How it all began …

My father’s great uncle and cousin died in December 1977 at the age of 92 in Istanbul, where he had spent most of his life. He travelled to Istanbul with his brother to take care of the estate. “Among everything else were a few rugs that I don’t remember because at the time I had no eye for them at all”, he said. One of the pieces was a Tekke, popularly known as Bukhara. Kemal, a trader from the bazaar, promised to try to sell the rug in the weekly auction at the bazaar. That was the end of the matter for my father. But …

“On a later visit to Istanbul, I met Kemal in the bazaar to have a Turkish coffee with him. He asked me if I could remember my uncle’s Tekke. I could hardly remember the name of the rug. Kemal said: Do you want to see it? He unrolled it and I saw a brown something that looked quite interesting. Kemal launched into a well-measured eulogy of the rug in the form of explanations about knotting (mixture of high-quality wool and silk – very rare), origin, colors (with the grain and against the grain – never heard or perceived) etc. Suddenly it must have run through me because he said to Kemal: Okay, you’re right, I’ll keep it. Also to have something visible from my uncle.” (Martin Posth)

That’s how my father got his first rug. This was not only the beginning of an extensive collection of knotted products, but also the foundation stone for one of the most extensive collections of books on knotted products, with over 1000 copies today. For when he returned to Germany, he bought the relevant work by Loges, Turkmen Rugs, to find his rug. In the process, he saw many other rugs of the same provenance, read about the history, manufacture, colors, knotting and was so impressed that one was already thinking about the next rug, which of course triggered another new book. This game never stopped. The piece is of pronounced elegance and very finely woven, the likes of which he have never found again.