Love for visual art can manifest in myriad ways. Take Bengaluru resident Danny Mehra. It is not that this art lover doesn’t like paintings, photographs or sculptures — the common expressions of visual art — but it is “the asymmetric aesthetics” of certain old tribal carpets that completes his fascination for the form.
Some 30 years ago, Mehra fell in love with the ocular splendour of aged tribal carpets — from Persia, Anatolia, Caucasus and Central Asia. He began collecting them through travels, auctions and years of living in the U.S. So much so that he now has in his home “a pile of them — all rare, from early 19th to mid-20th centuries.”
From December 21 to 28, Mehra displayed 83 of his kilims, carpets, and kilim bags at an exhibition in New Delhi’s India International Centre. “Carpet Stories” was as much his first chance to show his collection in the national capital (his maiden show was in 2012 in Bangalore) as it was a rare opportunity for interested Delhiites to catch a glimpse of a rich era of indigenous craft practices in a faraway region, most of which are now in the news for being in constant turmoil. Walking through the exhibition, one’s heart ached, thinking what must have happened to such age-old cultures in war-torn Syria or Iraq.
Mehra walked me through the exhibit — some carpets were placed on the floor, some over wooden platforms, some were hanging from walls like life-size paintings, labelled according to their kind and place of origin. Tulu, Julkhyr, Sofreh, Kurdish Bijar, Bidjov, Sumac, Kuba… the names were like an exotic litany. As were the names of places they came from. He spoke of how the carpets were woven by women of nomadic tribes such as the Luri, Bhaktiari, Khamseh, Afshan, Shahsavan and Qashqai in the early 19th and 20th centuries. Pointing to a 10 feet long, striking red Anatolian Tulu from the early 20th century, he said, “It is a traditional sleeping bag, one half goes under, the other half over.”
An ornate Tree of Life from Tallish in Azerbaijan majestically covered a corner spot. It was worked over with motifs in shades of red, blue, yellow and black — the common colours used in the region and derived from insects, seeds and flowers. I spotted the motif of a camel — a ubiquity in the region but curiously not found in the other carpets. What I did see though was a cover for a horse worked elaborately in wool. Mehra said, “Horses were prized possessions in the region; not everyone could have them.” Perhaps that’s the reason horse covers were so elaborately woven.
There were also carpet bags in varying sizes. A Persian 19th century salt bag, a Chanteh with sumptuous work, saddle bags and kilim bags — probably to carry bedding — stood out in the way they married beauty with utility.
Apart from just the sheer beauty of the pieces, what drove Mehra to acquire the carpets were the stories behind them. “Often, a seller gives you a story with a piece; you actually end up buying the story,” he said, pointing at a kilim with a hole, which the seller told him was chewed off by an angry camel.
To make room for additions to his repertoire, Mehra has now started to sell his kilims to collectors. “The problem is I am also a compulsive collector. In Delhi, I sold two carpets but also bought two,” he said, laughing.
Interested buyers can write to dannymehra@yahoo.com. Sangeeta Barooah Pisharoty is a New Delhi-based freelance writer.
