu-sively to refer to Group VI and itsvariants, the most numerous typewith 106 examples. Most of thesehave a double-niche field designwith a small medallion or rosette atthe centre, symmetrical arabesquevines in the field, and a border withoctagonal cartouches.

The exhibition showed thirteenexamples of 15th-16th century Turk-ish carpet art, but the greater part ofthe material in the catalogue, some

NOTES1 | Károly Csányi, Sándor Csermelyiand Károly Layer, Az erdélyi törökszönyegek kiállításának leíró lajstroma(Descriptive Catalogue of theExhibition of Turkish Carpets ofTransylvania), Budapest 1914.2 | Orientalische Teppiche – MitUnterstützung des K. K. Handels-Ministeriumsund des K.K. Ministeriums für Cultus undUnterricht – Herausgegében vom K. K.Österreichischen Handels Museum, I-III.Vienna, London, Paris 1892-1896.

3 | C. Hopf, Die Teppiche des Orients. Kgl.Landesgewerbemuseum, Stuttgart 1909.4 | W.R. Valentiner, Catalogue of Loan Exh-ibition of Early Oriental Rugs, New York 1910.5 | The Romanian place names usedhere came into official use in 1920.Prior to that Hungarian names wereused, and where applicable Germannames as well.6 | L. Fejérpataki, ‘Brassó városánakrégi számadáskönyvei 1503-1526’ (OldAccount Books of the town BraÎov), inArceológiai Értesít (Archaeological Bul-

letin), Budapest 1888, pp.150-172.7 | Ferenc Batári, Ottoman TurkishCarpets, Budapest-Keszthely 1994, pp.29-30.8 | Topkapı Sarayi Müzesi, Istanbul.Archive, E.5861.9 | Hans Dernschwam, Erdély-Beszter-cebánya-Törökországi utinapló (Transyl-vania-Besztercebánya – Diary ofTravels in Turkey). Edited and trans-lated by Lajos Tardy, Budapest 1984,after Franz Babinger, ‘H. DernschwamsTagebuch einer Reise nach Konstan-

tinople und Klein Asien (1553-55)’, inJakob Strieder, Studien zur Fugger Geschichte.Vol.VII. Munich & Leipzig 1923.10 | Magyar Történelmi Tár (Repository of Hungarian Historical Documents).Vol.18. Budapest 1871, p.216.

11 | Magyar Történelmi Tár Budapest 1878.p.359.

12 | Manuscript, National Library,Vienna, 8649 (Rec 988).

13 | Inventory of Furnishings in Gyula-fehérvár Palace (now Alba Iulia,Romania) of Gábor Bethlen on the

Left: Coupled-column prayer rug,Ladik (?), centralAnatolia (?), firsthalf 17th century.1.35 x 1.86m (4'5" x6'1”). HMAA 51.114.1

Right: Coupled-column prayer rug,Ladik, centralAnatolia, secondhalf 17th century.1.17 x 1.68m (3'10"x 5'6"). HMAA 7.947

Below right: Small-medallion ordouble-nicheUshak rug, westAnatolia, ca. 1600.1.11 x 1.57m (3'8" x5'2"). HMAA 24.459

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230 carpets, were 17th century rugs.To these could be added severalmore from among the 31 items dated17th-18th century. The cataloguealso included thirty pieces dated tothe 18th century and seven to the19th century.

Among Csányi’s discoverieswhile preparing the exhibition werehandwritten inscriptions datingfrom the 17th-19th centuries, con-necting rugs either to their originalowner or marking their donation tothe church (28 examples). The ear-liest of these, going back to 1605, ison a small-medallion Ushak carpet(cat.62) from the collection ofBaron Imre Szalay de Kéménd inBudapest. Such inscriptions provedof immense use to Csányi in refin-ing the dating of Ottoman Turkishcarpets generally.

The research project planned forthe carpets was halted by the out-break of World War I. Evan Radisicsdied in 1917, and Csányi was appoin-ted to a post at Budapest’s FranzJosef University. Although Telekibrought some of his collection fromGornesti to Budapest, a major partof his Transylvanian possessions waslost when the province became partof Romania at the end of the war.

The 1914 exhibition had provedsuch a success that in 1925 the newdirector of the Budapest museum,Gyula de Végh, returned to the sub-ject with the classic publicationTapis turcs provenant des églises etcollections de Transylvanie, an albumcontaining thirty excellent colourreproductions.21 While this publica-tion, prepared in collaboration withKároly Layer, who had worked withCsányi on the 1914 exhibition, didnot realise the original vision of awork of solid research and schol-arship on Turkish carpets, it had themerit of recording previously lesserknown but still art historically

significant material. In 1975 theCrosby Press published an Englishedition, Turkish Rugs in Transylvania,based on preparatory work byMarino and Clara Dall’Oglio.22

Today most of the carpetsborrowed from the museum andLutheran church collections at thetime of the exhibition are still safely

preserved in their original locations.The material that came from Calvin-ist churches has been depleted as aresult of economic difficultiesbetween the two World Wars. Rugsbelonging to private collectionswere for the most part lost withouttrace during World War II and thehuge political changes that followed.

Triple-arch prayerrug, Ladik (?), central Anatolia (?),first half 17th century. 1.24 x1.84m (4'1” x 6'0").HMAA 7.945

16th August 1629, Országos Levéltár,Budapest (National Archives, Buda-pest). Urbaria & Conscriptiones.Fasc.118. No.2.

14 | Batári, op. cit, p.33.15 | Károly Csányi, ‘Erdélyi törökszönyegek’ (Turkish carpets of Transylvania), in Magyar Iparmüvészet(Hungarian Applied Arts) XVII/2,pp.63-64, Budapest 1914.

16 | These included rugs of the follow-ing design types: Holbein, ‘scorpion’,triple arch, Ladik, çintamani, Armen-

ian, one each; two Lottos; four Gördesprayer rugs; five coupled-column prayerrugs; six two-column Kulas, eightdouble-niche Transylvanians.

17 | Including one Lotto rug, one white‘Bird’ pattern rug, two small-medallionUshaks, two Gördes prayer rugs, eightopposed-arch Transylvanians.

18 | Batári op. cit., no.38, p.54.

19 | These included 38 rugs loaned by the Black Church in BraÎov, 30from the Friar’s Church, SighiÎoara, 17 from Sebes, and 13 from MediaÎ.

20 | Csányi’s classifications are asfollows: I. ‘Holbein’ (four items); II. ‘Lotto’ (31 items); III. ‘Bird’ pattern(23 items); IV. Large-medallion Ushak(seven items, including six with star-medallions and one with a roundmedallion); V. Small-medallion Ushak(seven items); VI. Transylvanian, oropposed-arch (double-niche) Ushak(106 items); VII. Two-column prayerrug (37 items); VIII. Non-columnprayer rug (53 items); IX. Six-columnprayer rug (18 items, including one

four-column, one eight-column); X. Late type Ladik (two items); XI. Latetype Kula (four items); XII. Triple discor çintamani (five items); XIII. Diverse(five items, including three large-pattern Holbein, two Armenian).

21 | Jules de Végh, Charles Layer, Tapisturcs provenant des églises et collections deTransylvanie, Paris 1925.22 | Gyula Végh and Károly Layer,Turkish Rugs in Transylvania, new editionedited by Marino & Clara Dall’Oglio,Crosby Press, Fishguard 1977.

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