Int'l marketing research for Persian carpets launched: daily - Irna: "Int'l marketing research for Persian carpets launched: daily Tehran, Feb 27, IRNA
Iran-Rug-Market
Iran has launched marketing studies to increase sales of Persian carpets in South Africa, Nepal, Venezuela, Russia and a number of Persian Gulf littoral states, the
English-language `Iran Daily' reported on Tuesday quoting a senior carpet industry official.
Deputy Commerce Minister and head of Iran's National Carpet Center Morteza Faraji added that Iran's carpet industry hopes to export carpets worth half a billion dollars by March, the daily wrote.
The minister, who was the guest speaker at the inaugural ceremony of the 3rd Persian Rug Production and Trade Exhibition, added that the country controls 40 percent of the global handwoven carpet market.
The official further informed that all carpet weavers in rural areas and cities with populations of less than 20,000 will be covered by free health insurance, according to the paper.
He said the exhibition will, in addition to modern production methods, introduce storage techniques for Persian carpet.
Faraji said Germany and the United States were the largest international markets for Persian rugs.
He said that there had been plans to establish a stock exchange for Persian carpets by March 2007.
"It is essential for Iran to set up a carpet bourse as it can help regulate prices and create greater interaction among buyers and sellers," he said, adding that the bourse will also help prevent underpricing of this commodity.
According to the report, Iran exported USD 370.5 million worth of Persian rugs during the March 2005-January 2006 period.
It said some 67 percent of the rugs were exported to Germany, the United States, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Italy and Japan.
The article went on to say that Germany imported USD 89.6 million worth of Persian carpets from Iran during the aforestated period, exports to the US reached USD 67.2 million while figures for the UAE, Italy and Japan stood at USD 34.3 million, USD 33.1 million and USD 24 million, respectively.
Iran exported a total of USD 248 million worth of rugs to the above-mentioned five countries showing an increase of 10 percent as against the figure for the same period in the previous year, the report added."
Tuesday, February 28, 2006
Monday, February 27, 2006
Dale Huffman: YWCA to honor Susanne "Susie" Mousaian Weaver
Dale Huffman: YWCA to honor 7 area women: "COMMENTARY
Dale Huffman: YWCA to honor 7 area women
By Dale Huffman
Dayton Daily News
Susanne "Susie" Mousaian Weaver once saw these words on a church signboard, "The purpose of life is the life of purpose."
"Susie adopted that as her life motto," Mary Sue Kessler said. "Her lifetime purpose has been to enhance lives and increase the overall quality of our community."
Kessler, a retired bank official and community activist, nominated Weaver, who has been selected as one of seven women being honored by the YWCA as a 2006 Woman of Influence in Dayton.
The awards luncheon is Tuesday at the Dayton Convention Center. Tickets are still available.
For information, call 461-5550, ext. 179, on Monday.
Weaver's place in Dayton history was entered in the books in 2000 when she was elected the first female president of the Rotary Club of Dayton, one of the area's top service and social organizations.
The club was founded in 1912, and the first women were admitted in 1987.
But Weaver's record of giving goes back to the time when she was a child, Kessler said.
"At age 14, as a candy striper, she was a hospital volunteer."
According to Kessler, Weaver was an Air Force wife who became active in Dayton in 1982 when she returned home.
"One of her first opportunities came when she was named chair of the Dayton Educational Council," Kessler said. "She created workshops, she helped pass levies, and she worked hard to help establish the Dayton Public Schools Youth Advisory Council."
Kessler said that one of Weaver's passions is her family business, Mousaian Oriental Rugs.
"She and her husband, Paul, are proud to represent a third generation working the business."
Since this is an award honoring women of influence, I asked each of the seven winners, all profiled here in the past seven days, if they had their own woman of influence during their formative days.
Weaver said that her mother, Helen Mousaian, was her inspiration.
"She still influences me even though I lost her 20 years ago," Weaver said. "She was a fabulous role model in many ways."
She said her mother worked alongside her father in the family business all her adult life.
"My mother did not have a high school diploma, but made sure that all three of her own children had college educations," Weaver said. "She knew her priorities in life, serving God and touching the lives of family, friends, customers and sometimes folks she never met."
Weaver said, "I'll never forget that my mother was there for me during a very serious illness in my early 20s, and later I am thankful that God gave me the opportunity to be there for her during her terminal illness. She was a woman of great faith which permeated every aspect of her life."
Asked what advice she would give a young woman beginning a career, Weaver answered, "I would tell her to seek a balance in her life early on so that she maintains a healthy lifestyle. Balance time with work, with family, with friends.
"And I would suggest that she will appreciate her community more if she finds a way in which to support it, specifically through volunteerism."
Weaver added, "I was raised with the belief that the more you give, the more you have to give. I like a quote from Dr. Jonas Salk who said, 'The greatest reward for doing is the opportunity to do more.' "
Dale Huffman wants your story ideas. This column is for you. Send e-mail to dhuffman @DaytonDailyNews.com or write to him at 45 S. Ludlow St., Dayton, OH 45402. Fax: (937) 225-2489. Phone: (937) 225-2272."
Dale Huffman: YWCA to honor 7 area women
By Dale Huffman
Dayton Daily News
Susanne "Susie" Mousaian Weaver once saw these words on a church signboard, "The purpose of life is the life of purpose."
"Susie adopted that as her life motto," Mary Sue Kessler said. "Her lifetime purpose has been to enhance lives and increase the overall quality of our community."
Kessler, a retired bank official and community activist, nominated Weaver, who has been selected as one of seven women being honored by the YWCA as a 2006 Woman of Influence in Dayton.
The awards luncheon is Tuesday at the Dayton Convention Center. Tickets are still available.
For information, call 461-5550, ext. 179, on Monday.
Weaver's place in Dayton history was entered in the books in 2000 when she was elected the first female president of the Rotary Club of Dayton, one of the area's top service and social organizations.
The club was founded in 1912, and the first women were admitted in 1987.
But Weaver's record of giving goes back to the time when she was a child, Kessler said.
"At age 14, as a candy striper, she was a hospital volunteer."
According to Kessler, Weaver was an Air Force wife who became active in Dayton in 1982 when she returned home.
"One of her first opportunities came when she was named chair of the Dayton Educational Council," Kessler said. "She created workshops, she helped pass levies, and she worked hard to help establish the Dayton Public Schools Youth Advisory Council."
Kessler said that one of Weaver's passions is her family business, Mousaian Oriental Rugs.
"She and her husband, Paul, are proud to represent a third generation working the business."
Since this is an award honoring women of influence, I asked each of the seven winners, all profiled here in the past seven days, if they had their own woman of influence during their formative days.
Weaver said that her mother, Helen Mousaian, was her inspiration.
"She still influences me even though I lost her 20 years ago," Weaver said. "She was a fabulous role model in many ways."
She said her mother worked alongside her father in the family business all her adult life.
"My mother did not have a high school diploma, but made sure that all three of her own children had college educations," Weaver said. "She knew her priorities in life, serving God and touching the lives of family, friends, customers and sometimes folks she never met."
Weaver said, "I'll never forget that my mother was there for me during a very serious illness in my early 20s, and later I am thankful that God gave me the opportunity to be there for her during her terminal illness. She was a woman of great faith which permeated every aspect of her life."
Asked what advice she would give a young woman beginning a career, Weaver answered, "I would tell her to seek a balance in her life early on so that she maintains a healthy lifestyle. Balance time with work, with family, with friends.
"And I would suggest that she will appreciate her community more if she finds a way in which to support it, specifically through volunteerism."
Weaver added, "I was raised with the belief that the more you give, the more you have to give. I like a quote from Dr. Jonas Salk who said, 'The greatest reward for doing is the opportunity to do more.' "
Dale Huffman wants your story ideas. This column is for you. Send e-mail to dhuffman @DaytonDailyNews.com or write to him at 45 S. Ludlow St., Dayton, OH 45402. Fax: (937) 225-2489. Phone: (937) 225-2272."
Friday, February 24, 2006
The Australian: James Mellaart - Molesting the past [February 25, 2006]
The Australian: Molesting the past [February 25, 2006]: "
Molesting the past
Frank Campbell
February 25, 2006
The Goddess and the Bull: Catalhoyuk - An Archeological Journey to the Dawn of Civilisation
By Michael Balter, Simon & Schuster, 400pp, $39.95
ARCHEOLOGY promises the earth. Where do humans come from? How do they relate to other apes? What is culture and when did it begin? When and where did civilisation begin and how did it evolve? Historical archeology, archeology of recent periods that have written or other records to confirm interpretation, is so much easier than prehistoric archeology. This book is about one of the most important prehistoric sites in the world. About 10,000 years old, Catalhoyuk today is a mound 20m high on the bleak Anatolian plateau, composed of hundreds of mudbrick houses covering an area of about 12ha, huge by neolithic standards. Population estimates range from 3500 to 8000. Every few years the inhabitants semi-demolished their houses and built anew on top of the old houses, thus preserving much of their past. The site was occupied for a thousand years.
Catalhoyuk was discovered in 1958 by British archeologist James Mellaart. He was banned from the site in 1965 in circumstances worthy of Agatha Christie, who herself worked on similar sites with her husband Max Mallowan in the 1920s. Treasures disappeared mysteriously. Mellaart now appears to have been the victim both of his own flair for publicity and the jealousies of Turkish academics who felt that their site was being colonised. It made no difference. The British still control the site, but Turkish sensitivities are now managed more diplomatically.
Archeologists dig up their own future. And there's the rub: their careers depend on what they find, how they interpret their finds and how others interpret them. Especially the latter. Careers are at stake. There are very few decent jobs. There's a nasty hierarchy to negotiate. The academics lord it over the specialists, who in turn dominate the excavators. These contract workers, many of whom are professional diggers, often know more about sites, objects and interpretation than either the generalist academics or quasi-scientific specialists. Managing these conflicts is always difficult. When there are a hundred people on site, as in Catalhoyuk, it can be a nightmare.
Archeologists dig up someone else's past, which means nothing but trouble. Present-day nation-states and ethnic groups usually have nothing to do with the extinct culture being investigated, but they still interfere. The Turks are recent arrivals in Anatolia compared with the Catalhoyuk culture, yet that doesn't stop the Turkish state exploiting the site for tourism and nationalist propaganda. From Wales to Australia to Jordan, the present molests the past for its own nefarious purposes.
If careerism and nationalism were all archeologists had to worry about, they'd be laughing and drinking instead of just drinking. The tragedy is that archeology has promised a grand narrative but can deliver only conjecture. The archeologist has no clothes. Certainly, technique has vastly improved. Stratigraphy, dating, palynology and so on have enabled archeologists to describe their sites with real precision. So let's look at what Catalhoyuk has given us: rectangular mud-brick houses, rooms, grain bins, fireplaces, pottery, tools, art on plastered walls, in-house burials, animal bones, bullhorns and lots of figurines.
That's about it. "Let the narrative begin," I hear you say. Alas, there is no story. There are many contradictory, competing hypotheses, of course, which metamorphose into theses, then into books and careers. The crippling truth is that these theories fail the acid test of science: they are in principle unverifiable. The meaning and relationship of objects and patterns found can scarcely move beyond the bare description of the empirical evidence.
Thus the famous figurines may or may not have had religious significance. Maybe they were toys, say some archeologists. Catalhoyuk is a magnet for new-age goddess cultists pining for a primeval matriarchy. Which is just so much Glastonbury fog. At the academic level too, the fat figurines (many apparently sexless) have been thrown about as evidence of matriarchy. In fact, the figurines prove nothing. Likewise the wall art, bullhorns and underfloor burials. The meaning of this culture has gone forever.
And the big picture just gets muddier. The conventional explanation of the neolithic revolution is that agriculture was invented and therefore urbanisation commenced. Today, because of accurate dating, "sedentism" is known to predate agriculture. Well, probably. Some of the time. No one has any idea why Catalhoyuk was founded, abandoned or how it relates to other sites. The schism between the swashbuckling speculations of alpha archeologists and the nerds who stick to the evidence is as wide as ever. Powerful forces are at work: speculation equals promotion. Visit the website www.catalhoyuk.com to see how modest archeologists can't generalise.
Michael Balter is an American science journalist based in Paris. He portrays the archeologists with as much detail, affection and interest as the site itself, which makes for an engaging and entertaining book.
Balter inadvertently illustrates the pointlessness of conjecture by outlining his own big narrative of the neolithic, no more testable than the official versions. He notes just one stark admission by an archeologist on the limitations of prehistoric archeology: "[it] will always be our own fiction.""
Molesting the past
Frank Campbell
February 25, 2006
The Goddess and the Bull: Catalhoyuk - An Archeological Journey to the Dawn of Civilisation
By Michael Balter, Simon & Schuster, 400pp, $39.95
ARCHEOLOGY promises the earth. Where do humans come from? How do they relate to other apes? What is culture and when did it begin? When and where did civilisation begin and how did it evolve? Historical archeology, archeology of recent periods that have written or other records to confirm interpretation, is so much easier than prehistoric archeology. This book is about one of the most important prehistoric sites in the world. About 10,000 years old, Catalhoyuk today is a mound 20m high on the bleak Anatolian plateau, composed of hundreds of mudbrick houses covering an area of about 12ha, huge by neolithic standards. Population estimates range from 3500 to 8000. Every few years the inhabitants semi-demolished their houses and built anew on top of the old houses, thus preserving much of their past. The site was occupied for a thousand years.
Catalhoyuk was discovered in 1958 by British archeologist James Mellaart. He was banned from the site in 1965 in circumstances worthy of Agatha Christie, who herself worked on similar sites with her husband Max Mallowan in the 1920s. Treasures disappeared mysteriously. Mellaart now appears to have been the victim both of his own flair for publicity and the jealousies of Turkish academics who felt that their site was being colonised. It made no difference. The British still control the site, but Turkish sensitivities are now managed more diplomatically.
Archeologists dig up their own future. And there's the rub: their careers depend on what they find, how they interpret their finds and how others interpret them. Especially the latter. Careers are at stake. There are very few decent jobs. There's a nasty hierarchy to negotiate. The academics lord it over the specialists, who in turn dominate the excavators. These contract workers, many of whom are professional diggers, often know more about sites, objects and interpretation than either the generalist academics or quasi-scientific specialists. Managing these conflicts is always difficult. When there are a hundred people on site, as in Catalhoyuk, it can be a nightmare.
Archeologists dig up someone else's past, which means nothing but trouble. Present-day nation-states and ethnic groups usually have nothing to do with the extinct culture being investigated, but they still interfere. The Turks are recent arrivals in Anatolia compared with the Catalhoyuk culture, yet that doesn't stop the Turkish state exploiting the site for tourism and nationalist propaganda. From Wales to Australia to Jordan, the present molests the past for its own nefarious purposes.
If careerism and nationalism were all archeologists had to worry about, they'd be laughing and drinking instead of just drinking. The tragedy is that archeology has promised a grand narrative but can deliver only conjecture. The archeologist has no clothes. Certainly, technique has vastly improved. Stratigraphy, dating, palynology and so on have enabled archeologists to describe their sites with real precision. So let's look at what Catalhoyuk has given us: rectangular mud-brick houses, rooms, grain bins, fireplaces, pottery, tools, art on plastered walls, in-house burials, animal bones, bullhorns and lots of figurines.
That's about it. "Let the narrative begin," I hear you say. Alas, there is no story. There are many contradictory, competing hypotheses, of course, which metamorphose into theses, then into books and careers. The crippling truth is that these theories fail the acid test of science: they are in principle unverifiable. The meaning and relationship of objects and patterns found can scarcely move beyond the bare description of the empirical evidence.
Thus the famous figurines may or may not have had religious significance. Maybe they were toys, say some archeologists. Catalhoyuk is a magnet for new-age goddess cultists pining for a primeval matriarchy. Which is just so much Glastonbury fog. At the academic level too, the fat figurines (many apparently sexless) have been thrown about as evidence of matriarchy. In fact, the figurines prove nothing. Likewise the wall art, bullhorns and underfloor burials. The meaning of this culture has gone forever.
And the big picture just gets muddier. The conventional explanation of the neolithic revolution is that agriculture was invented and therefore urbanisation commenced. Today, because of accurate dating, "sedentism" is known to predate agriculture. Well, probably. Some of the time. No one has any idea why Catalhoyuk was founded, abandoned or how it relates to other sites. The schism between the swashbuckling speculations of alpha archeologists and the nerds who stick to the evidence is as wide as ever. Powerful forces are at work: speculation equals promotion. Visit the website www.catalhoyuk.com to see how modest archeologists can't generalise.
Michael Balter is an American science journalist based in Paris. He portrays the archeologists with as much detail, affection and interest as the site itself, which makes for an engaging and entertaining book.
Balter inadvertently illustrates the pointlessness of conjecture by outlining his own big narrative of the neolithic, no more testable than the official versions. He notes just one stark admission by an archeologist on the limitations of prehistoric archeology: "[it] will always be our own fiction.""
Monday, February 20, 2006
Philip Glass melds musical urgency to images in 'Qatsi' film triology
Philip Glass melds musical urgency to images in 'Qatsi' film triology: "Philip Glass melds musical urgency to images in 'Qatsi' film triology
Joshua Kosman, Chronicle Music Critic
Monday, February 20, 2006
Philip Glass is often knocked or mocked for writing the same music over and over. You only have to hear a few minutes of different pieces in juxtaposition to know how misguided a notion that can be.
The score that Glass wrote for Godfrey Reggio's 1983 film "Koyaanisqatsi" is a collection of the composer's trademark gestures in their purest form -- the familiar rippling arpeggios and portentous minor chords, repeated in square but shifting phrases.
But five years later, with "Powaqqatsi," he was grafting those moves onto an exuberant mishmash of world music, fusing a recognizable personal vocabulary with elements from elsewhere.
The two scores sat back-to-back in Davies Symphony Hall over the weekend, courtesy of San Francisco Performances, as members of the Philip Glass Ensemble provided live accompaniment for screenings of all three components of Reggio's cinematic "Qatsi" trilogy. (Sunday's performance wound up the run with "Naqoyqatsi" from 2002.)
Both the contrast and the similarities proved wonderfully telling. Glass' musical signature can be as much a shtick as a style, as some of his more throwaway creations demonstrate; faux Glass is not that hard to come up with if you try.
But when he's writing with real urgency and a sense of the occasion, as in the film scores for "Koyaanisqatsi" and "Powaqqatsi," Glass' standard elements combine to create a commanding dramatic landscape.
And hearing the music performed live, by a 10-member ensemble conducted by Music Director Michael Riesman, only added to the feeling of grandeur and scope. Kurt Munkacsi, Glass' longtime sound-design guru, helped sculpt what seemed at times like solid masses of musical material in the air of Davies Hall, and the shifting textures -- now thunderous, now translucent and spare -- made a kaleidoscopic effect.
In the music for "Koyaanisqatsi," the combination of this big, electronically modulated sound with Glass' stripped-down compositional aesthetic produced a piquant sense of contrast. The opening sequence, with a deep-voiced singer rumbling the title over and over in tones both deadpan and ominous, packs a punch that is all the greater for its restricted resources.
Glass casts his net wider for "Powaqqatsi," bringing Afro-pop, Middle Eastern chant and South American folk music into the mix, but interpreting it all through the lens of American minimalism. The most remarkable effect of all this new material is the way it enlivens Glass' rhythmic palette -- meters become punchy and complex, and even the simpler passages boast a vivacity that is not always part of his work.
I linger on Glass' music because Reggio's films, as far as I can ascertain, are pretty much irredeemable tripe. They comprise long, lushly beautiful montages of wordless images, all designed to explore the notion that Western technology is, y'know, like, a total bummer, and that before it hit them, the noble indigenous peoples of the Third World were living in serene harmony with the cosmos.
So on the one hand we have happy fishermen, folk dancers and agricultural workers, but on the other -- uh-oh! -- oil derricks, mushroom clouds and Vegas waitresses with really bad bouffant hairdos, who as we all know are the true purveyors of cultural evil.
"Koyaanisqatsi" (the title, like the others, derives from Hopi) does include one brief and beguiling memory trip for San Franciscans: sped-up footage of a drive along the late and not-very-lamented Embarcadero Freeway. That's something you don't see anymore.
E-mail Joshua Kosman at jkosman@sfchronicle.com."
Joshua Kosman, Chronicle Music Critic
Monday, February 20, 2006
Philip Glass is often knocked or mocked for writing the same music over and over. You only have to hear a few minutes of different pieces in juxtaposition to know how misguided a notion that can be.
The score that Glass wrote for Godfrey Reggio's 1983 film "Koyaanisqatsi" is a collection of the composer's trademark gestures in their purest form -- the familiar rippling arpeggios and portentous minor chords, repeated in square but shifting phrases.
But five years later, with "Powaqqatsi," he was grafting those moves onto an exuberant mishmash of world music, fusing a recognizable personal vocabulary with elements from elsewhere.
The two scores sat back-to-back in Davies Symphony Hall over the weekend, courtesy of San Francisco Performances, as members of the Philip Glass Ensemble provided live accompaniment for screenings of all three components of Reggio's cinematic "Qatsi" trilogy. (Sunday's performance wound up the run with "Naqoyqatsi" from 2002.)
Both the contrast and the similarities proved wonderfully telling. Glass' musical signature can be as much a shtick as a style, as some of his more throwaway creations demonstrate; faux Glass is not that hard to come up with if you try.
But when he's writing with real urgency and a sense of the occasion, as in the film scores for "Koyaanisqatsi" and "Powaqqatsi," Glass' standard elements combine to create a commanding dramatic landscape.
And hearing the music performed live, by a 10-member ensemble conducted by Music Director Michael Riesman, only added to the feeling of grandeur and scope. Kurt Munkacsi, Glass' longtime sound-design guru, helped sculpt what seemed at times like solid masses of musical material in the air of Davies Hall, and the shifting textures -- now thunderous, now translucent and spare -- made a kaleidoscopic effect.
In the music for "Koyaanisqatsi," the combination of this big, electronically modulated sound with Glass' stripped-down compositional aesthetic produced a piquant sense of contrast. The opening sequence, with a deep-voiced singer rumbling the title over and over in tones both deadpan and ominous, packs a punch that is all the greater for its restricted resources.
Glass casts his net wider for "Powaqqatsi," bringing Afro-pop, Middle Eastern chant and South American folk music into the mix, but interpreting it all through the lens of American minimalism. The most remarkable effect of all this new material is the way it enlivens Glass' rhythmic palette -- meters become punchy and complex, and even the simpler passages boast a vivacity that is not always part of his work.
I linger on Glass' music because Reggio's films, as far as I can ascertain, are pretty much irredeemable tripe. They comprise long, lushly beautiful montages of wordless images, all designed to explore the notion that Western technology is, y'know, like, a total bummer, and that before it hit them, the noble indigenous peoples of the Third World were living in serene harmony with the cosmos.
So on the one hand we have happy fishermen, folk dancers and agricultural workers, but on the other -- uh-oh! -- oil derricks, mushroom clouds and Vegas waitresses with really bad bouffant hairdos, who as we all know are the true purveyors of cultural evil.
"Koyaanisqatsi" (the title, like the others, derives from Hopi) does include one brief and beguiling memory trip for San Franciscans: sped-up footage of a drive along the late and not-very-lamented Embarcadero Freeway. That's something you don't see anymore.
E-mail Joshua Kosman at jkosman@sfchronicle.com."
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
Fars Province carpets� specialized exhibition to be held soon
Fars Province carpets� specialized exhibition to be held soon: "Fars Province carpets’ specialized exhibition to be held soon
TEHRAN, Feb. 15 (MNA) -– The 2nd Specialized Exhibition of the Fars Province Carpets will be held next week.
Introducing the carpets produced in Fars Province, exhibiting the national artifact and industry’s advantages over other floor coverings and rugs, development of the domestic markets for the woven carpet, familiarizing the consumers with different styles and designs of the product, encouraging competitions between the carpet producers, achieving a balance between the prices as well as creating a research field for the people interested in the sector have been cited as the main objectives of holding the four-day fair, an official at the Commerce Organization of Fars Province said.
Carpets worth about 82.8 million dollars were exported from the province in the past year. The figure accounted for 16 percent of the nation’s total carpet exports and also 40 percent of the country’s non-oil exports in the same year, the Persian service of Iranian Students News Agency (ISNA) quoted him as saying on Wednesday.
Referring to the quality of the carpets woven in Fars Province the official said the products are most welcomed by the customers in the international markets in particular in Germany, the U.S., Japan, Italy, Spain, France and South Africa.
The exhibition will be held for one week at the Fars Province’s Permanent Fairgrounds."
TEHRAN, Feb. 15 (MNA) -– The 2nd Specialized Exhibition of the Fars Province Carpets will be held next week.
Introducing the carpets produced in Fars Province, exhibiting the national artifact and industry’s advantages over other floor coverings and rugs, development of the domestic markets for the woven carpet, familiarizing the consumers with different styles and designs of the product, encouraging competitions between the carpet producers, achieving a balance between the prices as well as creating a research field for the people interested in the sector have been cited as the main objectives of holding the four-day fair, an official at the Commerce Organization of Fars Province said.
Carpets worth about 82.8 million dollars were exported from the province in the past year. The figure accounted for 16 percent of the nation’s total carpet exports and also 40 percent of the country’s non-oil exports in the same year, the Persian service of Iranian Students News Agency (ISNA) quoted him as saying on Wednesday.
Referring to the quality of the carpets woven in Fars Province the official said the products are most welcomed by the customers in the international markets in particular in Germany, the U.S., Japan, Italy, Spain, France and South Africa.
The exhibition will be held for one week at the Fars Province’s Permanent Fairgrounds."
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
Furniture|Today - Fewer markets? Not likely for most rug vendors
Furniture|Today - Fewer markets? Not likely for most rug vendors: "Fewer markets? Not likely for most rug vendors
Lissa Wyman -- Furniture Today, 2/13/2006 12:44:00 PM
Rug Column
Everyone says they want fewer markets, but it looks like rug vendors have another one. The recent Atlanta rug market, the Surfaces show in Las Vegas and the Vegas World Market Center show — the new kid on the block — were all hugely successful for the rug business.
That’s the problem. If one had been a bust, rug people would be making a mass exodus. As a niche category, rug folks can’t call the shots on where and when markets take place. They have to show where their customers shop, and their customers are everywhere.
Rugs are sold by every type of retailer — mass merchants, big boxes, home improvement centers, national chains, department stores, furniture stores, rug stores, Internet retailers, catalogs, patio shops, home accent stores, floor covering stores and to-the-trade designer shops. I’ve left out a few, but you get the picture.
In order to reach those channels, rug companies have to exhibit at a whole slew of markets, including High Point, Tupelo, the New York Home Textiles Market, various gift shows, The International Contemporary Furniture Fair, the New York Metro Market for traditional hand-knotted rugs, and floor covering buying group shows. Now add the WMC show to the list.
It’s costly, particularly in an industry comprised largely of independently owned companies with sales under $20 million. (A rug company with sales over $75 million is a giant.)
To an outsider, the solution seems simple: specialize in a few channels and cut down on shows. Easier said than done. Even the smallest vendors dream of scoring a big buy from a major catalog house. Even the biggest are reluctant to give up independent dealers.
The two January shows in Vegas, Surfaces and WMC, were at the same time and in the same town, but they could have been on separate planets. Floor covering people attended Surfaces. Furniture, designer and home accent people went to the WMC. A few Surfaces retailers checked out the WMC, and vice versa. But when we mentioned the WMC show to our broadloom buddies, we were met with uncomprehending stares. They’d never heard of it.
Surfaces is not popular with the rug industry. It’s very expensive but it’s about the only place they are exposed to a big bunch (like 30,000) of floor covering retailers. Some rug people showing at the WMC have kissed the floor covering segment goodbye. Feizy, Masterlooms, Safavieh and Surya have lines much more attuned to the home furnishings industry and they have wholeheartedly embraced the WMC market.
But some are caught between the WMC and Surfaces. Large vendors such as Oriental Weavers, Nourison and Momeni are set to open showrooms next year at the WMC, but they are reluctant to give up on the floor covering channel. Because this year’s Surfaces was a rip-snorting success, some will be showing at both places.
Fewer markets in the future? I don’t think so"
Lissa Wyman -- Furniture Today, 2/13/2006 12:44:00 PM
Rug Column
Everyone says they want fewer markets, but it looks like rug vendors have another one. The recent Atlanta rug market, the Surfaces show in Las Vegas and the Vegas World Market Center show — the new kid on the block — were all hugely successful for the rug business.
That’s the problem. If one had been a bust, rug people would be making a mass exodus. As a niche category, rug folks can’t call the shots on where and when markets take place. They have to show where their customers shop, and their customers are everywhere.
Rugs are sold by every type of retailer — mass merchants, big boxes, home improvement centers, national chains, department stores, furniture stores, rug stores, Internet retailers, catalogs, patio shops, home accent stores, floor covering stores and to-the-trade designer shops. I’ve left out a few, but you get the picture.
In order to reach those channels, rug companies have to exhibit at a whole slew of markets, including High Point, Tupelo, the New York Home Textiles Market, various gift shows, The International Contemporary Furniture Fair, the New York Metro Market for traditional hand-knotted rugs, and floor covering buying group shows. Now add the WMC show to the list.
It’s costly, particularly in an industry comprised largely of independently owned companies with sales under $20 million. (A rug company with sales over $75 million is a giant.)
To an outsider, the solution seems simple: specialize in a few channels and cut down on shows. Easier said than done. Even the smallest vendors dream of scoring a big buy from a major catalog house. Even the biggest are reluctant to give up independent dealers.
The two January shows in Vegas, Surfaces and WMC, were at the same time and in the same town, but they could have been on separate planets. Floor covering people attended Surfaces. Furniture, designer and home accent people went to the WMC. A few Surfaces retailers checked out the WMC, and vice versa. But when we mentioned the WMC show to our broadloom buddies, we were met with uncomprehending stares. They’d never heard of it.
Surfaces is not popular with the rug industry. It’s very expensive but it’s about the only place they are exposed to a big bunch (like 30,000) of floor covering retailers. Some rug people showing at the WMC have kissed the floor covering segment goodbye. Feizy, Masterlooms, Safavieh and Surya have lines much more attuned to the home furnishings industry and they have wholeheartedly embraced the WMC market.
But some are caught between the WMC and Surfaces. Large vendors such as Oriental Weavers, Nourison and Momeni are set to open showrooms next year at the WMC, but they are reluctant to give up on the floor covering channel. Because this year’s Surfaces was a rip-snorting success, some will be showing at both places.
Fewer markets in the future? I don’t think so"
Persian Carpet House, US venture | Retail and Leisure
Persian Carpet House, US venture | Retail and Leisure: "Persian Carpet House, US venture
United Arab Emirates: 9 hours, 22 minutes ago
Dubai-based Persian Carpet House and Antiques is planning to take its products to the US within two years, reported Gulf News. The company has 23 showrooms in the UAE and is also planning to open new outlets in Qatar, Oman, and Saudi Arabia. It has annual turnover of over $27m."
United Arab Emirates: 9 hours, 22 minutes ago
Dubai-based Persian Carpet House and Antiques is planning to take its products to the US within two years, reported Gulf News. The company has 23 showrooms in the UAE and is also planning to open new outlets in Qatar, Oman, and Saudi Arabia. It has annual turnover of over $27m."
Sunday, February 12, 2006
RugNotes: The Prague Post Online
RugNotes: The Prague Post Online: "Thursday, November 18, 2004
The Prague Post Online
The Prague Post Online: "A market niche turns into a magic carpet ride
Ehsan Abrar built the best carpet store in the country by appealing to his customers' good taste
Abrar brings a designer's sensibilities and a surgeon's skill to his trade.
By Mindy Kay Bricker
For The Prague Post
Over 40 years ago, Ehsan Abrar's brother called from Germany with a simple request: His professor wanted a Persian carpet and needed Abrar, who lived in Iran, to send a selection.
Bought. Sent. Sold. Done.
Then a 20-year-old student of German literature at Teheran University, Abrar and his brother, who was 18 and studying at a technical university in Germany, soon discovered they were on to a lucrative idea. Within months, Abrar was supplying the merchandise for his brother's carpet store in Karlsruhe, Germany.
The international request, though the first, "was not strange to us. We knew the material -- we grew up with carpets," Abrar says, referring both to Iran's second-biggest export (after oil) and his grandfather's business.
Now 63 years old and surrounded by thousands of Persian carpets in Perske Koberce u Manesa, his immaculate Prague 1 store, Abrar has parlayed his background and experience into an enviable position as the Czech Republic's largest dealer of Persian carpets. He sells both new and old carpets from Iran, some of which are one of a kind.
"Our advantage is our experience," he says. "I know the [customers'] taste. I know where they can get the best quality. I have the advantage of where to buy and how to buy. I have the background -- a tradition of carpets."
Restoring fine taste
With a glance and a stroke, Abrar can estimate the value of a rug as skillfully as most people can determine the ripeness of a tomato. By its design, he can tell you the carpet's origin, and by its feel, he can tell you the anatomy of the wool. The highest-quality wool comes from a sheep's neck and shoulders, the lowest from its stomach.
With such inherent knowledge, it was clear to Abrar that there was a market niche in Prague when he visited for the first time six years ago. And like most people visiting the city for the first time, he fell in love with Prague.
Immediately after the government collapsed in 1989, Abrar explains, Dutch antique collectors worked their way through the country buying furniture and carpets at bargain prices. And there were plenty of bargains to be had.
Before communism, Abrar says, Czechs "had a history of purchasing nice things." In particular, they had quality home furnishings. "They have the culture, and they always valued good things, carpets and especially furniture."
PERSKE KOBERCE U MANESA
Owner: Ehsan Abrar
Where: MyslIkova 3, Prague 1
Tel: 272 735 226
Web: www.koberceumanesa.cz
But by the time Abrar arrived, the antique market, including all the best carpets, "was all dried out; there was nothing left."
Abrar took this liquidation of fine taste as a sign that he could have a profitable future selling Persian carpets in Prague. Though he won't disclose his earnings, he says that his business has grown every year. This can be seen in his location and his stock. Abrar moved from Prague 10 to a store near the river in Prague 1 with a repair studio around the corner. He stocks around 5,000 pieces, including an American Sparuk -- a carpet for which in the 1920s an American company created the design and color scheme and placed orders for thousands to be made in Iran. The Sparuk was only sent to the United States; one is displayed in his store, in perfect condition, for 250,000 Kc.
Carpet surgeon
If a repair is complicated, particularly with an antique carpet, Abrar sends it home to Iran. But carpet weaving and producing is not foreign to the Czech Republic. Abrar says that he's found 70-year-old Czech carpets and tapestries, including some made in Bohemia that depict wealthy people picnicking or living in a pastoral setting.
"They had schools for carpet making," Abrar says, "even during communism."
Today, the country's textile-school graduates trickle in looking for jobs in his repair shop, which is the nucleus of his operation. Standing in the repair studio, it's easy to imagine how excited Abrar must have been as a child when visiting his grandfather during summer vacations. He and his siblings would go to various villages with their grandfather to commission carpet weavers, who would humor the children and teach them to weave.
Though he can weave a carpet very slowly, Abrar seems even more fascinated by the complexity and intricate process of repairs. Three rugs lay on three workstations; like a doctor, he is intimately acquainted with each. And each has a diagnosis: age, tread, moths.
"I wanted to become a doctor, and I would have liked to become a surgeon," Abrar says of his university days and young aspirations. Now, surrounded by his country and family heritage, he modestly shrugs: "So it didn't happen."
At least not in the way anyone expected.
Mindy Kay Bricker can be reached at realestate@praguepost.com"
The Prague Post Online
The Prague Post Online: "A market niche turns into a magic carpet ride
Ehsan Abrar built the best carpet store in the country by appealing to his customers' good taste
Abrar brings a designer's sensibilities and a surgeon's skill to his trade.
By Mindy Kay Bricker
For The Prague Post
Over 40 years ago, Ehsan Abrar's brother called from Germany with a simple request: His professor wanted a Persian carpet and needed Abrar, who lived in Iran, to send a selection.
Bought. Sent. Sold. Done.
Then a 20-year-old student of German literature at Teheran University, Abrar and his brother, who was 18 and studying at a technical university in Germany, soon discovered they were on to a lucrative idea. Within months, Abrar was supplying the merchandise for his brother's carpet store in Karlsruhe, Germany.
The international request, though the first, "was not strange to us. We knew the material -- we grew up with carpets," Abrar says, referring both to Iran's second-biggest export (after oil) and his grandfather's business.
Now 63 years old and surrounded by thousands of Persian carpets in Perske Koberce u Manesa, his immaculate Prague 1 store, Abrar has parlayed his background and experience into an enviable position as the Czech Republic's largest dealer of Persian carpets. He sells both new and old carpets from Iran, some of which are one of a kind.
"Our advantage is our experience," he says. "I know the [customers'] taste. I know where they can get the best quality. I have the advantage of where to buy and how to buy. I have the background -- a tradition of carpets."
Restoring fine taste
With a glance and a stroke, Abrar can estimate the value of a rug as skillfully as most people can determine the ripeness of a tomato. By its design, he can tell you the carpet's origin, and by its feel, he can tell you the anatomy of the wool. The highest-quality wool comes from a sheep's neck and shoulders, the lowest from its stomach.
With such inherent knowledge, it was clear to Abrar that there was a market niche in Prague when he visited for the first time six years ago. And like most people visiting the city for the first time, he fell in love with Prague.
Immediately after the government collapsed in 1989, Abrar explains, Dutch antique collectors worked their way through the country buying furniture and carpets at bargain prices. And there were plenty of bargains to be had.
Before communism, Abrar says, Czechs "had a history of purchasing nice things." In particular, they had quality home furnishings. "They have the culture, and they always valued good things, carpets and especially furniture."
PERSKE KOBERCE U MANESA
Owner: Ehsan Abrar
Where: MyslIkova 3, Prague 1
Tel: 272 735 226
Web: www.koberceumanesa.cz
But by the time Abrar arrived, the antique market, including all the best carpets, "was all dried out; there was nothing left."
Abrar took this liquidation of fine taste as a sign that he could have a profitable future selling Persian carpets in Prague. Though he won't disclose his earnings, he says that his business has grown every year. This can be seen in his location and his stock. Abrar moved from Prague 10 to a store near the river in Prague 1 with a repair studio around the corner. He stocks around 5,000 pieces, including an American Sparuk -- a carpet for which in the 1920s an American company created the design and color scheme and placed orders for thousands to be made in Iran. The Sparuk was only sent to the United States; one is displayed in his store, in perfect condition, for 250,000 Kc.
Carpet surgeon
If a repair is complicated, particularly with an antique carpet, Abrar sends it home to Iran. But carpet weaving and producing is not foreign to the Czech Republic. Abrar says that he's found 70-year-old Czech carpets and tapestries, including some made in Bohemia that depict wealthy people picnicking or living in a pastoral setting.
"They had schools for carpet making," Abrar says, "even during communism."
Today, the country's textile-school graduates trickle in looking for jobs in his repair shop, which is the nucleus of his operation. Standing in the repair studio, it's easy to imagine how excited Abrar must have been as a child when visiting his grandfather during summer vacations. He and his siblings would go to various villages with their grandfather to commission carpet weavers, who would humor the children and teach them to weave.
Though he can weave a carpet very slowly, Abrar seems even more fascinated by the complexity and intricate process of repairs. Three rugs lay on three workstations; like a doctor, he is intimately acquainted with each. And each has a diagnosis: age, tread, moths.
"I wanted to become a doctor, and I would have liked to become a surgeon," Abrar says of his university days and young aspirations. Now, surrounded by his country and family heritage, he modestly shrugs: "So it didn't happen."
At least not in the way anyone expected.
Mindy Kay Bricker can be reached at realestate@praguepost.com"
RugNotes: Azhar Abidi's scholarly essay on The Secret History of the Flying Carpet.
"Friday, August 06, 2004
Azhar Abidi's scholarly essay on The Secret History of the Flying Carpet.
The Australian: No carpeting for Arabian Nights hoax [August 07, 2004]: "No carpeting for Arabian Nights hoax
By Kate Legge
August 07, 2004
AUTHORITATIVE footnotes accompany Azhar Abidi's scholarly essay on The Secret History of the Flying Carpet.
According to Abidi, newly discovered 13th-century Persian scrolls he had translated have "shed new light on the real story behind the flying carpet of the Arabian Nights".
"Their existence was denied, their science suppressed, their manufacturers persecuted and any evidence about incidents involving them systematically erased," Abidi writes.
Abidi says Genghis Khan ordered his Mongol hordes to destroy these miraculous inventions, save for one, which he wanted buried with him to journey heavenward.
Literary journal Meanjin's chief sub-editor did not twig until he began checking the sources cited by Abidi, whose travelogues the magazine had published previously. On the trail of Australia's latest literary hoax, the sub-editor rang editor-in-chief Ian Brittain.
Brittain laughed and confessed that Abidi was an honourable trickster "taking readers for a ride", in the tradition of Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges, who created parallel worlds with mock footnotes, imaginary anecdotes and hypothetical texts.
Brittain's reference to a literary escapade in a brief foreword is the only clue that Abidi's claims are fabricated in the spirit of magical realism.
Born in Pakistan, Abidi, 36, studied engineering in London and works as an industry fund manager in Melbourne where he lives with his Australian wife and their child.
He spun his virtual history of flying carpets to explore the nature of truth and the idea that a myth has its origins in facts which can be unravelled if we suspend our disbelief.
Two Iranian websites have published his essay, prompting internet exchanges on the finer technical points of piloting carpets and how to turn and land them. Abidi bears no comparison with Norma Khouri, who allegedly sold a fictional story about honour killing as a personal memoir. But he does lead a double life, calculating investment risk by day and writing fiction at night. He has penned two novellas, which Australian agents and publishers initially rejected -- one saying the prose was too beautiful to have commercial prospects in this country.
His luck changed when an American talent scout read his work and showed it to an agent who represents Nobel prize winner Jose Saramago.
Abidi now has a contract with Penguin USA for Passarola Rising, a novella which, like his essay on flying carpets, probes the notion of truth.""
Azhar Abidi's scholarly essay on The Secret History of the Flying Carpet.
The Australian: No carpeting for Arabian Nights hoax [August 07, 2004]: "No carpeting for Arabian Nights hoax
By Kate Legge
August 07, 2004
AUTHORITATIVE footnotes accompany Azhar Abidi's scholarly essay on The Secret History of the Flying Carpet.
According to Abidi, newly discovered 13th-century Persian scrolls he had translated have "shed new light on the real story behind the flying carpet of the Arabian Nights".
"Their existence was denied, their science suppressed, their manufacturers persecuted and any evidence about incidents involving them systematically erased," Abidi writes.
Abidi says Genghis Khan ordered his Mongol hordes to destroy these miraculous inventions, save for one, which he wanted buried with him to journey heavenward.
Literary journal Meanjin's chief sub-editor did not twig until he began checking the sources cited by Abidi, whose travelogues the magazine had published previously. On the trail of Australia's latest literary hoax, the sub-editor rang editor-in-chief Ian Brittain.
Brittain laughed and confessed that Abidi was an honourable trickster "taking readers for a ride", in the tradition of Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges, who created parallel worlds with mock footnotes, imaginary anecdotes and hypothetical texts.
Brittain's reference to a literary escapade in a brief foreword is the only clue that Abidi's claims are fabricated in the spirit of magical realism.
Born in Pakistan, Abidi, 36, studied engineering in London and works as an industry fund manager in Melbourne where he lives with his Australian wife and their child.
He spun his virtual history of flying carpets to explore the nature of truth and the idea that a myth has its origins in facts which can be unravelled if we suspend our disbelief.
Two Iranian websites have published his essay, prompting internet exchanges on the finer technical points of piloting carpets and how to turn and land them. Abidi bears no comparison with Norma Khouri, who allegedly sold a fictional story about honour killing as a personal memoir. But he does lead a double life, calculating investment risk by day and writing fiction at night. He has penned two novellas, which Australian agents and publishers initially rejected -- one saying the prose was too beautiful to have commercial prospects in this country.
His luck changed when an American talent scout read his work and showed it to an agent who represents Nobel prize winner Jose Saramago.
Abidi now has a contract with Penguin USA for Passarola Rising, a novella which, like his essay on flying carpets, probes the notion of truth.""
RugNotes: Azhar Abidi's scholarly essay on The Secret History of the Flying Carpet.
RugNotes: Azhar Abidi's scholarly essay on The Secret History of the Flying Carpet.: "Friday, August 06, 2004
Azhar Abidi's scholarly essay on The Secret History of the Flying Carpet.
The Australian: No carpeting for Arabian Nights hoax [August 07, 2004]: "No carpeting for Arabian Nights hoax
By Kate Legge
August 07, 2004
AUTHORITATIVE footnotes accompany Azhar Abidi's scholarly essay on The Secret History of the Flying Carpet.
According to Abidi, newly discovered 13th-century Persian scrolls he had translated have "shed new light on the real story behind the flying carpet of the Arabian Nights".
"Their existence was denied, their science suppressed, their manufacturers persecuted and any evidence about incidents involving them systematically erased," Abidi writes.
Abidi says Genghis Khan ordered his Mongol hordes to destroy these miraculous inventions, save for one, which he wanted buried with him to journey heavenward.
Literary journal Meanjin's chief sub-editor did not twig until he began checking the sources cited by Abidi, whose travelogues the magazine had published previously. On the trail of Australia's latest literary hoax, the sub-editor rang editor-in-chief Ian Brittain.
Brittain laughed and confessed that Abidi was an honourable trickster "taking readers for a ride", in the tradition of Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges, who created parallel worlds with mock footnotes, imaginary anecdotes and hypothetical texts.
Brittain's reference to a literary escapade in a brief foreword is the only clue that Abidi's claims are fabricated in the spirit of magical realism.
Born in Pakistan, Abidi, 36, studied engineering in London and works as an industry fund manager in Melbourne where he lives with his Australian wife and their child.
He spun his virtual history of flying carpets to explore the nature of truth and the idea that a myth has its origins in facts which can be unravelled if we suspend our disbelief.
Two Iranian websites have published his essay, prompting internet exchanges on the finer technical points of piloting carpets and how to turn and land them. Abidi bears no comparison with Norma Khouri, who allegedly sold a fictional story about honour killing as a personal memoir. But he does lead a double life, calculating investment risk by day and writing fiction at night. He has penned two novellas, which Australian agents and publishers initially rejected -- one saying the prose was too beautiful to have commercial prospects in this country.
His luck changed when an American talent scout read his work and showed it to an agent who represents Nobel prize winner Jose Saramago.
Abidi now has a contract with Penguin USA for Passarola Rising, a novella which, like his essay on flying carpets, probes the notion of truth.""
Azhar Abidi's scholarly essay on The Secret History of the Flying Carpet.
The Australian: No carpeting for Arabian Nights hoax [August 07, 2004]: "No carpeting for Arabian Nights hoax
By Kate Legge
August 07, 2004
AUTHORITATIVE footnotes accompany Azhar Abidi's scholarly essay on The Secret History of the Flying Carpet.
According to Abidi, newly discovered 13th-century Persian scrolls he had translated have "shed new light on the real story behind the flying carpet of the Arabian Nights".
"Their existence was denied, their science suppressed, their manufacturers persecuted and any evidence about incidents involving them systematically erased," Abidi writes.
Abidi says Genghis Khan ordered his Mongol hordes to destroy these miraculous inventions, save for one, which he wanted buried with him to journey heavenward.
Literary journal Meanjin's chief sub-editor did not twig until he began checking the sources cited by Abidi, whose travelogues the magazine had published previously. On the trail of Australia's latest literary hoax, the sub-editor rang editor-in-chief Ian Brittain.
Brittain laughed and confessed that Abidi was an honourable trickster "taking readers for a ride", in the tradition of Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges, who created parallel worlds with mock footnotes, imaginary anecdotes and hypothetical texts.
Brittain's reference to a literary escapade in a brief foreword is the only clue that Abidi's claims are fabricated in the spirit of magical realism.
Born in Pakistan, Abidi, 36, studied engineering in London and works as an industry fund manager in Melbourne where he lives with his Australian wife and their child.
He spun his virtual history of flying carpets to explore the nature of truth and the idea that a myth has its origins in facts which can be unravelled if we suspend our disbelief.
Two Iranian websites have published his essay, prompting internet exchanges on the finer technical points of piloting carpets and how to turn and land them. Abidi bears no comparison with Norma Khouri, who allegedly sold a fictional story about honour killing as a personal memoir. But he does lead a double life, calculating investment risk by day and writing fiction at night. He has penned two novellas, which Australian agents and publishers initially rejected -- one saying the prose was too beautiful to have commercial prospects in this country.
His luck changed when an American talent scout read his work and showed it to an agent who represents Nobel prize winner Jose Saramago.
Abidi now has a contract with Penguin USA for Passarola Rising, a novella which, like his essay on flying carpets, probes the notion of truth.""
RugNotes: Aaron found his heart's desire on the floor
RugNotes: Aaron� found his heart�s desire on the floor: "Monday, October 04, 2004
Aaron’ found his heart’s desire on the floor
Aaron’ found his heart’s desire on the floor
Oriental rugs are owner’s third career – and his favorite.
By Linda Lipp
llipp@news-sentinel.com
Do what you’ll love and you’ll love what you do.
That’s what teacher turned stockbroker turned banker turned rug dealer Bob Anderson knows. The owner of Aaron’s Oriental Rug Gallery, 1217 Broadway, turned his love of collecting Oriental rugs into a successful business that has been largely immune from the economic woes that have plagued many northeastern Indiana businesses.
“What economic downturn?” he asks innocently from his perch upon a three-foot high stack of room-sized rugs. “The only slow time we had was right after Sept. 11.”
Anderson bought his first Oriental rug in 1973, after moving back to Fort Wayne from San Francisco and entering his third career, as a banker. Although he continued to work at Anthony Wayne Bank until the late 1980s, “my real passion in the evenings and on weekends was collecting Oriental rugs.” He finally opened a store, stocking it with his personal collection of about 200 rugs, “and I’ve never regretted it for a moment,” he said.
There is no Aaron at Aaron’s Oriental Rug Gallery. “There never was,” Anderson revealed. “Anderson’s Oriental Rugs just wasn’t very romantic, and Bob’s Oriental Rugs is even worse.”
Anderson liked the ring of the name Aaron, however, “and being first in the phone book, that never hurts,” he said.
Although it looks small from the street, the shop is large, stretching back a half-block deep. The extravagantly colored rugs are everywhere, piled four feet high on the floors, with a narrow aisle through the middle, and also hang on the walls. The lower level is reserved for new rugs, the upper level contains antique and collectible rugs.
Anderson isn’t sure exactly how many rugs he has in stock. “I know it’s in the thousands, I don’t think I want to know how many thousands,” he admitted.
All of the rugs are hand-picked by Anderson at major international shows in New York and Atlanta. The biggest producers of the handmade rugs are India, China, Pakistan and Nepal. Prices range from $200 to $2,500 for a 4-foot-by-6-foot rug. Room-sized rugs fall in the $2,000 to $20,000 range; and the unusually large, collectible “palace-sized” carpets can sell for as much as $75,000.
The quality and variety of rugs has improved since he’s been in business, Anderson said. Along with the traditional reds and blues, Oriental rugs now come in shades of green and gold and aubergine, among others. Contemporary geometric and asymmetrical designs are plentiful, along with the more traditional patterns. Long-wearing, stain resistant wool is still the standard, however, with a few rugs incorporating some silk threads as well.
Through the years, Anderson’s customers have come to rely on his taste as well as his expertise. A customer he’s worked with before might ask him to bring six or eight rugs over to test how they would look in a particular room. Others bring paint, wallpaper or furniture covering samples to the store, and then take home a rug on a trial basis to see how it will look.
Anderson trusts his customers as much as they trust him. “We’ve never even asked for a credit card if someone wants to take something home,” he said."
Aaron’ found his heart’s desire on the floor
Aaron’ found his heart’s desire on the floor
Oriental rugs are owner’s third career – and his favorite.
By Linda Lipp
llipp@news-sentinel.com
Do what you’ll love and you’ll love what you do.
That’s what teacher turned stockbroker turned banker turned rug dealer Bob Anderson knows. The owner of Aaron’s Oriental Rug Gallery, 1217 Broadway, turned his love of collecting Oriental rugs into a successful business that has been largely immune from the economic woes that have plagued many northeastern Indiana businesses.
“What economic downturn?” he asks innocently from his perch upon a three-foot high stack of room-sized rugs. “The only slow time we had was right after Sept. 11.”
Anderson bought his first Oriental rug in 1973, after moving back to Fort Wayne from San Francisco and entering his third career, as a banker. Although he continued to work at Anthony Wayne Bank until the late 1980s, “my real passion in the evenings and on weekends was collecting Oriental rugs.” He finally opened a store, stocking it with his personal collection of about 200 rugs, “and I’ve never regretted it for a moment,” he said.
There is no Aaron at Aaron’s Oriental Rug Gallery. “There never was,” Anderson revealed. “Anderson’s Oriental Rugs just wasn’t very romantic, and Bob’s Oriental Rugs is even worse.”
Anderson liked the ring of the name Aaron, however, “and being first in the phone book, that never hurts,” he said.
Although it looks small from the street, the shop is large, stretching back a half-block deep. The extravagantly colored rugs are everywhere, piled four feet high on the floors, with a narrow aisle through the middle, and also hang on the walls. The lower level is reserved for new rugs, the upper level contains antique and collectible rugs.
Anderson isn’t sure exactly how many rugs he has in stock. “I know it’s in the thousands, I don’t think I want to know how many thousands,” he admitted.
All of the rugs are hand-picked by Anderson at major international shows in New York and Atlanta. The biggest producers of the handmade rugs are India, China, Pakistan and Nepal. Prices range from $200 to $2,500 for a 4-foot-by-6-foot rug. Room-sized rugs fall in the $2,000 to $20,000 range; and the unusually large, collectible “palace-sized” carpets can sell for as much as $75,000.
The quality and variety of rugs has improved since he’s been in business, Anderson said. Along with the traditional reds and blues, Oriental rugs now come in shades of green and gold and aubergine, among others. Contemporary geometric and asymmetrical designs are plentiful, along with the more traditional patterns. Long-wearing, stain resistant wool is still the standard, however, with a few rugs incorporating some silk threads as well.
Through the years, Anderson’s customers have come to rely on his taste as well as his expertise. A customer he’s worked with before might ask him to bring six or eight rugs over to test how they would look in a particular room. Others bring paint, wallpaper or furniture covering samples to the store, and then take home a rug on a trial basis to see how it will look.
Anderson trusts his customers as much as they trust him. “We’ve never even asked for a credit card if someone wants to take something home,” he said."
Beacon Journal | 02/11/2006 | Expert rug cleaner needed
Beacon Journal | 02/11/2006 | Expert rug cleaner needed: "Expert rug cleaner needed
Q: I have a hand-tied wool rug that was quite expensive. In the last six months, it has taken on a strange odor. I have had it cleaned, laid it in the sun and sprayed it with a Febreze-type product, but nothing works. We have no pets. Do you have any suggestions?
-- Rhonda Simmons
La Quinta, Calif.
A: Hand-knotted rugs often are woven in less than sanitary conditions, so your rug may be harboring bacteria picked up during its construction, said Jim Hamed, president of Hamed Oriental Rugs in Bath Township. Usually rugs are washed before they're sold, but not always.
Another possibility is mold, particularly in the rug's cotton foundation, Hamed said. Although sunlight kills mold, he said the tightly packed wool may have prevented the sun from reaching the source of the problem.
In either case, Hamed said cleaning the rug will help only if it's done properly. Steam-cleaning isn't recommended for wool rugs, and it wouldn't solve a bacteria or mold problem. He recommended finding a specialist that will immerse your rug in a bath of water and special cleaning agents that won't destabilize the dyes. The cleaner might also use enzymes to feed on and eliminate the bacteria.
He suggested checking with the Oriental Rug Retailers of America (www.orrainc.com) to find a qualified cleaner in your area.
Have a question about home maintenance, decorating or gardening? Akron Beacon Journal home writer Mary Beth Breckenridge will find answers for the queries that are chosen to appear in the paper. To submit a question, call her at 330-996-3756, or send e-mail to mbrecken@thebeaconjournal.com."
Q: I have a hand-tied wool rug that was quite expensive. In the last six months, it has taken on a strange odor. I have had it cleaned, laid it in the sun and sprayed it with a Febreze-type product, but nothing works. We have no pets. Do you have any suggestions?
-- Rhonda Simmons
La Quinta, Calif.
A: Hand-knotted rugs often are woven in less than sanitary conditions, so your rug may be harboring bacteria picked up during its construction, said Jim Hamed, president of Hamed Oriental Rugs in Bath Township. Usually rugs are washed before they're sold, but not always.
Another possibility is mold, particularly in the rug's cotton foundation, Hamed said. Although sunlight kills mold, he said the tightly packed wool may have prevented the sun from reaching the source of the problem.
In either case, Hamed said cleaning the rug will help only if it's done properly. Steam-cleaning isn't recommended for wool rugs, and it wouldn't solve a bacteria or mold problem. He recommended finding a specialist that will immerse your rug in a bath of water and special cleaning agents that won't destabilize the dyes. The cleaner might also use enzymes to feed on and eliminate the bacteria.
He suggested checking with the Oriental Rug Retailers of America (www.orrainc.com) to find a qualified cleaner in your area.
Have a question about home maintenance, decorating or gardening? Akron Beacon Journal home writer Mary Beth Breckenridge will find answers for the queries that are chosen to appear in the paper. To submit a question, call her at 330-996-3756, or send e-mail to mbrecken@thebeaconjournal.com."
War's warp and weft / Afghan weavers incorporate battle scenes, World Trade Center attacks into tribal rugs
War's warp and weft / Afghan weavers incorporate battle scenes, World Trade Center attacks into tribal rugs: "War's warp and weft
Afghan weavers incorporate battle scenes, World Trade Center attacks into tribal rugs
Angélica Pence, Chronicle Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 12, 2004
At first, the fringed rug seems much like any other woven Afghan textile.
Large birds -- some flying east, some west -- are woven into a pungent red background and framed by a floral border in emerald green, yellow and golden hues. But a closer look tells a very different story: The birds aren't birds at all, they're helicopters; and the figures making up the rug's edging are actually bullets.
Narche jangi, or so-called "war rugs," emerged in Afghanistan more than two decades ago during the Soviet occupation, when the Baluchi tribe began weaving the iconography of warfare -- Kalashnikov rifles, jets, helicopters and hand grenades -- into their textiles.
The rugs have since taken on the very modern imagery of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the ensuing war in Afghanistan. Much of the imagery is copied from television news reports and aerial propaganda leaflets dropped by the thousands across Afghanistan by U.S. armed forces. The most controversial depict jetliners crashing into the World Trade Center, or tiny black silhouettes plummeting from the smoking twin towers. And to the surprise of some, the divisive folk art has gained a considerable, almost cult-like following in North America.
"After 9/11, people's interest in war rugs went up dramatically," says Kevin Sudeith, who began selling the Soviet-era rugs in a New York flea market about three years before the two jetliners brought down the skyscrapers. "People suddenly knew a lot more about Afghanistan (and) they wanted the rugs as a way to remember (9/11). Many people buy two at a time -- one to use and the other to show to their children, as a way to talk about the event, much like a document."
Rugs have been made by hand for centuries along the Silk Road -- an ancient trade route that stretches between Europe and the Far East. The oldest known rug, called the "Pazyryk," is housed in the State Hermitage museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, and is 2,500 years old. Nomadic or tribal rugs (along with bags, tents and other sheep's wool textiles) are made throughout Central Asia by numerous ethnic groups, including the Turkmen tribes. Often the only record of a tribe's history, the war tableaux are made chiefly on home looms by women and children, who have smaller, defter fingers than men.
Unlike ancient rugs, "these rugs are shocking because we recognize these motifs," says Angela Bailey-Sundahl, who recently bought a Taliban-era rug from www.warrug.com. "They're part of our everyday lives."
Less refined than the delicately woven Persian carpets that are often referred to as Oriental rugs, the Afghan variety is mostly made of hardy, hand- spun cotton or wool, entwined in geometric designs and tinted with vegetable dyes in deep, vivid hues. The most beautiful usually are credited to the Baluchi -- Sunni Muslims from the southwest region of Afghanistan -- and other hand weavers. Those with more rudimentary designs often come from weavers in refugee camps along the borders shared with Pakistan and Iran.
Emmett Eiland, owner of Emmett Eiland's Oriental Rug Co. in Berkeley, has traveled throughout Turkey, Iran, India, Pakistan, the Caucasus and Afghanistan researching the ancient trade.
"Oriental rug designs aren't just abstractions. What's interesting about war rugs in particular is that the weavers take scenes from everyday life and make them into rugs. Rug designs don't just come out of nowhere," says Eiland, a rug dealer since 1969 and author of "Oriental Rugs Today" (Berkeley Hills Books, $35).
Most war rugs coming out of Afghanistan today are shipped in bulk to distribution centers in New York, London and Hamburg, advertised everywhere from EBay to Soldier of Fortune magazine, and available in showrooms and at swap meets across the United States and Canada. Sudeith buys his supply via several sources, he says, including natives and some U.S. Special Forces agents stationed in the war-torn country.
Last year, Sudeith said his company and its online division sold 575 rugs, up from 150 in 2002, at $160 to $9,500. In the past six months, Bay Area residents bought more than 240 rugs from him. Of those, a good number were American women interested in the human rights of Afghan women.
"I wanted something very subtle, something woven by a woman," says Bailey- Sundahl, who teaches English as a second or foreign language in San Francisco and whose rug was made in the late 1990s. "For women in war-torn countries like Afghanistan, Bosnia and Iraq, weaving is their only voice."
Like Bailey-Sundahl, Oakland resident Melissa Hahn became interested in the pictorial rugs after hearing about them on National Public Radio. She soon logged on to the site and bought a 13-year-old carpet for $450.
"My interest was from a cultural perspective," says Hahn, a licensing manager for www.levi.com and a folk art collector. "I imagined an uneducated weaver looking up at the sky, seeing these bombers above their city, turning around weaving (the sights) into a rug."
Among the first rugs made after the attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon were those that portrayed the 2001 bombing of Tora Bora in Afghanistan. Some of the more recent styles come from Ghazni, between Kabul and Kandahar. These tend to have a thicker pile than the more prevalent Kazar rugs.
One such carpet recently for sale for $1,250 on www.warrug.com seemed to pay tribute to U.S. troops -- depicting an ATV and tank roving across a desert floor, while a U.S. predator drone, F16 fighter jets and a Blackhawk helicopter flew overhead. Colorful slogans scattered throughout the 4-by-4- foot rug declared the "War Against Terror," "Afghans Liberated From Terrorists, " "FDNY" and "WTC."
Hahn and Bailey-Sundahl opted against buying post-Sept. 11 versions.
"I didn't want anything mass-marketed," says Bailey-Sundahl, whose Taliban rug contains opium poppies inside hand grenades. "I wanted something with more freedom of imagination."
An estimated 4 million refugees fled Afghanistan to neighboring Iran and Pakistan during the decade-long Soviet-Afghan war, which began in 1979. Some longtime rug dealers and textile historians argue that what began during those times as folk art born of a people's suffering has since become a product created by poverty-stricken craftspeople who are less interested in making a political statement than a product that will sell to foreigners.
"They're no longer a message in a bottle," says Richard Habib, owner of Alexander's Decorative Rugs in San Francisco. With the Soviet-era rugs "you had to look at a puzzle and discover the message -- messages coming from weavers. But they started becoming very obvious after 9/11."
It takes between two and six weeks to weave a typical 4-by-6-foot war rug, which is secured by a wool-and-cotton foundation and 60 to 100 knots per square inch. Ardabil rugs from Iran, in contrast, are customarily made of 100 percent worsted wool and tied with 150 to 200 knots per square inch.
Habib, who deals in high-end Oriental, Persian and European antique rugs and tapestries, and contemporary Tibetan and Romanian rugs among others, says that as demand grows for the Sept. 11 war rugs, so does the prevalence of lesser quality fabrics and dyes, including synthetic neons, that are used to make them.
"If a war rug appeals to somebody, they should buy it," says Habib, a rug dealer for the past quarter century. "But they should know that they're not collectible. There's always going to be a limited audience for them."
Tony Abrahim, a native of Afghanistan, and co-founder and owner of IMG Home in SoMa, agrees and, like Habib, refuses to sell the post-Sept. 11 style of war rugs -- particularly those depicting the Twin Towers collapsing.
"I love America and these rugs, they are disturbing to me," says Abrahim, who fled his native Kabul during political unrest in the early 1970s when 16 members of his family were killed. "Yes, put guns and tanks on the rug. But you don't put blood on the rug."
Sudeith, who first caught sight of a war rug in 1996 at the New York dinner party of a wealthy Italian businessman, readily allows that the latest incarnations aren't for everyone. While the Soviet-era war rugs are of a higher quality, rarer and worth more money, that may change, he says, as those inspired by the day-to-day scenes of the U.S. occupation age with time.
"These war rugs are traditional folk art," Sudeith says. "They're a means of expression and in many regard (a weaver's) sole voice. And just like Persian rugs from Iran, they are woven to sell."
Resources
War rugs, www.warrug.com
Emmett Eiland's Oriental Rug Co. (includes information about "Oriental Rugs Today"), www.internetrugs.com
Alexander's Decorative Rugs, 2 Henry Adams St., Suite 330, San Francisco, www.alexandersrugs.com
IMG Home, www.shopimg.com
-- Angélica Pence
E-mail Angélica Pence at apence@sfchronicle.com.
Page HO - 1"
Afghan weavers incorporate battle scenes, World Trade Center attacks into tribal rugs
Angélica Pence, Chronicle Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 12, 2004
At first, the fringed rug seems much like any other woven Afghan textile.
Large birds -- some flying east, some west -- are woven into a pungent red background and framed by a floral border in emerald green, yellow and golden hues. But a closer look tells a very different story: The birds aren't birds at all, they're helicopters; and the figures making up the rug's edging are actually bullets.
Narche jangi, or so-called "war rugs," emerged in Afghanistan more than two decades ago during the Soviet occupation, when the Baluchi tribe began weaving the iconography of warfare -- Kalashnikov rifles, jets, helicopters and hand grenades -- into their textiles.
The rugs have since taken on the very modern imagery of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the ensuing war in Afghanistan. Much of the imagery is copied from television news reports and aerial propaganda leaflets dropped by the thousands across Afghanistan by U.S. armed forces. The most controversial depict jetliners crashing into the World Trade Center, or tiny black silhouettes plummeting from the smoking twin towers. And to the surprise of some, the divisive folk art has gained a considerable, almost cult-like following in North America.
"After 9/11, people's interest in war rugs went up dramatically," says Kevin Sudeith, who began selling the Soviet-era rugs in a New York flea market about three years before the two jetliners brought down the skyscrapers. "People suddenly knew a lot more about Afghanistan (and) they wanted the rugs as a way to remember (9/11). Many people buy two at a time -- one to use and the other to show to their children, as a way to talk about the event, much like a document."
Rugs have been made by hand for centuries along the Silk Road -- an ancient trade route that stretches between Europe and the Far East. The oldest known rug, called the "Pazyryk," is housed in the State Hermitage museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, and is 2,500 years old. Nomadic or tribal rugs (along with bags, tents and other sheep's wool textiles) are made throughout Central Asia by numerous ethnic groups, including the Turkmen tribes. Often the only record of a tribe's history, the war tableaux are made chiefly on home looms by women and children, who have smaller, defter fingers than men.
Unlike ancient rugs, "these rugs are shocking because we recognize these motifs," says Angela Bailey-Sundahl, who recently bought a Taliban-era rug from www.warrug.com. "They're part of our everyday lives."
Less refined than the delicately woven Persian carpets that are often referred to as Oriental rugs, the Afghan variety is mostly made of hardy, hand- spun cotton or wool, entwined in geometric designs and tinted with vegetable dyes in deep, vivid hues. The most beautiful usually are credited to the Baluchi -- Sunni Muslims from the southwest region of Afghanistan -- and other hand weavers. Those with more rudimentary designs often come from weavers in refugee camps along the borders shared with Pakistan and Iran.
Emmett Eiland, owner of Emmett Eiland's Oriental Rug Co. in Berkeley, has traveled throughout Turkey, Iran, India, Pakistan, the Caucasus and Afghanistan researching the ancient trade.
"Oriental rug designs aren't just abstractions. What's interesting about war rugs in particular is that the weavers take scenes from everyday life and make them into rugs. Rug designs don't just come out of nowhere," says Eiland, a rug dealer since 1969 and author of "Oriental Rugs Today" (Berkeley Hills Books, $35).
Most war rugs coming out of Afghanistan today are shipped in bulk to distribution centers in New York, London and Hamburg, advertised everywhere from EBay to Soldier of Fortune magazine, and available in showrooms and at swap meets across the United States and Canada. Sudeith buys his supply via several sources, he says, including natives and some U.S. Special Forces agents stationed in the war-torn country.
Last year, Sudeith said his company and its online division sold 575 rugs, up from 150 in 2002, at $160 to $9,500. In the past six months, Bay Area residents bought more than 240 rugs from him. Of those, a good number were American women interested in the human rights of Afghan women.
"I wanted something very subtle, something woven by a woman," says Bailey- Sundahl, who teaches English as a second or foreign language in San Francisco and whose rug was made in the late 1990s. "For women in war-torn countries like Afghanistan, Bosnia and Iraq, weaving is their only voice."
Like Bailey-Sundahl, Oakland resident Melissa Hahn became interested in the pictorial rugs after hearing about them on National Public Radio. She soon logged on to the site and bought a 13-year-old carpet for $450.
"My interest was from a cultural perspective," says Hahn, a licensing manager for www.levi.com and a folk art collector. "I imagined an uneducated weaver looking up at the sky, seeing these bombers above their city, turning around weaving (the sights) into a rug."
Among the first rugs made after the attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon were those that portrayed the 2001 bombing of Tora Bora in Afghanistan. Some of the more recent styles come from Ghazni, between Kabul and Kandahar. These tend to have a thicker pile than the more prevalent Kazar rugs.
One such carpet recently for sale for $1,250 on www.warrug.com seemed to pay tribute to U.S. troops -- depicting an ATV and tank roving across a desert floor, while a U.S. predator drone, F16 fighter jets and a Blackhawk helicopter flew overhead. Colorful slogans scattered throughout the 4-by-4- foot rug declared the "War Against Terror," "Afghans Liberated From Terrorists, " "FDNY" and "WTC."
Hahn and Bailey-Sundahl opted against buying post-Sept. 11 versions.
"I didn't want anything mass-marketed," says Bailey-Sundahl, whose Taliban rug contains opium poppies inside hand grenades. "I wanted something with more freedom of imagination."
An estimated 4 million refugees fled Afghanistan to neighboring Iran and Pakistan during the decade-long Soviet-Afghan war, which began in 1979. Some longtime rug dealers and textile historians argue that what began during those times as folk art born of a people's suffering has since become a product created by poverty-stricken craftspeople who are less interested in making a political statement than a product that will sell to foreigners.
"They're no longer a message in a bottle," says Richard Habib, owner of Alexander's Decorative Rugs in San Francisco. With the Soviet-era rugs "you had to look at a puzzle and discover the message -- messages coming from weavers. But they started becoming very obvious after 9/11."
It takes between two and six weeks to weave a typical 4-by-6-foot war rug, which is secured by a wool-and-cotton foundation and 60 to 100 knots per square inch. Ardabil rugs from Iran, in contrast, are customarily made of 100 percent worsted wool and tied with 150 to 200 knots per square inch.
Habib, who deals in high-end Oriental, Persian and European antique rugs and tapestries, and contemporary Tibetan and Romanian rugs among others, says that as demand grows for the Sept. 11 war rugs, so does the prevalence of lesser quality fabrics and dyes, including synthetic neons, that are used to make them.
"If a war rug appeals to somebody, they should buy it," says Habib, a rug dealer for the past quarter century. "But they should know that they're not collectible. There's always going to be a limited audience for them."
Tony Abrahim, a native of Afghanistan, and co-founder and owner of IMG Home in SoMa, agrees and, like Habib, refuses to sell the post-Sept. 11 style of war rugs -- particularly those depicting the Twin Towers collapsing.
"I love America and these rugs, they are disturbing to me," says Abrahim, who fled his native Kabul during political unrest in the early 1970s when 16 members of his family were killed. "Yes, put guns and tanks on the rug. But you don't put blood on the rug."
Sudeith, who first caught sight of a war rug in 1996 at the New York dinner party of a wealthy Italian businessman, readily allows that the latest incarnations aren't for everyone. While the Soviet-era war rugs are of a higher quality, rarer and worth more money, that may change, he says, as those inspired by the day-to-day scenes of the U.S. occupation age with time.
"These war rugs are traditional folk art," Sudeith says. "They're a means of expression and in many regard (a weaver's) sole voice. And just like Persian rugs from Iran, they are woven to sell."
Resources
War rugs, www.warrug.com
Emmett Eiland's Oriental Rug Co. (includes information about "Oriental Rugs Today"), www.internetrugs.com
Alexander's Decorative Rugs, 2 Henry Adams St., Suite 330, San Francisco, www.alexandersrugs.com
IMG Home, www.shopimg.com
-- Angélica Pence
E-mail Angélica Pence at apence@sfchronicle.com.
Page HO - 1"
Obituary: Wade G. Shehady Sr. / Dealer in exotic carpets since 1947
Obituary: Wade G. Shehady Sr. / Dealer in exotic carpets since 1947: "Obituary: Wade G. Shehady Sr. / Dealer in exotic carpets since 1947
Owned Shehady's Oriental Rugs in Aspinwall
Tuesday, April 12, 2005
By Dan Fitzpatrick, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Wade G. Shehady Sr., a local dealer of exotic rugs for 58 years, died Sunday at UPMC St. Margaret near Aspinwall. He was 77.
The owner of Shehady's Oriental Rugs in Aspinwall, Mr. Shehady collected tribal carpets from Turkey and the Caucasus Mountains, treating each as a piece of art that could be learned from. He knew so much about the rugs that when he saw a new one, all he needed was 30 seconds to identify the region where it originated and its age, according to his son, Wade Jr., who now runs the store his father and grandfather began in 1947.
Mr. Shehady demonstrated his knowledge once by placing and dating a rug from a block away, as it protruded from the end of a station wagon.
"That was how good his eye is," Wade Jr. said.
Mr. Shehady grew up in Jamestown, N.Y., and New Castle with 11 brothers and sisters. His father and mother owned a rug cleaning business near the University of Pittsburgh, and in 1947, Mr. Shehady and his father went into business together selling and restoring rugs. It was Mr. Shehady who looked for the exotic Oriental rugs and touted them to customers, landing the late Sen. John Heinz as an early buyer.
"He had such a love for these old rugs," his son said.
Wade Jr., now 57, took over the family business in 1990, but his father kept returning to the store, sometimes in a walker, close to the time of his death.
"It was his love," Wade Jr. said.
In addition to his son, Mr. Shehady is survived by his wife, Bessie; six children, Marilyn Nemchick, Pamela Smith, Janet Knight, Kim Volzer, Bessie Shehady and Philip Shehady; sisters Adele Gallade, Katherine Barcellino and Evelyn Ceransky; brothers Charles, Frederick, Thomas and Richard; 14 grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren.
Visitors will be received today from 1 to 9 p.m. at Savolskis-Wasik-Glenn Funeral Home, 3501 Main St., Munhall. The funeral is private.
(Dan Fitzpatrick can be reached at dfitzpatrick@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1752.)"
Owned Shehady's Oriental Rugs in Aspinwall
Tuesday, April 12, 2005
By Dan Fitzpatrick, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Wade G. Shehady Sr., a local dealer of exotic rugs for 58 years, died Sunday at UPMC St. Margaret near Aspinwall. He was 77.
The owner of Shehady's Oriental Rugs in Aspinwall, Mr. Shehady collected tribal carpets from Turkey and the Caucasus Mountains, treating each as a piece of art that could be learned from. He knew so much about the rugs that when he saw a new one, all he needed was 30 seconds to identify the region where it originated and its age, according to his son, Wade Jr., who now runs the store his father and grandfather began in 1947.
Mr. Shehady demonstrated his knowledge once by placing and dating a rug from a block away, as it protruded from the end of a station wagon.
"That was how good his eye is," Wade Jr. said.
Mr. Shehady grew up in Jamestown, N.Y., and New Castle with 11 brothers and sisters. His father and mother owned a rug cleaning business near the University of Pittsburgh, and in 1947, Mr. Shehady and his father went into business together selling and restoring rugs. It was Mr. Shehady who looked for the exotic Oriental rugs and touted them to customers, landing the late Sen. John Heinz as an early buyer.
"He had such a love for these old rugs," his son said.
Wade Jr., now 57, took over the family business in 1990, but his father kept returning to the store, sometimes in a walker, close to the time of his death.
"It was his love," Wade Jr. said.
In addition to his son, Mr. Shehady is survived by his wife, Bessie; six children, Marilyn Nemchick, Pamela Smith, Janet Knight, Kim Volzer, Bessie Shehady and Philip Shehady; sisters Adele Gallade, Katherine Barcellino and Evelyn Ceransky; brothers Charles, Frederick, Thomas and Richard; 14 grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren.
Visitors will be received today from 1 to 9 p.m. at Savolskis-Wasik-Glenn Funeral Home, 3501 Main St., Munhall. The funeral is private.
(Dan Fitzpatrick can be reached at dfitzpatrick@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1752.)"
Saturday, February 11, 2006
Feb 19 - Amir Nasseri and Persian Journal attack and insult Islam mentioning The great Carpet of BAHARESTAN
Feb 19 - Commemoration of Battle of Qaddissiya - Our Real Ashura - Persian Journal Culture Archaeological History Art Archaeology cutlural history news & Iranian cutlure newspaper: "Culture Feb 10th, 2006 - 19:47:12
Page One > Culture
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Feb 19 - Commemoration of Battle of Qaddissiya - Our Real Ashura
Feb 10, 2006
Amir Nasseri - Persian Journal
Let us remember history as it truly exists.
Let us remember February 19, our real day of mourning.
I am posting an article I found at Derafshe Kaviyani, followed in the end by a few words of my own. The original article is in quotes:
"Commemoration of Battle of Qadissiya - 1368 years later
By BKA
Derafsh Kavian
To all true Iranians:
Feb 19 is the commemoration day of the start of the battle of Qaddissiya.
Qadissiya battle started on Monday February 19, 636(A.D) and lasted for four(4) days.
On the flat plains near the Euphrates river in modern Iraq between Kufa and abu sukheir.
The Sassanian army under the command of Lt. General Rostam-e-farokzad(In Pahlavi- Eran- Sepah-bod) and the Arab army of caliph Omar under the command of Sa'd ibn Abi waqqas clashed.
Many Iranians fought bravely and died (more than 30,000 dead) in this battle trying to defend Iran from the nomadic Arabs attempting to convert Iranians to their Islamic religion.
At the end of the battle Lt. Gen Rostam was killed and the national flag (Darfash-e-Kavian) was captured by the Arab nomads.
This flag was taken to Caliph Omar who promptly removed all of the magnificent jewels set on it and then ordered it to be burned.
After the battle the Arabs went to the capital Ctesiphone, the glorious capital of Sasanian empire and the largest city in the world at that time, the city was invaded, sacked, and functionally destroyed by the armies of Islam.
The great Carpet of BAHARESTAN, woven with threads of gold and silver in the great arched hall of the palace of Ctesiphone was cut up by the Arab nomads and distributed as war booty.
Note:- this looting is still going on 1368 years later.
Gondi Shapour university and library were destroyed and its books were burned by the invaders. Most of Sasanian records and literary works were destroyed.
This day Feb 19 should be commemorated by all Iranians nationally and internationally.
This is our real national "Ashura" not the one the Mullahs force us to commemorate.
Instead of going on a pilgrimage to Mecca and Karbla we should all go to Qaddissiya to remind ourselves of the truth of what has happened to us over the past 1368 years.
It is our duty to inform the world as well as remind the Arab world itself of their crimes and barbaric behaviour against the people of Iran during this period.
Arabs should be reminded of their massacres of Iranians in the city of Estakher and other areas.
They should be reminded of their racist policies and their looting, pillaging, raping and abuse of Iran and its people for the 200 years of their rule.
We should do our utmost to ensure that it will never happen again.
In memory of the fallen heros of battles of Qadissyia and Nahavand.
"Payandeh Iran"
---
It is by forgetting our real history that we have allowed Islam to continue to strangle our country. Any Iranian who chooses to follow the bogus religion of the Arabic pirates of the desert must question whether he or she is true to Iran.
By forgetting or neglecting Iran's history we only bring shame to the memory of our forefathers and to ourselves. We bring shame to the great nation of Iran.
I will now leave you with a few verses from Persia's Poetic Past:
But Sassanian wealth and beauty caught the eye
Of a desert tribe, whose religion was a lie
Like desert snakes, they ruthlessly attacked
Until beautiful Ctesiphone was sacked
Rostam-e-Farokhzad, the brave and capable general
Fought till the end, though his wounds were several
At Qaddissiya, he came to Iran's defense
Alas, the Taazi army was too dense
With coercion and the sword
Islam was able to spread its word
A dark and sinister force was born
That to this day brings Iran much scorn
Some to India had to flee
Iran's destruction was unbearable to see
Parsees, they are called to this day
Ahura Mazda, with them will always stay
But Iranian roots are strong and hard to kill
Iran was freed again, with such a thrill
The Saffarids would answer the nation?s call
To make Arab tyranny shamefully fall
Don't mourn the Ashura, weep a Taazi's death
Hassan and Hossein were foreigners, who weakened Iran's breath
If mourn you must, then mourn, a national event
Like Gaugamela, or Qaddissiya, places of great lament
Amir Nasseri - Persian Journal"
Page One > Culture
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Feb 19 - Commemoration of Battle of Qaddissiya - Our Real Ashura
Feb 10, 2006
Amir Nasseri - Persian Journal
Let us remember history as it truly exists.
Let us remember February 19, our real day of mourning.
I am posting an article I found at Derafshe Kaviyani, followed in the end by a few words of my own. The original article is in quotes:
"Commemoration of Battle of Qadissiya - 1368 years later
By BKA
Derafsh Kavian
To all true Iranians:
Feb 19 is the commemoration day of the start of the battle of Qaddissiya.
Qadissiya battle started on Monday February 19, 636(A.D) and lasted for four(4) days.
On the flat plains near the Euphrates river in modern Iraq between Kufa and abu sukheir.
The Sassanian army under the command of Lt. General Rostam-e-farokzad(In Pahlavi- Eran- Sepah-bod) and the Arab army of caliph Omar under the command of Sa'd ibn Abi waqqas clashed.
Many Iranians fought bravely and died (more than 30,000 dead) in this battle trying to defend Iran from the nomadic Arabs attempting to convert Iranians to their Islamic religion.
At the end of the battle Lt. Gen Rostam was killed and the national flag (Darfash-e-Kavian) was captured by the Arab nomads.
This flag was taken to Caliph Omar who promptly removed all of the magnificent jewels set on it and then ordered it to be burned.
After the battle the Arabs went to the capital Ctesiphone, the glorious capital of Sasanian empire and the largest city in the world at that time, the city was invaded, sacked, and functionally destroyed by the armies of Islam.
The great Carpet of BAHARESTAN, woven with threads of gold and silver in the great arched hall of the palace of Ctesiphone was cut up by the Arab nomads and distributed as war booty.
Note:- this looting is still going on 1368 years later.
Gondi Shapour university and library were destroyed and its books were burned by the invaders. Most of Sasanian records and literary works were destroyed.
This day Feb 19 should be commemorated by all Iranians nationally and internationally.
This is our real national "Ashura" not the one the Mullahs force us to commemorate.
Instead of going on a pilgrimage to Mecca and Karbla we should all go to Qaddissiya to remind ourselves of the truth of what has happened to us over the past 1368 years.
It is our duty to inform the world as well as remind the Arab world itself of their crimes and barbaric behaviour against the people of Iran during this period.
Arabs should be reminded of their massacres of Iranians in the city of Estakher and other areas.
They should be reminded of their racist policies and their looting, pillaging, raping and abuse of Iran and its people for the 200 years of their rule.
We should do our utmost to ensure that it will never happen again.
In memory of the fallen heros of battles of Qadissyia and Nahavand.
"Payandeh Iran"
---
It is by forgetting our real history that we have allowed Islam to continue to strangle our country. Any Iranian who chooses to follow the bogus religion of the Arabic pirates of the desert must question whether he or she is true to Iran.
By forgetting or neglecting Iran's history we only bring shame to the memory of our forefathers and to ourselves. We bring shame to the great nation of Iran.
I will now leave you with a few verses from Persia's Poetic Past:
But Sassanian wealth and beauty caught the eye
Of a desert tribe, whose religion was a lie
Like desert snakes, they ruthlessly attacked
Until beautiful Ctesiphone was sacked
Rostam-e-Farokhzad, the brave and capable general
Fought till the end, though his wounds were several
At Qaddissiya, he came to Iran's defense
Alas, the Taazi army was too dense
With coercion and the sword
Islam was able to spread its word
A dark and sinister force was born
That to this day brings Iran much scorn
Some to India had to flee
Iran's destruction was unbearable to see
Parsees, they are called to this day
Ahura Mazda, with them will always stay
But Iranian roots are strong and hard to kill
Iran was freed again, with such a thrill
The Saffarids would answer the nation?s call
To make Arab tyranny shamefully fall
Don't mourn the Ashura, weep a Taazi's death
Hassan and Hossein were foreigners, who weakened Iran's breath
If mourn you must, then mourn, a national event
Like Gaugamela, or Qaddissiya, places of great lament
Amir Nasseri - Persian Journal"
Thursday, February 09, 2006
BBC NEWS | Business | Iranian exporters fear sanctions Mr. Razi Miri Speaks Out
BBC NEWS | Business | Iranian exporters fear sanctions: "She says Iran should have nuclear technology, but she also hopes the company can avoid going out of business.
These are worries shared by those working in Iran's most traditional export, Persian carpets, a sector that was also weighed down by US sanctions until recently.
Razi Miri who runs Miri Carpets employs 6,000 people in his export business in the bazaar.
He has pioneered the weaving of new carpets using old designs reviving traditional methods of dying and weaving, but the product is again too expensive for the local market.
Mr Miri, who has just returned from a carpet expo in Germany, says the problems in getting visas for some countries already make it difficult for him to do business, though it could get worse.
¿Exporting is something special," he says.
"We have to have good relations with other countries if we want to export."
Violent revolution
Mr Miri believes sanctions simply will not have the intended effect because exporters will always find a way round them.
Locals cannot afford Persian carpets
"Sanctions can be a very serious problem for exporters in our country," he says, adding that "it doesn't mean they can stop Iran 100% in terms of business; they can make problems for us but [they cannot stop us] completely".
The message from Iran's exporters is that sanctions that would curb Iran's non oil exports would not alter government policy, but it would remove the livelihood of ordinary Iranians.
Some abroad might say that would force the Iranian people to topple their government, but after one violent revolution a quarter of a century ago there is little appetite here for another."
These are worries shared by those working in Iran's most traditional export, Persian carpets, a sector that was also weighed down by US sanctions until recently.
Razi Miri who runs Miri Carpets employs 6,000 people in his export business in the bazaar.
He has pioneered the weaving of new carpets using old designs reviving traditional methods of dying and weaving, but the product is again too expensive for the local market.
Mr Miri, who has just returned from a carpet expo in Germany, says the problems in getting visas for some countries already make it difficult for him to do business, though it could get worse.
¿Exporting is something special," he says.
"We have to have good relations with other countries if we want to export."
Violent revolution
Mr Miri believes sanctions simply will not have the intended effect because exporters will always find a way round them.
Locals cannot afford Persian carpets
"Sanctions can be a very serious problem for exporters in our country," he says, adding that "it doesn't mean they can stop Iran 100% in terms of business; they can make problems for us but [they cannot stop us] completely".
The message from Iran's exporters is that sanctions that would curb Iran's non oil exports would not alter government policy, but it would remove the livelihood of ordinary Iranians.
Some abroad might say that would force the Iranian people to topple their government, but after one violent revolution a quarter of a century ago there is little appetite here for another."
Wednesday, February 08, 2006
George W. O'Bannon
George W. O'Bannon: "George W. O'Bannon
George W. O'Bannon, director of Pitt's Office of International Student Services from 1968 to 1975, died of lymphoma Oct. 2, 2000, in Tucson, Ariz. He was 64.
In 1971, O'Bannon organized an exchange program between Pitt and Afghanistan's University of Kabul, with funding from the U.S. State Department.
An authority on oriental rugs, particularly those of Central Asian nomadic tribes, O'Bannon left the University to open O'Bannon Oriental Carpets in Pittsburgh. At about that same time, he published the first of several books he wrote or edited, "The Turkoman Carpet," a seminal work in its field.
O'Bannon and his family relocated to Harrisburg in 1979 and to Philadelphia in 1983. After the death of his wife, Helen, in 1988, O'Bannon concentrated on his career as a writer, guest curator and speaker on oriental rugs. He retired to Arizona in 1993.
He is survived by four sons and three daughters-in-law: Patrick and Pia Deinhardt of Philadelphia; Colin of Columbus, Ohio; Sean and Nancy of Boca Raton, Fla., and Casey and Susan of Philadelphia; two grandchildren; and his longtime companion, Arlene Cooper of New York City.
Memorial contributions may be sent to the George W. O'Bannon Memorial Fund, c/o Niloo Paydar, Indianapolis Museum of Art, 1200 W. 38th St., Indianapolis, Ind. 45208-4196.n
Back to UTimes Home
©2000 University of Pittsburgh "
George W. O'Bannon, director of Pitt's Office of International Student Services from 1968 to 1975, died of lymphoma Oct. 2, 2000, in Tucson, Ariz. He was 64.
In 1971, O'Bannon organized an exchange program between Pitt and Afghanistan's University of Kabul, with funding from the U.S. State Department.
An authority on oriental rugs, particularly those of Central Asian nomadic tribes, O'Bannon left the University to open O'Bannon Oriental Carpets in Pittsburgh. At about that same time, he published the first of several books he wrote or edited, "The Turkoman Carpet," a seminal work in its field.
O'Bannon and his family relocated to Harrisburg in 1979 and to Philadelphia in 1983. After the death of his wife, Helen, in 1988, O'Bannon concentrated on his career as a writer, guest curator and speaker on oriental rugs. He retired to Arizona in 1993.
He is survived by four sons and three daughters-in-law: Patrick and Pia Deinhardt of Philadelphia; Colin of Columbus, Ohio; Sean and Nancy of Boca Raton, Fla., and Casey and Susan of Philadelphia; two grandchildren; and his longtime companion, Arlene Cooper of New York City.
Memorial contributions may be sent to the George W. O'Bannon Memorial Fund, c/o Niloo Paydar, Indianapolis Museum of Art, 1200 W. 38th St., Indianapolis, Ind. 45208-4196.n
Back to UTimes Home
©2000 University of Pittsburgh "
Person of the Week: Helen O'Bannon
Person of the Week: Helen O'Bannon: "Helen O'Bannon
Week of May 7, 2001
Helen Bohen O'Bannon, Wellesley class of 1961, is a fine example of the women who fought to expand women's sphere in the 1970s.
O'Bannon did not start out to change the world. Born in Ridgewood, New Jersey, in 1939, Helen Bohen majored in economics at Wellesley. While getting a master's degree at Stanford, Bohen met and married George O'Bannon, a political science student. After gaining his master’s degree, George O'Bannon took a job in Washington, DC. Helen, a homemaker, worked part-time as an economic researcher and analyst for several government agencies. After two years as associate director of the Peace Corps in Afghanistan, George O'Bannon moved his family to Pittsburgh. While he served as director of international student services at the University of Pittsburgh, Helen taught economics at Robert Morris College.
In 1972 O'Bannon learned that her mother was dying of cancer. "I realized," she later said, "that I was very much dependent upon George as a provider, that even though I had my own career it was very much second to what he was doing, and I realized that anything could happen to him at any time."
Trying to figure out how to be more self-sufficient, O'Bannon started looking for a career path and applied for securities jobs. She met unabashed discrimination, most notably at Merrill, Lynch, Pierce, Fenner and Smith. One of the questions on the entrance exam for their broker trainee program was "When you fight with your wife, which of you usually wins?" Another asked, "When you meet a woman, what interests you the most about her?" The choices included "her beauty" and "her intellect." O'Bannon chose "intellect," not the correct choice, "beauty." Her rejection letter said in part, "Dear Mr. O'Bannon: We're sorry we can't take more young men like you." Incensed at this shabby and patently discriminatory treatment of women, O'Bannon decided to sue, prompting a class-action law suit. Although Merrill Lynch successfully used delaying tactics for several years, in 1976 the courts decided in her favor. Merrill Lynch was assessed a judgment of nearly $4 million, most of it restitution to women who had been denied sales jobs and other positions. Perhaps more importantly, the decision prompted other brokerage firms to treat women more equitably.
While waiting for the court's decision, O'Bannon prepared an economics text, Money and Banking: Theory, Policy, and Institutions (Harper and Row, 1975). She took doctoral courses at the University of Pittsburgh School of Business. And in 1973 O'Bannon began a three-year term as an associate dean at the Carnegie Institute, the engineering school of Carnegie-Mellon University, where she was responsible for budget and financial affairs. She strove to make the university – and the engineering profession in general – more accessible to women.
In December 1975 O'Bannon was named a member of Pennsylvania's Public Utility Commission. Although consumer and environmental groups had supported her appointment, O'Bannon said she did not feel she was an advocate for any one point of view. In addition to regulating gas, electric power, and telephone companies, the Public Utility Commission monitored over 4300 transportation companies.
A change in administration did not end O’Bannon’s public service. In 1979 O’Bannon became Pennsylvania’s Secretary of Public Welfare, responsible for the management of one of the state’s largest agencies. The Department of Public Welfare controlled income-maintenance and medical-assistance programs, institutional and community programs for the mentally ill and mentally retarded, social-service programs for children and families, and programs for the disabled. O’Bannon had a special sympathy for those under her care. When she was nine, the insurance company her father had worked for – at which he worked his way from office boy to vice president – declared bankruptcy. Since he did not find other steady employment, and her mother was confined to their home with multiple sclerosis, the family had lived from one Social Security check to the next.
After O'Bannon become Secretary of Public Welfare, she and her family moved to Harrisburg. George O'Bannon became a dealer in oriental rugs, a passion he had developed while they were in Afghanistan in the late 1960s. The O'Bannons practiced what they called a "syncopated internal-external parent system," in which one parent was most available to the children, and the other had an outside job. Categorizing her life as "a random walk through careers," Helen O'Bannon acknowledged that it would not have been possible without the support of her husband and friends.
In 1983 O’Bannon returned to academia, becoming vice president of the University of Pennsylvania, the first woman to hold this position. President Sheldon Hackney called her "a risk taker who had exceptional management skills." "Helen could analyze and grasp issues with astounding speed," he said. "She was never deterred by the challenges, stepping in where others fear to tread. On top of that, she had a wonderful sense of humor." She established the university’s first internal auditing system, a capital-budgeting process, and a facilities-management system.
Helen O‘Bannon remained a loyal Wellesley alumna. She received the Alumnae Achievement Award in 1980. And from 1982 to 1985 she served as President of the Alumnae Association.
O’Bannon was diagnosed with cancer shortly after she became vice president at the University of Pennsylvania. She continued to work until shortly before her death on October 19, 1988. She was survived by her husband, George, and her four sons -- Patrick, Colin, Casey and Sean. The Class of 1961 established a Wellesley scholarship fund in her honor.
"There's a piece of paper that I always carry around with me that defines success," Helen O'Bannon once said. "It's a quotation from Harry Emerson Fosdick. 'To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to endure the betrayal of false friends; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know that even one life has breathed easier because you lived. This is to have succeeded.'"
Written by Wilma Slaight"
Week of May 7, 2001
Helen Bohen O'Bannon, Wellesley class of 1961, is a fine example of the women who fought to expand women's sphere in the 1970s.
O'Bannon did not start out to change the world. Born in Ridgewood, New Jersey, in 1939, Helen Bohen majored in economics at Wellesley. While getting a master's degree at Stanford, Bohen met and married George O'Bannon, a political science student. After gaining his master’s degree, George O'Bannon took a job in Washington, DC. Helen, a homemaker, worked part-time as an economic researcher and analyst for several government agencies. After two years as associate director of the Peace Corps in Afghanistan, George O'Bannon moved his family to Pittsburgh. While he served as director of international student services at the University of Pittsburgh, Helen taught economics at Robert Morris College.
In 1972 O'Bannon learned that her mother was dying of cancer. "I realized," she later said, "that I was very much dependent upon George as a provider, that even though I had my own career it was very much second to what he was doing, and I realized that anything could happen to him at any time."
Trying to figure out how to be more self-sufficient, O'Bannon started looking for a career path and applied for securities jobs. She met unabashed discrimination, most notably at Merrill, Lynch, Pierce, Fenner and Smith. One of the questions on the entrance exam for their broker trainee program was "When you fight with your wife, which of you usually wins?" Another asked, "When you meet a woman, what interests you the most about her?" The choices included "her beauty" and "her intellect." O'Bannon chose "intellect," not the correct choice, "beauty." Her rejection letter said in part, "Dear Mr. O'Bannon: We're sorry we can't take more young men like you." Incensed at this shabby and patently discriminatory treatment of women, O'Bannon decided to sue, prompting a class-action law suit. Although Merrill Lynch successfully used delaying tactics for several years, in 1976 the courts decided in her favor. Merrill Lynch was assessed a judgment of nearly $4 million, most of it restitution to women who had been denied sales jobs and other positions. Perhaps more importantly, the decision prompted other brokerage firms to treat women more equitably.
While waiting for the court's decision, O'Bannon prepared an economics text, Money and Banking: Theory, Policy, and Institutions (Harper and Row, 1975). She took doctoral courses at the University of Pittsburgh School of Business. And in 1973 O'Bannon began a three-year term as an associate dean at the Carnegie Institute, the engineering school of Carnegie-Mellon University, where she was responsible for budget and financial affairs. She strove to make the university – and the engineering profession in general – more accessible to women.
In December 1975 O'Bannon was named a member of Pennsylvania's Public Utility Commission. Although consumer and environmental groups had supported her appointment, O'Bannon said she did not feel she was an advocate for any one point of view. In addition to regulating gas, electric power, and telephone companies, the Public Utility Commission monitored over 4300 transportation companies.
A change in administration did not end O’Bannon’s public service. In 1979 O’Bannon became Pennsylvania’s Secretary of Public Welfare, responsible for the management of one of the state’s largest agencies. The Department of Public Welfare controlled income-maintenance and medical-assistance programs, institutional and community programs for the mentally ill and mentally retarded, social-service programs for children and families, and programs for the disabled. O’Bannon had a special sympathy for those under her care. When she was nine, the insurance company her father had worked for – at which he worked his way from office boy to vice president – declared bankruptcy. Since he did not find other steady employment, and her mother was confined to their home with multiple sclerosis, the family had lived from one Social Security check to the next.
After O'Bannon become Secretary of Public Welfare, she and her family moved to Harrisburg. George O'Bannon became a dealer in oriental rugs, a passion he had developed while they were in Afghanistan in the late 1960s. The O'Bannons practiced what they called a "syncopated internal-external parent system," in which one parent was most available to the children, and the other had an outside job. Categorizing her life as "a random walk through careers," Helen O'Bannon acknowledged that it would not have been possible without the support of her husband and friends.
In 1983 O’Bannon returned to academia, becoming vice president of the University of Pennsylvania, the first woman to hold this position. President Sheldon Hackney called her "a risk taker who had exceptional management skills." "Helen could analyze and grasp issues with astounding speed," he said. "She was never deterred by the challenges, stepping in where others fear to tread. On top of that, she had a wonderful sense of humor." She established the university’s first internal auditing system, a capital-budgeting process, and a facilities-management system.
Helen O‘Bannon remained a loyal Wellesley alumna. She received the Alumnae Achievement Award in 1980. And from 1982 to 1985 she served as President of the Alumnae Association.
O’Bannon was diagnosed with cancer shortly after she became vice president at the University of Pennsylvania. She continued to work until shortly before her death on October 19, 1988. She was survived by her husband, George, and her four sons -- Patrick, Colin, Casey and Sean. The Class of 1961 established a Wellesley scholarship fund in her honor.
"There's a piece of paper that I always carry around with me that defines success," Helen O'Bannon once said. "It's a quotation from Harry Emerson Fosdick. 'To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to endure the betrayal of false friends; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know that even one life has breathed easier because you lived. This is to have succeeded.'"
Written by Wilma Slaight"
Monday, February 06, 2006
News from Arkansas State University
News from Arkansas State University: "Dr. Douglas Boyd to present public
lecture, sponsored by Heritage Studies
Feb. 6, 2006 -- A public lecture, “Digital Archives, Oral History and The Civil Rights Movement” will be presented by the Heritage Studies Ph.D. Program Thursday, Feb. 9, at Arkansas State University in Jonesboro.
The public lecture will be given by Dr. Douglas A. Boyd, program manager for the Kentucky Oral History Commission, a program of the Kentucky Historical Society. The lecture, which is free and open to the public, will be held at 4 p.m. in the ASU Museum.
Boyd holds a Ph.D. in folklore from Indiana University. He has served as the senior archivist for the oral history and folklife collections at the Kentucky Historical Society, where he managed an archive of over 8,000 interviews.
In addition to his public sector and academic experience, Boyd has a background in recording studio production, specializing in digital audio restoration. He has designed the Civil Rights portion of the Kentucky Oral History Project’s online digital media database. This provides easy internet access to more than 200 hours of audio content, 15 hours of video content, and at least 10,000 pages of electronic oral history transcriptions, all of which are full-text searchable.
Boyd’s interests are not limited to the technological applications of oral history, but also include the intellectual components. He has recently submitted, for publication, a completed book manuscript, which focuses on the dynamics between oral history and public memory. He has co-authored “The Stars of Ballymenone” with folklorist Henry Glassie to be published by Indiana University Press in the spring.
The lecture will be held in Room 157 of the ASU Museum.
"
lecture, sponsored by Heritage Studies
Feb. 6, 2006 -- A public lecture, “Digital Archives, Oral History and The Civil Rights Movement” will be presented by the Heritage Studies Ph.D. Program Thursday, Feb. 9, at Arkansas State University in Jonesboro.
The public lecture will be given by Dr. Douglas A. Boyd, program manager for the Kentucky Oral History Commission, a program of the Kentucky Historical Society. The lecture, which is free and open to the public, will be held at 4 p.m. in the ASU Museum.
Boyd holds a Ph.D. in folklore from Indiana University. He has served as the senior archivist for the oral history and folklife collections at the Kentucky Historical Society, where he managed an archive of over 8,000 interviews.
In addition to his public sector and academic experience, Boyd has a background in recording studio production, specializing in digital audio restoration. He has designed the Civil Rights portion of the Kentucky Oral History Project’s online digital media database. This provides easy internet access to more than 200 hours of audio content, 15 hours of video content, and at least 10,000 pages of electronic oral history transcriptions, all of which are full-text searchable.
Boyd’s interests are not limited to the technological applications of oral history, but also include the intellectual components. He has recently submitted, for publication, a completed book manuscript, which focuses on the dynamics between oral history and public memory. He has co-authored “The Stars of Ballymenone” with folklorist Henry Glassie to be published by Indiana University Press in the spring.
The lecture will be held in Room 157 of the ASU Museum.
"
Sunday, February 05, 2006
Farewell to Fantasy / Pioneer Berkeley label sold to Concord Records
Farewell to Fantasy / Pioneer Berkeley label sold to Concord Records: "Farewell to Fantasy
Pioneer Berkeley label sold to Concord Records
Carolyn Said, Chronicle Staff Writer
Saturday, December 4, 2004
Some of the greatest names in jazz and blues are now under new management.
Berkeley's Fantasy Inc., a 55-year-old record label that won fame and fortune recording Creedence Clearwater Revival and owns a catalog rich with jazz and soul icons, has been sold to Concord Records Inc., a Beverly Hills company started in the Bay Area.
The sales price was $83 million, according to Billboard magazine.
The combined company, to be called Concord Music Group Inc., owns the rights to a dream team of musicians.
Fantasy's extensive catalog includes Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Bill Evans, John Coltrane and the Modern Jazz Quartet, as well as Ella Fitzgerald, Joe Pass, Oscar Peterson, Sarah Vaughan and Count Basie.
In the soul arena, its artists include Isaac Hayes, Johnnie Taylor, the Dramatics, the Staple Singers, and Albert King. Concord artists include Charlie Byrd, Rosemary Clooney, Herb Ellis, Stan Getz, Gene Harris, Tito Puente and Mel Torme.
Concord Music Group will operate out of both Berkeley and Beverly Hills. Although the landmark Fantasy Building at 10th and Parker Streets in Berkeley was not included in the sale, Concord will rent office space there and will use the Fantasy Recording Studios, according to Terri Hinte, Fantasy spokeswoman.
Hinte said there undoubtedly will be some workforce shifts, but not for a few months. Fantasy has 80 employees; Concord has about 40.
Fantasy's owners are Chairman Saul Zaentz, 83, an Oscar-winning film producer; President Ralph Kaffel; Al Bendich, vice president and legal counsel; and Frank Noonan, vice president of finance. All four have been with the company for decades. The latter three will stay with the new firm for several months as consultants. Zaentz has focused on his film work for almost 30 years and has not been involved in Fantasy's day-to-day operations.
Concord, which scored a platinum hit this year with Ray Charles' final recording, "Genius Loves Company" (in conjunction with Starbucks' Hear Music), is owned by Normal Lear's entertainment holding company, Act II Communications Holding LP. The 31-year-old label focuses on jazz, traditional pop and adult contemporary formats.
"I'm convinced my grown-up children are getting a good home," said San Francisco's Orrin Keepnews, 81, who oversaw Fantasy's jazz program in the 1970s after having sold it the catalog of Riverside Records, a company he ran in New York in the 1950s and 1960s.
"Concord, as far as I can see, is a rarity these days, a very vigorous and committed record label. I'll enjoy seeing what (they) can do to verify the continuing life and viability of a number of artists I worked with 40 years ago: Thelonious Monk, Bill Evans, Sonny Rollins and McCoy Tyner," said Keepnews, now a Grammy-winning independent record producer.
Fantasy's revenue comes from reissues in its stable. It does not sign new artists. According to Billboard, Fantasy's 2003 sales were $22 million, half of that in the United States, while Concord's revenue was $20 million, including $13 million in the United States.
Both Fantasy and Concord have deep roots in the Bay Area.
Fantasy Records was founded in 1949 in an alley off San Francisco's Market Street by hipster brothers Max and Sol Weiss. Its first artist "was an Oakland pianist named Dave Brubeck," according to the company's Web site. It went on to record Gerry Mulligan, Chet Baker, Cal Tjader, Odetta, comic Lenny Bruce, and beat poets Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Allen Ginsberg.
Zaentz joined the company as a salesman in 1955. A dozen years later, he assembled a group of investors to buy the label, which was heavily concentrated on jazz recordings. According to published reports, the price was $325,000.
The single rock group then signed with Fantasy was an El Cerrito garage band called the Golliwogs. It was led by a Fantasy shipping clerk named John Fogerty, who had started it in junior high school. After rechristening themselves Creedence Clearwater Revival, the quartet recorded a string of gold and platinum records and million-selling singles, including "Suzie Q," "Proud Mary" and "Bad Moon Rising." In 1970, they outsold the Beatles.
Creedence was "a lightning strike," Zaentz told The Chronicle in 1970. "If we ever find another group that sells half as much, we'll be delirious."
With the money pouring in from Creedence, Fantasy expanded by steadily buying up outstanding independent jazz labels, including Prestige, Stax, Specialty, Milestone, Riverside and Takoma.
Concord Records grew out of the Concord Jazz Festival. Both are named after the Contra Costa County town where they originated, then a sleepy little suburb.
Local businessman Carl Jefferson, a successful Lincoln-Mercury dealer with a passion for jazz, started the Concord Summer Music Festival in 1969.
Guitarists Herb Ellis and Joe Pass, who performed at an early festival, suggested to Jefferson he fund and produce a record. The Concord Jazz label was the result. Jefferson started the record company in 1973 in a former seafood restaurant next to his car dealership.
Jefferson, who died in 1995, was the motivating force behind construction of the Concord Pavilion (now The Chronicle Pavilion), the first large-scale outdoor concert venue of its kind in the West.
Jefferson's music philosophy was simple: He recorded what he liked. Under Jefferson's hand-picked successor, Glen Barros, who took over in 1995, Concord branched out from jazz, adding pop and blues artists, Latin jazz, salsa, Afro- Cuban and Brazilian music. It partnered with Chick Corea's Stretch Records and the smooth jazz label Peak Records, according to its Web site. In 2001, it started Playboy Jazz in conjunction with Hugh Hefner's Playboy Enterprises.
Concord has issued more than 1,000 albums. Its current roster of artists includes Karrin Allyson, Patti Austin, Peter Cincotti, Michael Feinstein, Nnenna Freelon, Robben Ford, Marian McPartland, Barry Manilow, Ozomatli, Eddie Palmieri, Poncho Sanchez and Curtis Stigers.
Act III, owned by Lear and Hal Gaba, bought Concord in 1999 and moved its corporate headquarters to Beverly Hills in 2002. Barros is still the president and chief executive officer, titles he will retain at the merged company, Concord Music Group.
The Concord-Fantasy deal was brokered by Tailwind Capital Partners, a private equity firm headquartered in New York and San Francisco.
The sale encompasses only Fantasy's music business. It does not affect Zaentz's film business, which has produced acclaimed adaptations of literary works such as "The English Patient" and "Amadeus" and also does post- production sound. Zaentz, who owned the film rights to J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings," was an executive producer on Peter Jackson's movie trilogy.
Creedence's Fogerty and Zaentz had a famous falling out. In 1985, Zaentz threatened to sue Fogerty for defamation of character after he wrote a song called "Zanz Kant Danz" with lyrics that said of the title character, "Watch him or he'll rob you blind."
In 1988, Fantasy sued Fogerty, claiming he'd plagiarized his own 1970 single "Run Through the Jungle," exclusively owned by Fantasy, to write his 1984 hit, "The Old Man Down the Road." A San Francisco jury ruled in favor of Fogerty.
More recently, Fogerty complained about Fantasy's selling his Vietnam War protest song "Fortunate Son" for use in Wrangler jean commercials, which stripped out his message about phony patriotism, using lines that sound like a paean to flag-waving.
Chronicle senior pop music critic Joel Selvin contributed to this story.E-mail Carolyn Said at csaid@sfchronicle.com."
Pioneer Berkeley label sold to Concord Records
Carolyn Said, Chronicle Staff Writer
Saturday, December 4, 2004
Some of the greatest names in jazz and blues are now under new management.
Berkeley's Fantasy Inc., a 55-year-old record label that won fame and fortune recording Creedence Clearwater Revival and owns a catalog rich with jazz and soul icons, has been sold to Concord Records Inc., a Beverly Hills company started in the Bay Area.
The sales price was $83 million, according to Billboard magazine.
The combined company, to be called Concord Music Group Inc., owns the rights to a dream team of musicians.
Fantasy's extensive catalog includes Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Bill Evans, John Coltrane and the Modern Jazz Quartet, as well as Ella Fitzgerald, Joe Pass, Oscar Peterson, Sarah Vaughan and Count Basie.
In the soul arena, its artists include Isaac Hayes, Johnnie Taylor, the Dramatics, the Staple Singers, and Albert King. Concord artists include Charlie Byrd, Rosemary Clooney, Herb Ellis, Stan Getz, Gene Harris, Tito Puente and Mel Torme.
Concord Music Group will operate out of both Berkeley and Beverly Hills. Although the landmark Fantasy Building at 10th and Parker Streets in Berkeley was not included in the sale, Concord will rent office space there and will use the Fantasy Recording Studios, according to Terri Hinte, Fantasy spokeswoman.
Hinte said there undoubtedly will be some workforce shifts, but not for a few months. Fantasy has 80 employees; Concord has about 40.
Fantasy's owners are Chairman Saul Zaentz, 83, an Oscar-winning film producer; President Ralph Kaffel; Al Bendich, vice president and legal counsel; and Frank Noonan, vice president of finance. All four have been with the company for decades. The latter three will stay with the new firm for several months as consultants. Zaentz has focused on his film work for almost 30 years and has not been involved in Fantasy's day-to-day operations.
Concord, which scored a platinum hit this year with Ray Charles' final recording, "Genius Loves Company" (in conjunction with Starbucks' Hear Music), is owned by Normal Lear's entertainment holding company, Act II Communications Holding LP. The 31-year-old label focuses on jazz, traditional pop and adult contemporary formats.
"I'm convinced my grown-up children are getting a good home," said San Francisco's Orrin Keepnews, 81, who oversaw Fantasy's jazz program in the 1970s after having sold it the catalog of Riverside Records, a company he ran in New York in the 1950s and 1960s.
"Concord, as far as I can see, is a rarity these days, a very vigorous and committed record label. I'll enjoy seeing what (they) can do to verify the continuing life and viability of a number of artists I worked with 40 years ago: Thelonious Monk, Bill Evans, Sonny Rollins and McCoy Tyner," said Keepnews, now a Grammy-winning independent record producer.
Fantasy's revenue comes from reissues in its stable. It does not sign new artists. According to Billboard, Fantasy's 2003 sales were $22 million, half of that in the United States, while Concord's revenue was $20 million, including $13 million in the United States.
Both Fantasy and Concord have deep roots in the Bay Area.
Fantasy Records was founded in 1949 in an alley off San Francisco's Market Street by hipster brothers Max and Sol Weiss. Its first artist "was an Oakland pianist named Dave Brubeck," according to the company's Web site. It went on to record Gerry Mulligan, Chet Baker, Cal Tjader, Odetta, comic Lenny Bruce, and beat poets Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Allen Ginsberg.
Zaentz joined the company as a salesman in 1955. A dozen years later, he assembled a group of investors to buy the label, which was heavily concentrated on jazz recordings. According to published reports, the price was $325,000.
The single rock group then signed with Fantasy was an El Cerrito garage band called the Golliwogs. It was led by a Fantasy shipping clerk named John Fogerty, who had started it in junior high school. After rechristening themselves Creedence Clearwater Revival, the quartet recorded a string of gold and platinum records and million-selling singles, including "Suzie Q," "Proud Mary" and "Bad Moon Rising." In 1970, they outsold the Beatles.
Creedence was "a lightning strike," Zaentz told The Chronicle in 1970. "If we ever find another group that sells half as much, we'll be delirious."
With the money pouring in from Creedence, Fantasy expanded by steadily buying up outstanding independent jazz labels, including Prestige, Stax, Specialty, Milestone, Riverside and Takoma.
Concord Records grew out of the Concord Jazz Festival. Both are named after the Contra Costa County town where they originated, then a sleepy little suburb.
Local businessman Carl Jefferson, a successful Lincoln-Mercury dealer with a passion for jazz, started the Concord Summer Music Festival in 1969.
Guitarists Herb Ellis and Joe Pass, who performed at an early festival, suggested to Jefferson he fund and produce a record. The Concord Jazz label was the result. Jefferson started the record company in 1973 in a former seafood restaurant next to his car dealership.
Jefferson, who died in 1995, was the motivating force behind construction of the Concord Pavilion (now The Chronicle Pavilion), the first large-scale outdoor concert venue of its kind in the West.
Jefferson's music philosophy was simple: He recorded what he liked. Under Jefferson's hand-picked successor, Glen Barros, who took over in 1995, Concord branched out from jazz, adding pop and blues artists, Latin jazz, salsa, Afro- Cuban and Brazilian music. It partnered with Chick Corea's Stretch Records and the smooth jazz label Peak Records, according to its Web site. In 2001, it started Playboy Jazz in conjunction with Hugh Hefner's Playboy Enterprises.
Concord has issued more than 1,000 albums. Its current roster of artists includes Karrin Allyson, Patti Austin, Peter Cincotti, Michael Feinstein, Nnenna Freelon, Robben Ford, Marian McPartland, Barry Manilow, Ozomatli, Eddie Palmieri, Poncho Sanchez and Curtis Stigers.
Act III, owned by Lear and Hal Gaba, bought Concord in 1999 and moved its corporate headquarters to Beverly Hills in 2002. Barros is still the president and chief executive officer, titles he will retain at the merged company, Concord Music Group.
The Concord-Fantasy deal was brokered by Tailwind Capital Partners, a private equity firm headquartered in New York and San Francisco.
The sale encompasses only Fantasy's music business. It does not affect Zaentz's film business, which has produced acclaimed adaptations of literary works such as "The English Patient" and "Amadeus" and also does post- production sound. Zaentz, who owned the film rights to J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings," was an executive producer on Peter Jackson's movie trilogy.
Creedence's Fogerty and Zaentz had a famous falling out. In 1985, Zaentz threatened to sue Fogerty for defamation of character after he wrote a song called "Zanz Kant Danz" with lyrics that said of the title character, "Watch him or he'll rob you blind."
In 1988, Fantasy sued Fogerty, claiming he'd plagiarized his own 1970 single "Run Through the Jungle," exclusively owned by Fantasy, to write his 1984 hit, "The Old Man Down the Road." A San Francisco jury ruled in favor of Fogerty.
More recently, Fogerty complained about Fantasy's selling his Vietnam War protest song "Fortunate Son" for use in Wrangler jean commercials, which stripped out his message about phony patriotism, using lines that sound like a paean to flag-waving.
Chronicle senior pop music critic Joel Selvin contributed to this story.E-mail Carolyn Said at csaid@sfchronicle.com."
Farewell to Fantasy / Pioneer Berkeley label sold to Concord Records
Farewell to Fantasy / Pioneer Berkeley label sold to Concord Records: "Farewell to Fantasy
Pioneer Berkeley label sold to Concord Records
Carolyn Said, Chronicle Staff Writer
Saturday, December 4, 2004
Some of the greatest names in jazz and blues are now under new management.
Berkeley's Fantasy Inc., a 55-year-old record label that won fame and fortune recording Creedence Clearwater Revival and owns a catalog rich with jazz and soul icons, has been sold to Concord Records Inc., a Beverly Hills company started in the Bay Area.
The sales price was $83 million, according to Billboard magazine.
The combined company, to be called Concord Music Group Inc., owns the rights to a dream team of musicians.
Fantasy's extensive catalog includes Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Bill Evans, John Coltrane and the Modern Jazz Quartet, as well as Ella Fitzgerald, Joe Pass, Oscar Peterson, Sarah Vaughan and Count Basie.
In the soul arena, its artists include Isaac Hayes, Johnnie Taylor, the Dramatics, the Staple Singers, and Albert King. Concord artists include Charlie Byrd, Rosemary Clooney, Herb Ellis, Stan Getz, Gene Harris, Tito Puente and Mel Torme.
Concord Music Group will operate out of both Berkeley and Beverly Hills. Although the landmark Fantasy Building at 10th and Parker Streets in Berkeley was not included in the sale, Concord will rent office space there and will use the Fantasy Recording Studios, according to Terri Hinte, Fantasy spokeswoman.
Hinte said there undoubtedly will be some workforce shifts, but not for a few months. Fantasy has 80 employees; Concord has about 40.
Fantasy's owners are Chairman Saul Zaentz, 83, an Oscar-winning film producer; President Ralph Kaffel; Al Bendich, vice president and legal counsel; and Frank Noonan, vice president of finance. All four have been with the company for decades. The latter three will stay with the new firm for several months as consultants. Zaentz has focused on his film work for almost 30 years and has not been involved in Fantasy's day-to-day operations.
Concord, which scored a platinum hit this year with Ray Charles' final recording, "Genius Loves Company" (in conjunction with Starbucks' Hear Music), is owned by Normal Lear's entertainment holding company, Act II Communications Holding LP. The 31-year-old label focuses on jazz, traditional pop and adult contemporary formats.
"I'm convinced my grown-up children are getting a good home," said San Francisco's Orrin Keepnews, 81, who oversaw Fantasy's jazz program in the 1970s after having sold it the catalog of Riverside Records, a company he ran in New York in the 1950s and 1960s.
"Concord, as far as I can see, is a rarity these days, a very vigorous and committed record label. I'll enjoy seeing what (they) can do to verify the continuing life and viability of a number of artists I worked with 40 years ago: Thelonious Monk, Bill Evans, Sonny Rollins and McCoy Tyner," said Keepnews, now a Grammy-winning independent record producer.
Fantasy's revenue comes from reissues in its stable. It does not sign new artists. According to Billboard, Fantasy's 2003 sales were $22 million, half of that in the United States, while Concord's revenue was $20 million, including $13 million in the United States.
Both Fantasy and Concord have deep roots in the Bay Area.
Fantasy Records was founded in 1949 in an alley off San Francisco's Market Street by hipster brothers Max and Sol Weiss. Its first artist "was an Oakland pianist named Dave Brubeck," according to the company's Web site. It went on to record Gerry Mulligan, Chet Baker, Cal Tjader, Odetta, comic Lenny Bruce, and beat poets Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Allen Ginsberg.
Zaentz joined the company as a salesman in 1955. A dozen years later, he assembled a group of investors to buy the label, which was heavily concentrated on jazz recordings. According to published reports, the price was $325,000.
The single rock group then signed with Fantasy was an El Cerrito garage band called the Golliwogs. It was led by a Fantasy shipping clerk named John Fogerty, who had started it in junior high school. After rechristening themselves Creedence Clearwater Revival, the quartet recorded a string of gold and platinum records and million-selling singles, including "Suzie Q," "Proud Mary" and "Bad Moon Rising." In 1970, they outsold the Beatles.
Creedence was "a lightning strike," Zaentz told The Chronicle in 1970. "If we ever find another group that sells half as much, we'll be delirious."
With the money pouring in from Creedence, Fantasy expanded by steadily buying up outstanding independent jazz labels, including Prestige, Stax, Specialty, Milestone, Riverside and Takoma.
Concord Records grew out of the Concord Jazz Festival. Both are named after the Contra Costa County town where they originated, then a sleepy little suburb.
Local businessman Carl Jefferson, a successful Lincoln-Mercury dealer with a passion for jazz, started the Concord Summer Music Festival in 1969.
Guitarists Herb Ellis and Joe Pass, who performed at an early festival, suggested to Jefferson he fund and produce a record. The Concord Jazz label was the result. Jefferson started the record company in 1973 in a former seafood restaurant next to his car dealership.
Jefferson, who died in 1995, was the motivating force behind construction of the Concord Pavilion (now The Chronicle Pavilion), the first large-scale outdoor concert venue of its kind in the West.
Jefferson's music philosophy was simple: He recorded what he liked. Under Jefferson's hand-picked successor, Glen Barros, who took over in 1995, Concord branched out from jazz, adding pop and blues artists, Latin jazz, salsa, Afro- Cuban and Brazilian music. It partnered with Chick Corea's Stretch Records and the smooth jazz label Peak Records, according to its Web site. In 2001, it started Playboy Jazz in conjunction with Hugh Hefner's Playboy Enterprises.
Concord has issued more than 1,000 albums. Its current roster of artists includes Karrin Allyson, Patti Austin, Peter Cincotti, Michael Feinstein, Nnenna Freelon, Robben Ford, Marian McPartland, Barry Manilow, Ozomatli, Eddie Palmieri, Poncho Sanchez and Curtis Stigers.
Act III, owned by Lear and Hal Gaba, bought Concord in 1999 and moved its corporate headquarters to Beverly Hills in 2002. Barros is still the president and chief executive officer, titles he will retain at the merged company, Concord Music Group.
The Concord-Fantasy deal was brokered by Tailwind Capital Partners, a private equity firm headquartered in New York and San Francisco.
The sale encompasses only Fantasy's music business. It does not affect Zaentz's film business, which has produced acclaimed adaptations of literary works such as "The English Patient" and "Amadeus" and also does post- production sound. Zaentz, who owned the film rights to J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings," was an executive producer on Peter Jackson's movie trilogy.
Creedence's Fogerty and Zaentz had a famous falling out. In 1985, Zaentz threatened to sue Fogerty for defamation of character after he wrote a song called "Zanz Kant Danz" with lyrics that said of the title character, "Watch him or he'll rob you blind."
In 1988, Fantasy sued Fogerty, claiming he'd plagiarized his own 1970 single "Run Through the Jungle," exclusively owned by Fantasy, to write his 1984 hit, "The Old Man Down the Road." A San Francisco jury ruled in favor of Fogerty.
More recently, Fogerty complained about Fantasy's selling his Vietnam War protest song "Fortunate Son" for use in Wrangler jean commercials, which stripped out his message about phony patriotism, using lines that sound like a paean to flag-waving.
Chronicle senior pop music critic Joel Selvin contributed to this story.E-mail Carolyn Said at csaid@sfchronicle.com."
Pioneer Berkeley label sold to Concord Records
Carolyn Said, Chronicle Staff Writer
Saturday, December 4, 2004
Some of the greatest names in jazz and blues are now under new management.
Berkeley's Fantasy Inc., a 55-year-old record label that won fame and fortune recording Creedence Clearwater Revival and owns a catalog rich with jazz and soul icons, has been sold to Concord Records Inc., a Beverly Hills company started in the Bay Area.
The sales price was $83 million, according to Billboard magazine.
The combined company, to be called Concord Music Group Inc., owns the rights to a dream team of musicians.
Fantasy's extensive catalog includes Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Bill Evans, John Coltrane and the Modern Jazz Quartet, as well as Ella Fitzgerald, Joe Pass, Oscar Peterson, Sarah Vaughan and Count Basie.
In the soul arena, its artists include Isaac Hayes, Johnnie Taylor, the Dramatics, the Staple Singers, and Albert King. Concord artists include Charlie Byrd, Rosemary Clooney, Herb Ellis, Stan Getz, Gene Harris, Tito Puente and Mel Torme.
Concord Music Group will operate out of both Berkeley and Beverly Hills. Although the landmark Fantasy Building at 10th and Parker Streets in Berkeley was not included in the sale, Concord will rent office space there and will use the Fantasy Recording Studios, according to Terri Hinte, Fantasy spokeswoman.
Hinte said there undoubtedly will be some workforce shifts, but not for a few months. Fantasy has 80 employees; Concord has about 40.
Fantasy's owners are Chairman Saul Zaentz, 83, an Oscar-winning film producer; President Ralph Kaffel; Al Bendich, vice president and legal counsel; and Frank Noonan, vice president of finance. All four have been with the company for decades. The latter three will stay with the new firm for several months as consultants. Zaentz has focused on his film work for almost 30 years and has not been involved in Fantasy's day-to-day operations.
Concord, which scored a platinum hit this year with Ray Charles' final recording, "Genius Loves Company" (in conjunction with Starbucks' Hear Music), is owned by Normal Lear's entertainment holding company, Act II Communications Holding LP. The 31-year-old label focuses on jazz, traditional pop and adult contemporary formats.
"I'm convinced my grown-up children are getting a good home," said San Francisco's Orrin Keepnews, 81, who oversaw Fantasy's jazz program in the 1970s after having sold it the catalog of Riverside Records, a company he ran in New York in the 1950s and 1960s.
"Concord, as far as I can see, is a rarity these days, a very vigorous and committed record label. I'll enjoy seeing what (they) can do to verify the continuing life and viability of a number of artists I worked with 40 years ago: Thelonious Monk, Bill Evans, Sonny Rollins and McCoy Tyner," said Keepnews, now a Grammy-winning independent record producer.
Fantasy's revenue comes from reissues in its stable. It does not sign new artists. According to Billboard, Fantasy's 2003 sales were $22 million, half of that in the United States, while Concord's revenue was $20 million, including $13 million in the United States.
Both Fantasy and Concord have deep roots in the Bay Area.
Fantasy Records was founded in 1949 in an alley off San Francisco's Market Street by hipster brothers Max and Sol Weiss. Its first artist "was an Oakland pianist named Dave Brubeck," according to the company's Web site. It went on to record Gerry Mulligan, Chet Baker, Cal Tjader, Odetta, comic Lenny Bruce, and beat poets Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Allen Ginsberg.
Zaentz joined the company as a salesman in 1955. A dozen years later, he assembled a group of investors to buy the label, which was heavily concentrated on jazz recordings. According to published reports, the price was $325,000.
The single rock group then signed with Fantasy was an El Cerrito garage band called the Golliwogs. It was led by a Fantasy shipping clerk named John Fogerty, who had started it in junior high school. After rechristening themselves Creedence Clearwater Revival, the quartet recorded a string of gold and platinum records and million-selling singles, including "Suzie Q," "Proud Mary" and "Bad Moon Rising." In 1970, they outsold the Beatles.
Creedence was "a lightning strike," Zaentz told The Chronicle in 1970. "If we ever find another group that sells half as much, we'll be delirious."
With the money pouring in from Creedence, Fantasy expanded by steadily buying up outstanding independent jazz labels, including Prestige, Stax, Specialty, Milestone, Riverside and Takoma.
Concord Records grew out of the Concord Jazz Festival. Both are named after the Contra Costa County town where they originated, then a sleepy little suburb.
Local businessman Carl Jefferson, a successful Lincoln-Mercury dealer with a passion for jazz, started the Concord Summer Music Festival in 1969.
Guitarists Herb Ellis and Joe Pass, who performed at an early festival, suggested to Jefferson he fund and produce a record. The Concord Jazz label was the result. Jefferson started the record company in 1973 in a former seafood restaurant next to his car dealership.
Jefferson, who died in 1995, was the motivating force behind construction of the Concord Pavilion (now The Chronicle Pavilion), the first large-scale outdoor concert venue of its kind in the West.
Jefferson's music philosophy was simple: He recorded what he liked. Under Jefferson's hand-picked successor, Glen Barros, who took over in 1995, Concord branched out from jazz, adding pop and blues artists, Latin jazz, salsa, Afro- Cuban and Brazilian music. It partnered with Chick Corea's Stretch Records and the smooth jazz label Peak Records, according to its Web site. In 2001, it started Playboy Jazz in conjunction with Hugh Hefner's Playboy Enterprises.
Concord has issued more than 1,000 albums. Its current roster of artists includes Karrin Allyson, Patti Austin, Peter Cincotti, Michael Feinstein, Nnenna Freelon, Robben Ford, Marian McPartland, Barry Manilow, Ozomatli, Eddie Palmieri, Poncho Sanchez and Curtis Stigers.
Act III, owned by Lear and Hal Gaba, bought Concord in 1999 and moved its corporate headquarters to Beverly Hills in 2002. Barros is still the president and chief executive officer, titles he will retain at the merged company, Concord Music Group.
The Concord-Fantasy deal was brokered by Tailwind Capital Partners, a private equity firm headquartered in New York and San Francisco.
The sale encompasses only Fantasy's music business. It does not affect Zaentz's film business, which has produced acclaimed adaptations of literary works such as "The English Patient" and "Amadeus" and also does post- production sound. Zaentz, who owned the film rights to J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings," was an executive producer on Peter Jackson's movie trilogy.
Creedence's Fogerty and Zaentz had a famous falling out. In 1985, Zaentz threatened to sue Fogerty for defamation of character after he wrote a song called "Zanz Kant Danz" with lyrics that said of the title character, "Watch him or he'll rob you blind."
In 1988, Fantasy sued Fogerty, claiming he'd plagiarized his own 1970 single "Run Through the Jungle," exclusively owned by Fantasy, to write his 1984 hit, "The Old Man Down the Road." A San Francisco jury ruled in favor of Fogerty.
More recently, Fogerty complained about Fantasy's selling his Vietnam War protest song "Fortunate Son" for use in Wrangler jean commercials, which stripped out his message about phony patriotism, using lines that sound like a paean to flag-waving.
Chronicle senior pop music critic Joel Selvin contributed to this story.E-mail Carolyn Said at csaid@sfchronicle.com."
The Times Herald - News - 02/05/2006 - Campaign manager takes a Swann dive
The Times Herald - News - 02/05/2006 - Campaign manager takes a Swann dive: "Campaign manager takes a Swann dive
By: MARGARET GIBBONS, Times Herald Staff02/05/2006
Email to a friendPost a CommentPrinter-friendly
It was bad enough when Republican gubernatorial hopeful Bill Scranton's now-ousted campaign manager, James Seif of Blue Bell, called Scranton rival Lynn Swann "the rich white guy in the race."
(Swann, a former Pittsburgh Steelers star and former television sports commentator, is black.)
But then Seif went on to compound his boneheadedness when he tried explaining what he meant. Seif said Swann is the insider candidate while Scranton is the "insurgent."
Just great.
When the public hears the word "insurgent" these days, they think of suicide bombers or those who plant roadside bombs.
Is it any wonder that Seif got tossed?"
By: MARGARET GIBBONS, Times Herald Staff02/05/2006
Email to a friendPost a CommentPrinter-friendly
It was bad enough when Republican gubernatorial hopeful Bill Scranton's now-ousted campaign manager, James Seif of Blue Bell, called Scranton rival Lynn Swann "the rich white guy in the race."
(Swann, a former Pittsburgh Steelers star and former television sports commentator, is black.)
But then Seif went on to compound his boneheadedness when he tried explaining what he meant. Seif said Swann is the insider candidate while Scranton is the "insurgent."
Just great.
When the public hears the word "insurgent" these days, they think of suicide bombers or those who plant roadside bombs.
Is it any wonder that Seif got tossed?"
Telegraph | Arts | Hockney and the secrets of the Old Masters
Telegraph | Arts | Hockney and the secrets of the Old Masters: " Hockney and the secrets of the Old Masters
(Filed: 22/09/2001)
Has David Hockney made a discovery that will change the history of art for ever? He talks to Martin Gayford
IN 1999, there was a magnificent exhibition of Ingres portraits at the National Gallery in London. Among the many visitors was David Hockney, and he, along with everyone else, was struck by the extraordinary delicacy and precision of the portrait drawings on show by the French master. Unlike the public - and the art historians and critics - he started to ask himself specific practical questions about those miraculous little works on paper.
As someone who himself had drawn delicate and precise images of people in the tradition that stems from Ingres, he wanted to know how they were done. And the answers he came up with led to other questions and other answers, and finally to a theory, set out in his new book Secret Knowledge, that could revolutionise our understanding of art history.
What Hockney saw when he looked hard at those Ingres drawings were signs that Ingres had been using a piece of optical equipment called a camera lucida. That is, as he puts it, "a prism on a stick". "When you look through the prism from a certain point you can see the person in front of you and the paper below at the same time." In that way, as Hockney explains, a skilled artist could trace the image, "fast-forwarding" through the normal process of measuring the subject's head by eye.
Hockney suggests there are two ways of working from life. One is what used to go on in art schools in front of a model: looking, measuring, groping to find the right line. The second way is to work from an image that is already there - a photograph, a projected slide. Hockney argued that Ingres was working in the second way, using the camera lucida rapidly to establish the key proportions of his sitter's face - which he then worked over more slowly without the optical aid. Then, equally rapidly, he jotted down the lines of their clothes, which he could see apparently hovering above the paper. Thus the use of this tool would explain puzzling features of the Ingres drawings, including the speed at which Ingres had been able to turn them out, and the fact that some lines looked traced.
At the time there was some coverage of this theory. Hockney talked about it, and did a series of drawings using the same technique. Over the last couple of years there have been further hints of how his mind was working - a letter to The Telegraph, for example, suggesting that Constable used an optical aid in painting his studies of clouds. There was a predictable, dismissive response: Hockney was mad, he had a bee in his bonnet. To which the artist calmly replied when we recently spent an evening discussing the subject: "Well, I know something that they don't."
Now, with the publication of this book, he lets the rest of us in on the secret. And his contentions are pretty astounding - not merely that some artists used certain bags of tricks, but that, effectively, the photographic way of looking at the world, through optical equipment, pre-dates, by centuries, the invention of photography itself. "The spirit of photography is much older than its history," said Hockney. "That is what my assistant David Graves and I have discovered." It began, according to the Hockney thesis, not with the discovery in the early 19th century that optical images could be chemically fixed on glass and paper, but in the early 15th century. And it began in just the places where we conventionally consider the Renaissance to have started - in the Flanders of van Eyck and the Florence of Masaccio and Brunelleschi.
"We went to Florence to attend a conference on art and science," Hockney explained. "And we stood on the exact spot that Brunelleschi is supposed to have stood when according to Vasari he made one of the first perspective paintings - of the baptistry from the cathedral. And onto a panel the precise size of his panel, which is described, we projected the baptistry, perfectly though upside down, with a mirror that cost us £6." And from an image such as this, Brunelleschi could have created his painting.
This is the truly startling aspect of Hockney's thesis. It has often been suggested that some artists, Vermeer and Canaletto in particular, might have used optical equipment. But Hockney has rediscovered a simple technique by which artists could have done so from the late Middle Ages on. All that is required is a concave mirror, in everyday terms, a shaving mirror, which we know to have been something that could have been manufactured at the time. Its opposite, a convex mirror - which simply has the silvering on the other side of the glass - is frequently depicted hanging on the wall of early Netherlandish paintings such as Van Eyck's Arnolfini portrait.
"It's very easy to do," Hockney went on. "We made experiments, and we found out how they used mirrors then. Nobody before has ever made these empirical tests - which is shocking in a way." He showed me videotapes of some of those experiments, in which extraordinarily beautiful, shimmering images appeared as if by magic in his Los Angeles studio.
The secret is that a concave mirror has the optical qualities of a lens. It will project an image onto a flat surface. And it will do so vividly if the thing to be projected is brightly illuminated, and the lens and the projection are in a darker space (Hockney experimented by painting a van Eyck-style portrait in this way of someone sitting outside a window).
These optical projections, as he calls them, are fascinating things. Their use would explain many aspects of paintings by masters as diverse as Holbein, Chardin, Caravaggio and Velazquez. The swirling satins, for example, of which 17th-century painters were so fond, are also exactly the kind of effect that optical projections pick out and enhance with hyper-real clarity. In his book he illustrates how the very simple, straightforward depiction of cloth by earlier artists such as Giotto and Pisanello was suddenly transformed into the complex, and technically difficult treatment of folds, patterns and textile texture in 16th- and 17th-century art.
The use of optical devices would explain the almost supernatural accuracy with which Holbein foreshortened the various items on the table in The Ambassadors. And Hockney has detected places where it looks as though artists such as Holbein and Lotto had to shift focus because part of, say, an oriental carpet had gone fuzzy.
Similar problems could explain why the figures in Caravaggio - as people noted at this year's Royal Academy exhibition - are often strangely grouped. Hockney argues that his paintings are, in effect, collages of optical projections done at different times. Small changes of focus or positioning might result in figures being too big, or oddly crammed together in too little space.
"Interestingly, another criticism of Caravaggio," says Hockney, "was that the sacred figures looked like ordinary people. But of course, they would have been ordinary people if he was using optics - just as a photographer would have to use ordinary people. That criticism was very similar to that made against a New Testament movie in the Fifties called The Road. Everybody wanted to know who the actor would be who would play Christ, and about his private life."
By 1600 Hockney believes that the technology had advanced sufficiently for lenses to be used instead of mirrors. Indeed, his theory suggests that the methods of some Old Masters were closer to those of 20th-century film and photographic media than might have been imagined. "I've become most interested in a painter called Cagnacci, whose work I used to walk past. Now I look at it and realise how close to a Hollywood studio his workshop must have been - you know, costumes, lighting, camera, action!"
But what Hockney is not saying is that in some way these Old Masters were cheating. "Well, people say, you shouldn't destroy the mystery. But how it's done is not the deepest mystery. Because in the end nobody knows how it's done - how art is made. It can't be explained. Optical devices are just tools. Understanding a tool doesn't explain the magic of creation. Nothing can." In fact, what he is suggesting is no more shocking than the use of photography by many later painters such as Sickert, Degas and Bacon.
Nor is he saying that all Old Masters used these techniques. In the book, he draws a diagram showing the interaction of the optical tradition with what he calls eye-balling. The argument is that many painters - Rubens, for example - did not use optical devices, but that even those who didn't were sometimes affected by the optical "look".
In fact, Hockney redraws most of Western art history, because his argument is also that the history of painting since the late 19th century is in part an attempt to escape the lens-eye view of the world. Cezanne, in particular, fought heroically to see the world in a different way - the way a two-eyed, mobile person sees it, rather than the way a fixed, single lens does. And this has been Hockney's own struggle as an artist. In the past he has worked in a near photographically naturalistic idiom, but also experimented with many other modes of representation. His final view is that the Western lens-based view of the world - which is now universally dominant thanks to the media of film and television - has become a trap.
"I'm coming round to the view that there's only a personal view of the world. There isn't anything else. What we call verisimilitude turns out to be the optical projection and its descendants, which is only one way of looking at the world." In other words, we have grown used to looking at the world through the eye of a camera, but there are other ways of seeing.
It's a truly radical view of the visual world. To put it bluntly, if Hockney is right, then a lot of art history, as it has been practised over the last century and more, is going to look a bit stupid.
There will be a tendency in some academic circles to dismiss his theories flatly. But then, art history as it has been practised up to now has been just that - a branch of history. It has derived from the study of documents, not from practical knowledge of what artists did in their studios (a murky subject about which there is little information).
That is Hockney's great strength. "Until now, art historians simply haven't known enough about how pre-photographic cameras and optical projections work. It's not in the nature of historians to make experiments. Scientists make experiments. Historians would say, we don't know Brunelleschi or van Eyck knew about how to do this - which I think is untenable."
Hockney has shown exactly how these optical tools could have been used - by using them himself. And he has turned up some written references, by Leonardo da Vinci, for example, and the 17th-century Dutch writer and patron Constantin Huygens, which seem to refer to the techniques he has rediscovered. "I think," he adds, "it's quite possible for knowledge to be lost."
None the less, his thesis lacks the smoking-gun evidence that some critics will require. On the other hand, a number of distinguished artists and art world figures have remarked to me that they believe Hockney is on to something. Far from being crazy, what he is saying makes lucid sense.
'Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters' by David Hockney is published by Thames & Hudson on Oct 15, price £35. It is available for £30 plus £1.99 postage through Telegraph Books Direct. To order please call 0870 155 7222. 'David Hockney - Secret Knowledge', an 'Omnibus' special, will be shown on BBC2 on Oct 13. Hockney's designs for Strauss's 'Die Frau ohne Schatten' can be seen at the Royal Opera House from Oct 9."
(Filed: 22/09/2001)
Has David Hockney made a discovery that will change the history of art for ever? He talks to Martin Gayford
IN 1999, there was a magnificent exhibition of Ingres portraits at the National Gallery in London. Among the many visitors was David Hockney, and he, along with everyone else, was struck by the extraordinary delicacy and precision of the portrait drawings on show by the French master. Unlike the public - and the art historians and critics - he started to ask himself specific practical questions about those miraculous little works on paper.
As someone who himself had drawn delicate and precise images of people in the tradition that stems from Ingres, he wanted to know how they were done. And the answers he came up with led to other questions and other answers, and finally to a theory, set out in his new book Secret Knowledge, that could revolutionise our understanding of art history.
What Hockney saw when he looked hard at those Ingres drawings were signs that Ingres had been using a piece of optical equipment called a camera lucida. That is, as he puts it, "a prism on a stick". "When you look through the prism from a certain point you can see the person in front of you and the paper below at the same time." In that way, as Hockney explains, a skilled artist could trace the image, "fast-forwarding" through the normal process of measuring the subject's head by eye.
Hockney suggests there are two ways of working from life. One is what used to go on in art schools in front of a model: looking, measuring, groping to find the right line. The second way is to work from an image that is already there - a photograph, a projected slide. Hockney argued that Ingres was working in the second way, using the camera lucida rapidly to establish the key proportions of his sitter's face - which he then worked over more slowly without the optical aid. Then, equally rapidly, he jotted down the lines of their clothes, which he could see apparently hovering above the paper. Thus the use of this tool would explain puzzling features of the Ingres drawings, including the speed at which Ingres had been able to turn them out, and the fact that some lines looked traced.
At the time there was some coverage of this theory. Hockney talked about it, and did a series of drawings using the same technique. Over the last couple of years there have been further hints of how his mind was working - a letter to The Telegraph, for example, suggesting that Constable used an optical aid in painting his studies of clouds. There was a predictable, dismissive response: Hockney was mad, he had a bee in his bonnet. To which the artist calmly replied when we recently spent an evening discussing the subject: "Well, I know something that they don't."
Now, with the publication of this book, he lets the rest of us in on the secret. And his contentions are pretty astounding - not merely that some artists used certain bags of tricks, but that, effectively, the photographic way of looking at the world, through optical equipment, pre-dates, by centuries, the invention of photography itself. "The spirit of photography is much older than its history," said Hockney. "That is what my assistant David Graves and I have discovered." It began, according to the Hockney thesis, not with the discovery in the early 19th century that optical images could be chemically fixed on glass and paper, but in the early 15th century. And it began in just the places where we conventionally consider the Renaissance to have started - in the Flanders of van Eyck and the Florence of Masaccio and Brunelleschi.
"We went to Florence to attend a conference on art and science," Hockney explained. "And we stood on the exact spot that Brunelleschi is supposed to have stood when according to Vasari he made one of the first perspective paintings - of the baptistry from the cathedral. And onto a panel the precise size of his panel, which is described, we projected the baptistry, perfectly though upside down, with a mirror that cost us £6." And from an image such as this, Brunelleschi could have created his painting.
This is the truly startling aspect of Hockney's thesis. It has often been suggested that some artists, Vermeer and Canaletto in particular, might have used optical equipment. But Hockney has rediscovered a simple technique by which artists could have done so from the late Middle Ages on. All that is required is a concave mirror, in everyday terms, a shaving mirror, which we know to have been something that could have been manufactured at the time. Its opposite, a convex mirror - which simply has the silvering on the other side of the glass - is frequently depicted hanging on the wall of early Netherlandish paintings such as Van Eyck's Arnolfini portrait.
"It's very easy to do," Hockney went on. "We made experiments, and we found out how they used mirrors then. Nobody before has ever made these empirical tests - which is shocking in a way." He showed me videotapes of some of those experiments, in which extraordinarily beautiful, shimmering images appeared as if by magic in his Los Angeles studio.
The secret is that a concave mirror has the optical qualities of a lens. It will project an image onto a flat surface. And it will do so vividly if the thing to be projected is brightly illuminated, and the lens and the projection are in a darker space (Hockney experimented by painting a van Eyck-style portrait in this way of someone sitting outside a window).
These optical projections, as he calls them, are fascinating things. Their use would explain many aspects of paintings by masters as diverse as Holbein, Chardin, Caravaggio and Velazquez. The swirling satins, for example, of which 17th-century painters were so fond, are also exactly the kind of effect that optical projections pick out and enhance with hyper-real clarity. In his book he illustrates how the very simple, straightforward depiction of cloth by earlier artists such as Giotto and Pisanello was suddenly transformed into the complex, and technically difficult treatment of folds, patterns and textile texture in 16th- and 17th-century art.
The use of optical devices would explain the almost supernatural accuracy with which Holbein foreshortened the various items on the table in The Ambassadors. And Hockney has detected places where it looks as though artists such as Holbein and Lotto had to shift focus because part of, say, an oriental carpet had gone fuzzy.
Similar problems could explain why the figures in Caravaggio - as people noted at this year's Royal Academy exhibition - are often strangely grouped. Hockney argues that his paintings are, in effect, collages of optical projections done at different times. Small changes of focus or positioning might result in figures being too big, or oddly crammed together in too little space.
"Interestingly, another criticism of Caravaggio," says Hockney, "was that the sacred figures looked like ordinary people. But of course, they would have been ordinary people if he was using optics - just as a photographer would have to use ordinary people. That criticism was very similar to that made against a New Testament movie in the Fifties called The Road. Everybody wanted to know who the actor would be who would play Christ, and about his private life."
By 1600 Hockney believes that the technology had advanced sufficiently for lenses to be used instead of mirrors. Indeed, his theory suggests that the methods of some Old Masters were closer to those of 20th-century film and photographic media than might have been imagined. "I've become most interested in a painter called Cagnacci, whose work I used to walk past. Now I look at it and realise how close to a Hollywood studio his workshop must have been - you know, costumes, lighting, camera, action!"
But what Hockney is not saying is that in some way these Old Masters were cheating. "Well, people say, you shouldn't destroy the mystery. But how it's done is not the deepest mystery. Because in the end nobody knows how it's done - how art is made. It can't be explained. Optical devices are just tools. Understanding a tool doesn't explain the magic of creation. Nothing can." In fact, what he is suggesting is no more shocking than the use of photography by many later painters such as Sickert, Degas and Bacon.
Nor is he saying that all Old Masters used these techniques. In the book, he draws a diagram showing the interaction of the optical tradition with what he calls eye-balling. The argument is that many painters - Rubens, for example - did not use optical devices, but that even those who didn't were sometimes affected by the optical "look".
In fact, Hockney redraws most of Western art history, because his argument is also that the history of painting since the late 19th century is in part an attempt to escape the lens-eye view of the world. Cezanne, in particular, fought heroically to see the world in a different way - the way a two-eyed, mobile person sees it, rather than the way a fixed, single lens does. And this has been Hockney's own struggle as an artist. In the past he has worked in a near photographically naturalistic idiom, but also experimented with many other modes of representation. His final view is that the Western lens-based view of the world - which is now universally dominant thanks to the media of film and television - has become a trap.
"I'm coming round to the view that there's only a personal view of the world. There isn't anything else. What we call verisimilitude turns out to be the optical projection and its descendants, which is only one way of looking at the world." In other words, we have grown used to looking at the world through the eye of a camera, but there are other ways of seeing.
It's a truly radical view of the visual world. To put it bluntly, if Hockney is right, then a lot of art history, as it has been practised over the last century and more, is going to look a bit stupid.
There will be a tendency in some academic circles to dismiss his theories flatly. But then, art history as it has been practised up to now has been just that - a branch of history. It has derived from the study of documents, not from practical knowledge of what artists did in their studios (a murky subject about which there is little information).
That is Hockney's great strength. "Until now, art historians simply haven't known enough about how pre-photographic cameras and optical projections work. It's not in the nature of historians to make experiments. Scientists make experiments. Historians would say, we don't know Brunelleschi or van Eyck knew about how to do this - which I think is untenable."
Hockney has shown exactly how these optical tools could have been used - by using them himself. And he has turned up some written references, by Leonardo da Vinci, for example, and the 17th-century Dutch writer and patron Constantin Huygens, which seem to refer to the techniques he has rediscovered. "I think," he adds, "it's quite possible for knowledge to be lost."
None the less, his thesis lacks the smoking-gun evidence that some critics will require. On the other hand, a number of distinguished artists and art world figures have remarked to me that they believe Hockney is on to something. Far from being crazy, what he is saying makes lucid sense.
'Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters' by David Hockney is published by Thames & Hudson on Oct 15, price £35. It is available for £30 plus £1.99 postage through Telegraph Books Direct. To order please call 0870 155 7222. 'David Hockney - Secret Knowledge', an 'Omnibus' special, will be shown on BBC2 on Oct 13. Hockney's designs for Strauss's 'Die Frau ohne Schatten' can be seen at the Royal Opera House from Oct 9."
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