859-254-4412
Best of Baluch in Switzerlands- Hali 2008
Wednesday, July 09, 2008

       On the weekend of 31 May-1 June, German, Swiss and Austrian baluch
collectors gathered in Zurich for their annual meeting which was hosted by Arlette
Bollag and Toni Hutmacher's Galerie Nomadenschaetze and jointly organised by
Hans Ritter, Joerg Affentranger and Hansueli Furrer. Much to the satisfaction of the
hosts and the organisers the attendance of the meeting was surprisingly good. Up to
about thirty people - including the baluch collectors and several members of the rug
societies of Zurich and nearby Basel - gathered in the gallery at Werdmuehlestrasse,
where there was enough space for everybody to see and admire the material that
was shown.
      The only topic of this year's meeting was "Baluch rugs from Swiss Collections".
Why this choice? For this one has to recall that Switzerland and the European
Community share a customs boundary. As a consequence of this, Swiss collectors
are usually reluctant to bring their treasures to rug meetings outside Switzerland.
Meeting in Switzerland for the first time, we took the opportunity to view some of the
best pieces from the collections of two of the foremost Swiss baluch collectors -
Joerg Affentranger and Hansueli Furrer.
      Joerg Affentranger, who mainly collects and researches baluch flatweaves, had
brought with him more than one hundred of them, large and small ones, and mostly
coming from the Sistan area. Many of the pieces which he showed he had acquired
during one of his recent field trips to the regions of their production. It was fascinating
to see how, based on his ever growing collection and meticulous documentation of
acquisition details, he is becoming increasingly more precise in attributing
flatweaves based on their structure and details of design. One of the stars among
the many wonderful and interesting pieces was certainly the now carefully restored
large flatweave published in David Sorgato's recent catalogue ‘BALUCH’ (no. 38). In
addition to the flatweaves, Joerg Affentranger also showed a number of beautiful and
remarkable pile rugs, star among which was clearly the large "Mina Khani" rug
published in ‘BALUCH’ (no. 23). Joerg Affentranger had so much material with him
that time was too short for us to see everything. In other words, there is still more to
be seen, hopefully at a future baluch collectors' meeting in Switzerland.
      And then to Hansueli Furrer, who had brought with him about thirty rugs and
twenty smaller pieces (bag faces, salt bags, balisht, chanteh), most of them piled
and modestly characterised by himself as just "red and blue", i.e. of either "classical"
Khorassan Baluch or Timuri production. But what we saw was really stunning and
confirmed what some of us had already known, namely that Hansueli Furrer's
collection must count as one of the top private baluch collections - every piece
interesting, almost all in very good condition and with excellent colours, in short: best
of baluch. Undisputed star among many other well-known pieces was the "Mina-
Khani" rug published as no.6 in Black & Loveless' 1976 exhibition catalogue ‘Rugs
of the Wandering Baluchi’.
      Last but not least, Arlette Bollag showed a small selection of
Nomadenschaetze's Baluch rugs (most of them not for sale). The best known piece
among them was a large and unique fragment of a Baluch saf (HALI 128, p.115,
2003). Very impressive was also a large "Mushwani"-type carpet (following Michael
Craycraft we should now attribute such pieces to the "Hazara") with outstanding and
deeply saturated colours (green, aubergine, dark blue and red among others).
      The highlight of the meeting was without doubt reached when, on Sunday
morning during a short break of the viewing inside the gallery, we had taken some of
the most beautiful pieces outside to see them in full daylight. It was a feast for the
eyes which made it clear to everybody looking why we are collecting baluch rugs and
why we are admiring them so much.