Tying the Knot in Urfa

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Yes, but which one? The Spanish, the Persian or the Turkish? When it comes to carpets there is plenty of choice and although I spent a week at it, I am not too sure which one it was.

In the workshop with Songül and Mehmet

Carpet making has a long tradition in Turkey. It harks back to distant times when the ancestors of today’s settled and urbanised Turks were roaming the steppes with huge flocks of sheep. In a way, carpet-making is to sheep rearing what cheese and yoghurt are to milk production: a way to deal with huge surpluses—and a very successful one indeed. Even if mechanised production is the norm in the West, the old ways have not disappeared here and local municipalities are keen to preserve and encourage the tradition. That’s how I found myself knocking at the door of Urfa’s Belediye carpet workshop in the northern part of town, in an area set aside for crafts including mosaic, leather, woodwork and ceramics.

Carpet-making is a female occupation. In the long winter days when agricultural tasks are less demanding, women and girls spend months at it. They prepare the wool in the late summer/autumn, when they can be seen fully clothed, waist high in the water, beating the lanolin out of it with big sticks. Then they dry it and dye it and, come the winter, it is time to weave it. When they are done, the men step in. A van collects the production of an area and takes them off to be sold. Distant Istanbul is a favourite destination because of the size of the market. The best buyers will snap up a whole vanload at once, no questions asked. That way they can ensure a steady supply.

This does not mean that men are unable to make carpets. They run the shops and do the repairs between clients.

There are two main categories of carpet: kilims, which are woven, and the knotted variety, made of either wool or silk. In the workshop I attended I saw all of them but for practical reasons I ended up with a wool carpet. Normally, carpet-making is a one-woman job. You really need a very wide carpet to accommodate two people working side by side. Fortunately I found Songül, halfway through a huge carpet (well over 2.5m wide) destined for the foreign market, apparently Spain. She kindly agreed to be my mentor and put up with my Turkish.

It was clear from the outset that I had the wrong kind of hand: too many fingers or not enough of them to twist a strand of wool quickly and efficiently through the warp. To start with I was using both hands, which caused some hilarity: the women in the workshop could do it with just one finger, two at most. Anyway, I got better with practice and graduated to using the scissors to trim the pile after each complete run. The scissors look like an instrument of torture, which indeed they are. They are huge and heavy and have to be used with two hands, one at each end, and even then I got cramps. I was better at operating the machinery of the loom between runs. I quickly learned to pay attention to the pattern because each mistake means unpicking all the way back (I got some experience of that as well).

There must have been something like two dozen looms in the workshop, of various sizes. Some women came in for the whole day with their preschool children and we all took it in turns to mind them. Teenage girls dropped in after school to work on their projects. Whether they will want to continue making carpets later on, when they calculate their hourly rate, is an interesting point to debate. Carpet-making is a very slow process, even when you are good at it. Together with Songül we completed about four centimetres of our big carpet in five days. She was quick, very quick (my ‘contribution’ probably slowed her down); even so, she will take over a year to finish that one carpet.

So what did I learn from five days of carpet-making? Female companionship for sure. I was welcomed with unquestioning friendliness and made to feel part of the group. We shared food, laughter and silence with the occasional clanking of the looms and the ever-present Turkish (or Kurdish?) music wafting from someone’s transistor radio. Dancing around the looms even broke out at some point.

It also gave me an appreciation of the work itself. I have always been a keen carpet buyer, ready to strike a bargain, haggling and softening vendors’ hearts with my knowledge of the language. Turkish-speaking tourists are a rarity in Turkey and a source of wonder and awe.

But if I ever buy another carpet (though my small house has no clear floor space left) I will probably haggle less—or possibly not at all.

By Paola Pugsley, author of Blue Guide Eastern Turkey and Blue Guide Southeastern Turkey, available now for download.

Venice and the Politcs of Washing

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W.D. Howells, Venetian Life, first published in 1866, and Polly Coles, The Politics of Washing: Real Life in Venice, Robert Hale, 2013.

A recent review of Polly Coles’ The Politics of Washing claimed that it was the most perceptive book on Venice since W.D. Howells’ Venetian Life. In a field that includes J.G. Links’ Venice for Pleasure and Jan (then James) Morris’ Venice, that is a bold claim for both of them but it gave me the excuse for reading Howells for the first time as well as exploring the ‘political’ challenge of how far a newly arrived resident can pull out their underwear (and which garments) on a backstreet (backcanal?) Venetian washing line.

W.D. Howells had worked for Abraham Lincoln’s campaign team and his reward was a year as consul in Venice, at that time under Austrian occupation. He is well educated and curious, but perhaps rather brash and impatient with a city where no one seems to do much. There is, for a sturdy Protestant such as himself, far too great a reliance on the Madonna breaking through the clouds and sorting out calamities and plagues. He soon settles into the routine, however, and when called upon to provide the annual report of ‘Commercial Transactions’ feels ‘a vague feeling of injury during a year of almost uninterrupted tranquillity.’ None of his compatriots seems to need his help and so he is free to observe daily life and to battle with the intricate personality of Giovanna, his housekeeper, she of the capacious pockets where unwieldy keys, lumps of beeswax, pictures of the Virgin and an illegible account book jostle with each other. Giovanni’s growing power over Howells and his wife is linked to the diminishing number of hours she attends them, but so entangled are they by her family and hangers-on that it is only by moving to a completely different part of the city that they can escape her web.

Howells was writing for an American audience, for most of whom Venice must have been a fantasy, and he exaggerates the picturesque and the ruffians. Yet he has literary skill and his account of arriving in Venice by night and his evocation of the coldness of a Venetian winter are haunting. Despite some good passages and insights, however, too much of the book is a mishmash: some history, interrupted by comments on the hierarchies of society, then a discussions of gondoliers, all of it without really penetrating what makes Venice survive as a city. His best chapter is perhaps his last, written seven years later when he was back in Massachusetts, where he describes how he camped out in lodgings in part of the Palazzo Giustiniani, in a fine position on the Grand Canal. One of the delights that all the male residents enjoy is swimming in the canal when the new tide brings fresh water. There is a more measured and reflective tone in this chapter, something that is often missing in the jumble of what has gone before. Overall, I would certainly rate Howells well below Morris, who is much more sensitive to the nuances of Venetian life.

In The Politics of Washing, Polly Coles, the English partner of an Italian violin-maker, cannot escape being totally immersed in the life of the city (in more ways than one as the floods intensify). There is the education system to negotiate for a start (the couple have four children) and she finds it distant and often sterile for her lively offspring. I never knew that there was quite so much Latin and Greek in the syllabus of the liceo classico. The conventions by which parents accept responsibility for their wayward children and apologise for them even though it might be the inadequacy of their teachers that is to blame is beautifully explored.

The fresh tides here are not those from the lagoon but from the massive influxes of tourists and much of Coles’ life is spent dragging her trolley through crowded streets and missing appointments because the vaporetti are too full for the residents to fit onto them. Coles shares my own belief that it is only in the early morning that one can fully appreciate Venice today. I really enjoyed this book, not only because Coles writes so well but also because she is sensitive to the people, both native and foreign, who surround her all too closely on a daily basis. How far can one risk one’s partner’s Y-fronts fluttering down into one’s neighbour’s garden and what would be the social consequences she would have to live with if they did? What are the conventions in using ‘tu’ and ‘lei’ a) in a conversation with a friendly Italian woman 20 years her junior and b) during a blazing row with her partner when ‘lei’ seems justified to express distance and disdain but turns out to be so inappropriate that it makes him collapse into laughter?

No one should go to Venice without reading this book as it will, perhaps, make them more aware that beyond the burger bars and overpriced pasta, there are people who have known the city since birth but have now become strangers in it, as the privates spaces and the traditional shops that used to serve them dwindle. Though Coles is a newcomer herself, she acts as a sympathetic champion of those who are being pushed to the margins by the cruisers depositing their ‘See Venice in two hours’ crowds. Their social network soon tells them exactly how alta the acqua is, which passageways are still open and where one can browse books in one’s wellies (stivali impermeabili), as the less nifty tourists flounder about in the swirling waters. As the artificially contrived Carnival gets under way in Piazza San Marco, the rowing clubs set off in the opposite direction, with Coles and her friend Jane negotiating a flat-bottomed sanpierota crammed with flags and children, to what is essentially a retaliatory fancy-dress village fête for the locals.

Less visible are the other residents, those who have drifted in from the east to work as carers, and who have only each other to sustain themselves now that children and family are far away. They are the new representatives of the East, the Schiavoni of the 21st century, a reminder that Venice has always been awash with foreigners—although most now stay only long enough to buy their Carnival masks and gelati before clambering on board their cruise ships again. This is a sobering book in many ways, a narrative of a self-destructing and sclerotic city where the ancient landing-posts are all too often submerged. I am happy to place it alongside James Morris’ own memoir of living with a family in Venice in the 1950s (now reissued and updated by the author)—but what a difference sixty years has made to the magic of the city.

Reviewed by Charles Freeman

Turin restored and rejuvenated

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The famous Savoy collection of Egyptian antiquities was largely gathered during the 18th and 19th centuries and was extensive enough by the 1830s for Champollion to do much of his work on deciphering hieroglyphics in Turin. For years the collections seem to have gathered dust but there has now been a vibrant revival of the museum. Somehow it has caught the imagination of the city.  It  buzzes with energy and school groups, with the number of visitors now topping half a million a year. At first I was a little disappointed with the traditional cases of artefacts in the first rooms but the sculpture gallery is stunning, and one has to accept that this is a better collection than that in the British Museum. There are especially good arrangements of everyday life found in undisturbed tombs.

The finest restorations are to be found in the coronet of palaces and hunting lodges that encircles the city: the “Corona di Delizie” or “Crown of Delights” as they have been known since the 18th century. The Villa della Regina is walkable from the centre, along the Via Po, through the majestic Piazza Vittoria Veneto, across the Po and up the hill past the Neoclassical church of the Gran Madre di Dio, built to celebrate the return of King Vittorio Emanuele I after the Napoleonic hiatus when Piedmont had been ruled from France. The villa originally dates to the early 17th century but derives its name from Queen Anne-Marie, the niece of Louis XIV who married Vittorio Amedeo II of Savoy, and made it her home. She died here in 1728. There is an elegant ‘classical’ garden behind the villa and its private vineyard is still kept up.

Forty minutes from the centre of town is the Venaria Reale, the vast 17th–18th-century hunting lodge of the royal family. Virtually abandoned after the third wife of Carlo Emanuele III died here in childbirth in 1741, it has now been subject to a massive restoration programme. The first rooms of the Reggia, the main palace, are devoted to the Savoy dynasty, which originated in Savoy in 1003, so making it the oldest in Europe. (With the dynasty secure in Piedmont, Sardinia and then Italy, Savoy itself was passed to France in thanks for French help in the unification of Italy in 1860.) Here you can find the dynasty’s members listed and thus sort out the rulers and their marriages into the other royal families of Europe. A gallery of (reproduced) portraits of all the more significant members provides further help. The next rooms show the growth of Turin as a capital and document the works of the two great architects of the dynasty, Guarino Guarini in the 17th century and Filippo Juvarra in the early 18th.

Juvarra (1678–1736), who arrived in Turin in 1714, was appointed architect of the Venaria Reale and completed the astonishing vestibule there as well as the palace church dedicated to St Hubert, the patron saint of hunting.  Yet this is only one part of the complex that can be visited. There are two exhibition areas (with exhibitions of the fashion designer Roberto Capucci and Lorenzo Lotto on show until the summer of 2013), the  royal Savoy barge as well as many of the original rooms of the earlier palace. Then there are the gardens now being recreated after falling into decline in the 19th century. There is a complicated ticket system under which you pick and choose what you want to see, but we found that it is better to go for the €20 ticket that covers everything. The planned 18th-century town, the borgo antico, alongside the palace, is full of eating places.

When the royal family abandoned the Venaria Reale, it was Juvarra who was asked the design the new hunting lodge at Stupinigi, to the south of the city. This is a wonderful building and the restoration is magnificent. The lodge is owned by the order of St Maurice and its future was in doubt when the order fell into financial problems but on 15th March, 2013, it opened again and it is hoped that this will be permanent. Every room is beautifully decorated, not least with 18th-century hunting scenes set in the adjoining park. The central hall is simply staggering: Juvarra’s architecture, if you do not know it, is altogether a revelation, whether here at Stupinigi or in the entrance hall he designed for the Palazzo Madama back in the city or at the Superga, the ‘victory’ church on a hill overlooking the city that later became the mausoleum of the royal family.

Filippo Juvarra’s royal hunting lodge at Stupinigi.

After the Second World War, the royal family, discredited through their association with fascism, went into exile and many of their former palaces, especially those in Piedmont, began to crumble. The rejuvenation of these buildings has been astonishing and puts Turin back on the map as one of the finest cities in Europe for the Baroque.

There are many other sights in Piedmont to explore. The Castello di Masino, beautifully restored by FAI, the Italian ‘National Trust’, was our favourite but we also loved the castle at Issogne, on the old Roman road to Gaul, across the regional border in Valle d’Aosta. All these delights will be crammed into my forthcoming tour of Turin and the surrounding area in May.

Charles Freeman is historical consultant to the Blue Guides and author of Sites of Antiquity: 50 Sites that Explain the Classical World.

A palatial art museum in Trieste

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Revoltella remained unmarried but he was not socially reclusive. His dinner parties attended by bejewelled beauties, his French chef’s extravagant concoctions and his gleaming gilded tableware were famous. At a gala banquet which he gave in honour of Franz Joseph’s brother Maximilian, on the eve of the latter’s departure for Mexico to take up his imperial appointment, the centrepiece, which drew gasps of wonder from the assembled guests, consisted of four hounds sculpted from butter attacking a wild boar confected out of sausage. It is difficult to gauge what motivated Revoltella. Was it business? Insecurity? A desire to impress? Ambition for social status, or for acceptance? A genuine regard for art? Did he have good taste? It is hard to say. His palace is a deliberate showpiece, but is neither impressively original nor depressingly vulgar. His chosen philosophers, whom he had sculpted at the top of the main stairs, were Galileo, Newton, Descartes and Leibniz: not thinkers, as such, concerned with the destiny of the soul, but physicists and mathematicians, an Italian, an Englishman, a Frenchman and a German. His collection of paintings contains the kind of thing that one might expect from a man of his time and status: Biedermeier portraits and romantic images of the Orient: there is a good Cairo street scene by Ippolito Caffi. In the study hangs a vivid Egyptian landscape showing the Suez canal slicing its way up from the Red Sea to Port Said.

From the library (which contains a copy of Revoltella’s own travel journal, which he wrote during his trip to Suez in 1861), a false door designed to imitate a bookshelf leads through to a small cabinet, once a bathroom, where some of the early treasures of the collection are housed, among them a model by Canova for his famous heroic nude statue of Napoleon holding a celestial ball intended to carry a Winged Victory. (The completed statue, in Carrara marble, never pleased the little emperor. He felt that the golden Victory figure appeared to be flying ominously away, and the statue was consigned to the vaults of the Louvre until purchased by Napoleon’s nemesis, the Duke of Wellington, who displayed it in his London home, Apsley House. It is still there.)

The collection in the adjoining building is rich in Italian art of the 20th century. De Chirico, Morandi, Carrà, Sironi, Burri: all are represented by at least one work. Particularly interesting are the local Trieste painters, whose work is less often seen in international collections. Piero Marussig is the best known; but also interesting are Carlo Sbisà (1889–1964), who found inspiration in the Italian Renaissance, and Bruno Croatto (1875–1948), known for his powerful realism.

  • The Draughtswoman, by Carlo Sbisà
  • Portrait in front of the Palatine ruins, by Croatto