The II International Symposium on the Art of Azerbaijan Carpets, held in Baku 23-29 May, 1988, was sponsored by the Ministry of Culture of the Azerbaijan SSR and the Academy of Sciences of the Azerbaijan SSR. The week before the Moscow summit, this was an especially exciting time for carpet-lovers to be in the U.S.S.R.; for carpet-weaving will lend itself particularly well to perestroika, the restructuring of the economy of the Soviet Union, a policy that presently encourages individual initiative and private enterprise. Carpet-weaving has an important history in this area of the Caucasus, known to us primarily from the boom period of commercial production and export at the turn of the century. This conference of 150 participants from seven Soviet republics and nine foreign cc;>untries, with 48 papers (17 by foreigners, 31 by individuals from the U.S.S.R.), served as a vehicle to build morale among the local populace and

Azerbaijani attendees of the conference (who included reporters, artists, carpet-designers, scientists, and scholars) by drawing international attention to aspects of production, design, history, and trade of Azerbaijan carpets. Large graphic signs were posted all around town announcing the II International Symposium on the Art of Azerbaijan Carpets; daily newspapers reported enthusiastic responses to the .activities planned around our presence. Lectures were presented in the exquisite oval hall of the Philharmonia, built in 1904 and still famed as having the finest acoustics in the Soviet Union. Substantive morning lectures were enlivened by afternoon excursions accompanied by warm and generous hospitality; a wide variety of evening activities opened our Western eyes to current facets of the Soviet system, offering glimpses of perestroika and glasnost at local and regional levels.

We experienced the special meaning of "red carpet treatment" in Azerbaijan. It seems to be related to the metaphor of "anar" (pomegranate), frequently used in connection with local carpets. For us red carpet treatment consisted of incredible displays of red carpets suspended over balconies on nearly every floor of office and apartment buildings in Baku and elsewhere. We were greeted by Azerbaijani dancers and musicians in traditional dress, who I performed at official events along our route. At each venue we were offered sweet drinks of sorbet, and red carnations, as we watched engaging spectacles that surely pre-date Russian imperial expansion into the Caucasus in the 18th and 19th centuries. The music and dance, national dress and cuisine, as well as the Azerbaijani language, today still reflect an earlier history, with substantial admixtures of more familiar Turkish and Persian styles. We were treated to an extraordinary array of local color, from prehistoric petroglyphs and displays of cavemen preparing dinners of caviar from the sturgeon of the Caspian Sea, to contemporary carpets and children's carpet designs executed in chalk on the sidewalk. There were special exhibitions of Azerbaijan embroidery, the art of Azerbaijan carpet-making, on dyes and dyestuffs, as well as exhibits at local museums: the Azerbaijan Carpet Museum, the Museum of the History of Azerbaijan (national dress), the Nizami Ganjevi Museum of Azerbaijan Literature (literary memorabilia, including woven carpets depicting literary events, historical romance, and portraits of famous poets), the Fine Arts Museum (jewelry on loan from the Historical Museum), to each of which we were invited for opening festivities. A superb chamber music concert, featuring works by European, Russian, and Azerbaijani composers, was presented at the Fine Arts Museum, originally the home of R. Mustafayev, one of Baku's oil industrialists at the turn of the century when oil riches were beginning to supersede that derived from the production and trade of Caucasian carpets. Baku's eclectic architecture, combining European Baroque styles with the neoclassical and Oriental, reflects the sophistication of this rich period of the city's history and commercial success.

The conference itself was organized around several key themes. Topics included surveys of collections of Azerbaijan carpets in Soviet museums and elsewhere, techniques of carpet production (including flatweaves) and loom technology, sources of design inspiration and transfer mechanisms, scientific techniques and analytical approaches to the study of carpets, nomadism and pastoral pursuits, the Turkic essence of Caucasian rug designs, commercial interests and activities in the late 19th/early 20th centuries, contemporary carpet production in Azerbaijan, carpet traditions in regions abutting Azerbaijan (Daghestan, Georgia, northeastern Turkey). But since papers were presented in no particular order, there was an uncomfortable lack of thematic continuity. The term " Azerbaijan carpet" was used primarily by Soviet colleagues for what we would normally call "Caucasian carpets." In fact, historically, most Caucasian carpets were produced in what is today Azerbaijan. (with the problematic exception of those produced in Nagorny Karabakh). Lectures were accompanied by simultaneous translation broadcast to transistors with earphones we each had at our seats. For an audience of many languages, this was an effective and efficient means of communicatiQn when systems worked. As a speaker, I found it strange to address my remarks into three microphones at once. All who registered for the conference were provided with hefty registration packets containing books on contemporary and historical Azerbaijan carpets, posters, postcards, tourist brochures, a dyestruck paperweight with an image of a carpet loom, buttons, a nametag, and invitations to numerous events. At the end of the conference we each received a copy of the proceedings of the I International Symposium on the Art of Azerbaijan Carpets, held in Baku in 1983. Generosity and expressions of local pride permeated all aspects of our stay throughout the week-long conference proceedings. One of the finest aspects of such a meeting is the possibilities it offers for collegial exchange. In this instance, we also benefitted from the presence of physicists and chemists from the Academy of Sciences SSR, with whom conversations centered around their studies of crystallographic description and its relation to carpet patterns. There was a special excitement to be found in discussions with Soviet colleagues who share similar attitudes in their studies of subjects of mutual interest.

Highlights of the conference were many. Papers drawing the most discussion were those dealing with reed screens by Josephine Powell, presenting a speculative derivation of their design from Eagle Kazak/Sunburst carpets, and A. Ismaylova of the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences, on weaving traditions of the Talish, leading to further considerations of places of origin and manufacture. For some of us this provided updated elaborations of the provocative presentation by Josephine Powell at the Vienna I.C.O.C. in 1986. There was also considerable discussion of symbolism and meaning in carpet designs; the most fruitful contribution was probably that offered by Dennis Dodds on the origin of the Leshgi star design, suggesting its visual derivation from the Arabic rendering of the word for god repeated four times.

Surveys of collections of Azerbaijan carpets resulted in an enumeration of unsuspected museum holdings that were

acquired by private individuals in the 19th and early 20th centuries, indicating parallel patterns of collecting in Russia and in the West. These include the holdings of the State Museums of Georgia, the Moscow Museum of Oriental Art, and the State Historical Museum, as well as those of Azerbaijan in Baku and Daghestan.

Addressing separate issues, Dick Wright asked for help from Soviet colleagues in understanding Azerbaijan carpets from three directions: 1) as products of economic interests at the turn of the century, citing particularly the kustar (home- based) industrial movement, 2) in terms of design terminology, and 3) as results emanating from ethnic distinctions within the Caucasus regions. Robert Chenciner offered a poetic appreciation of the walls of Derband in relation to carpets, an intriguing topic that drew upon theories and practice of city-planning in relation to economic geography, noting in particular the strategic location of Derband at the narrowest point on the Caspian coast past which all caravans and migrating peoples had to pass. Presumably for reasons of local political import, Emil Salmanov, of the Institute of Art and Architecture of the Academy of Sciences of Azerbaijan SSR, was excluded from the program. By a show of popular opposition, allowed if not encouraged in the current aura of glasnost, his paper was reinstated. He spoke about the history and technology of weaving jajim, illustrating the type of horizontal ground loom with tripod support used for weaving narrow strips of fabric with warp-patterned stripes that are so popular among tribes of Azerbaijan and northwestern Iran.

It was a rare treat for those of us attending this conference to view Caucasian carpets and to learn about their history on site. To see the modern products of the Azerbaijan industry reinforceed the concept of carpets as applied art. It was a revelation to see that in the Soviet Union local Ministries of Culture can put so much effort, and direct so many resources, to the study of the rich traditions that have gone into the making of their multinational homeland. And it was further eye-opening to see these research efforts redirected to local industrial production and commercial enterprise.

Photographs @ Carol Bier