How to be Happy with Antique Oriental Holes by Jan A. Timmerman

In acquiring pieces for his collection, Mr. Timmerman's focus has always been authenticity and artistic merit, but not condition. His collection demonstrates that one can collect early Anatolian, Caucasian, and Turkoman pieces as well as tribal bags from the Shahsavan by exercising patience and perseverance and with a budget ceiling of $10,000 per piece, with most acquisitions costing one tenth that amount. He concedes, however, that today these economic purchases are no longer feasible.

Mr. Timmerman is married and has three daughters. The following article was written by him in preparation for an interview conducted by Dr. Herbert Exner which also appears in this issue.

Why this change of mood? Is it the you-can't-take-it-with-you feeling? But I have always thought (or pretended to think) that one of my main drives was to collect for posterity, to preserve rugs that otherwise would have been used up and thrown away. So nobody could curse me the way I curse our forefathers. In this altruistic vein, I should, of course, continue to collect until my last gasp, but perhaps it would be more sincere now to admit to myself that collecting for my own pleasure was a still stronger drive. And why should I do anything for posterity anyway?

It is not that I have reached the summit and am now doing downhill. No, I have always perceived my collecting as an uphill fight and the top of the hill is still not in sight. (Psychologists: note the use of the word fight as if we weren't talking about a pleasant pastime. Yes, but there is always the link with conquering.) The physical energy is slipping away. Collecting -- which I prefer to understand as dislodging old rugs from all nooks and crannies yourself, not depending solely upon a dealer to hand you over the desired things or upon coming across a lot in an auction catalogue -- requires a lot of energy: getting up very early on freezing winter mornings to go to a flea market in the dark to search for pieces, mostly without success; traveling to out-of-the-way places; clinging to unfriendly and suspicious owners (who would blame them?), sometimes for years (if I want to have it, they become all the more suspicious), until finally they succumb to one's charms or break down. So much energy is starting to be difficult for me to muster, or perhaps it is a matter of just becoming lazy. Then, intellectually, there looms the certainty that the summit will never be conquered. The battle is lost. Better acknowledge it. The more you climb, the higher the mountain gets. We have all seen and learned so much over the last 20 years or so that the things we would like to find are practically non-existent in any marketplace, cheap or plush. It is better not to protest against the infinitesimally small odds, but rather to start a process of rationalization and purification comprising such things as: Why not be happy with what I have already? Why not consolidate my collection by having repairs done and getting rid of rugs I now love less than in earlier days? (Easier said than done; everybody wants to have the rug I want to keep, and the other way around.) And even more likely to cure you, admit that there are more important things in life. Compare the hole in the rug with the hole in the ozone layer.

The final stage in this process is to put a piece of paper on the wall with Ici un Rembrandt on it like Zola did. I am not that sublimated yet, but having seen quite a number of top pieces all over the world over three quarters of a lifetime, and having a good memory, I have built up a museum in my head with a collection of extreme beauty. But I admit I could never have created this imaginary museum without first having lived among lots of rugs, permitting me to satisfy my physical needs to feel and caress them.

There has been a time when my great pleasure was to see other collectors turn green with envy. This seems very mean, but you need it to compensate for the times other collectors look at your things with scorn or, at best, a smile of pity. Now that my urge to possess is fading away, I seem to become more mellow.

Naturally, the outcome of this changing frame of mind is that you must and will be content with ever few pieces in your daily environment. Proceeding along this road, I discover that the objects I love most are fragmentary and/or full of holes and have threadbare spots. So gradually I have learned to be happy with my antique Oriental holes, but of course you need some imagination to turn them into beautiful carpets. Well, fantasies and imagination enrich any life.

I have long since found out that imagination is the best way to restore a rug. Nothing can go wrong, as is usually the case with restorations, and it is by far the cheapest.

But am I frank? Is all this the truth and nothing but the truth? While formulating these thoughts, I sense an uneasy feeling of cowardice, of betrayal to my long-standing reputation as an inveterate, neurotic collector. Deep in my heart I hope for a relapse and, as luck would have it, right now the telephone rings! "What? Well, that seems interesting. I'll be with you within 10 minutes." A hopeless case! How did it all start? I was brought up in a family where beautiful things were cherished but, as you so often see in homes with old furniture, good paintings, famille verte porcelain, nice silver, all the rugs were lousy! They were, literally, considered down to earth and not meant to catch the eye too much. In my teens I became interested in old books, bottles, prints, Roman glass, and whatnot -- rugs never caught my eye; what did I miss? -- all very cheap in the '30s, the unfortunate thing being that soon after I found one object of my liking, I found a second one, and then another without trying, and there was the start of the collection. I was never content with one beautiful piece, I always wanted more, and this is where the pathological part of collecting comes in. How I got that way I am at a loss to explain. This particular streak did not run in the family.

Caucasian Bidjov

After having recovered from the war and being absorbed by many other priorities, it was not until my late twenties that I first saw a rug that captivated me. A friend of the family who dealt in oriental art and whose main line was Japanese prints and netsukes as a private hobby had collected a few antique rugs, and there was the first spark. The prints and the netsukes I also found fascinating and sometimes I wish the spark had come from the netsukes. You can store a large collection in a few drawers, instead of hauling heavy and bulky rugs from one place to the other, rolling them out and up (not to mention the washing which makes them utterly unliftable). Don't ask me why the spark came from the rugs and not from the many other objects radiating beauty. All talk about "aura" only transposes the question mark. The recipient is the deciding factor; he receives the message or not -- he, the individual. I have not yet come across anybody who could explain to me the working of the individual mind in matters of liking or loving. The word "taste" is as inconclusive as any other and by its own individual nature does not explain anything either. Honesty prompts me to admit, however, that the rug spark has known periods of weakness, being superseded by polychrome Chinese porcelain, twist-stem glasses, wine bottles, antique Dutch skates, and Delft tiles with skaters on them, and various other objects of the past. But the rugs have always remained something of a premier amour to which one returns toujours. This friend also pointed the way to an Amsterdam club of collectors and dealers, very devoted and competent by the standards of the day. My joining reduced the average age to about 70. Naturally these pioneers didn't know as much as we know today, knowledge in our field being nothing but a huge pile of color slides stacked up in our brain, and their pack was thinner. I absorbed as much as I could but at that time (late '40s, early '50s) it was still possible to concentrate on classical rugs and fragments of what were then considered the heydays; tribal rugs, bags, and the like, being kilims, were regarded as, at best, as charming pastime for the more simple beginner. If I hadn't had a family to feed, house, and educate, I would on the basis of what then slipped through my fingers be the envy of the great collectors of today.

The Amsterdam club gave up the ghost when all members but one died. I tried to revive it later but didn't succeed. There was too little knowledge around and too little cooperation. It was then that I discovered that it was easier to collect rugs than rug collectors. But in other countries the clubs thrive, Germany (my only practical experience) being a very convincing example. Working on your own enhances the making of mistakes, but what about the quality of advice? First of all, I never could get it at the exact moment I needed it, that is, having to decide within seconds. And what to do with advice that goes against your own feelings? Few people in the world, in any field, impress me. This also applies to rug experts. I've heard too many contradictions from too many people. So on expert advice I bought wrong rugs and got rid of good ones, but of course it is my own responsibility. Nobody forced me. As a collector, I have made all possible sorts of mistakes. Many of them still nag at my conscience, which proves that I'm not cured yet. But I console myself by saying that they were part of the learning process. My most horrible mistake was not to buy a beautiful Lotto of the 17th century (like the ones you see in Budapest) in the Madrid Rastro about 25 years ago. Even the yellow was bright and unfaded (now I think because it came from a dark monastery). And that at a give-away price. But then I wasn't sure enough of myself. I have never specialized in a certain type or provenance. Is that a mistake? Lots of people think so. But I was never able to lock up beauty in one compartment and be blind to the rest. And non-specialization enables you to make more frequent finds, which keeps the enthusiasm going. And don't forget that variety is the spice of life.

Now comes a real mistake. After having started only with pieces I thought beautiful, I later wanted to have a sample of every species and trapped myself into buying for the sake of completion even when the quality was not good enough, hoping to find better examples later. This sometimes did happen; however, more often it did not. I should have waited patiently, which many people strongly advised me to do, and saved my money for one top quality piece instead of acquiring several minor or fragmentary ones. Should I have listened? Partly yes, partly no.

Yes, because it would have prevented the quantity that I now sometimes feel as becoming a physical and mental strain; also because most of them need a lot of repairing. It is difficult to ban them from your mind but you have to, as a matter of self-protection; otherwise, this load will drag you down the hill, stalling your uphill fight.

No, because many of the then ugly ducklings have now turned into resplendent white swans, a result of changing taste and attitudes but also with my help. I have always liked to use my hands and have done many repairs, though they were actually not much more than to prevent the rugs from falling to piece still further. Time has always been the greatest problem and, after having worked with my hands for a few days, I absolutely must start reading again, asking myself if I'm not an intellectual after all. I have repair work left for the next 300 years.

Another regrettable and irreparable mistake: In my younger years it was common usage to reconstitute "entire" antique carpets from parts that had survived. Nobody thought of sewing them onto a cloth ground, more or less in their proper place, like we all do with Anatolian carpets these days. (Caucasians are yet to come.) I fell victim to that habit and had a very old Talish of which the short ends remained, cut up and pieced together, which resulted in unsatisfactory proportions. A lesson for later.

Is there a recognizable direction in my collection? The collection does not show any desire to enhance technical knowledge. Although I admire and fully recognize the value of technical details and development, my collection is purely based on my own aesthetic impulses ("taste"). A few characteristics can be discerned. The pieces are "original." To me that means as near as possible to the traditional tastes of the makers and their local world. This almost automatically leads to a certain age and the times of pre-aniline dyes (varying according to place of origin). This again implies that they all have "lived" and, better still, suffered. I have less affinity with the sleek, successful survivors.

You will also note that I have a taste for the more bold, not so much the very fine and intricate (but what about the "classical" fragments?). Probably the main direction is color and the successful interplay of colors in a design, and then preferably primary colors. This captivates me and can hold me in its spell for a long time. Strangely enough this is entirely according to the taste of the time, by no means only in rugs. Compare the playgrounds of today's schools with those of my youth; look at what the joggers wear. I didn't influence them; did they influence me? I believe I came first. Yet I have tried to defend the collection against the changing taste of the time. It still houses many object desperately sought one or two generations ago, like the more common Anatolian prayer rugs now superseded by the bold Anatolian kilims.

You now have a glance of the strange aberrations of one particular collector. Others will be different, but there is one common streak recognizable not only by the trained psychologist. Collectors are all hardheaded individualists and therefore I fully accept the utter uselessness of this exercise. No other collector will take any heed of it.

Maybe I won't. After all there are still quite a few rugs that I don't yet have.

Early Kazak "The objects I love most are fragmentary and/or full of holes and have threadbare spots."