Work of Art

Red carpet with Tree of Life and Animals

Carpet Collection

14th century, 90cm x155cm, Karapinar, South Central Anatolia; sold on 2018, at Sotheby’s auction.

Content of

Work of Art

Christopher Alexander's carpet collection, at its final state included about 80 carpets, most of them Turkish carpets, or carpets with a pronounced "Turkic" character

Carpet Collection

Christopher Alexander started collecting carpets because of his desire to learn from them. He felt that they had something to teach him. He was never interested in the classification of carpets, where they came from, or on their type. He ...

Contents

Photographs

Red Carpet with Tree of Life and Animals: Photograph 01/01/1993

Carpet

Photographer:

One of the four - Don Tuttle, Garry Muse, Bud Holland, Dennis Anderson, Berkeley, CA, U.S.A.

Source:

Digital

Characteristics:

Color

Photograph of the whole carpet.

References

Scientific Research

Color and Inner Light: The Eleven Color Properties

Areas of focus:

Structure of Space

Guiding idea:

Centers and Fields of Centers

Christopher Alexander postulated that centers and the field of centers they create are the building blocks from which wholeness is made. However, he further argued that geometry alone is not sufficient, and that color is the way wholeness comes to ...

Books

A Foreshadowing of 21st Century Art - The Color and Geometry of very Early Turkish Carpets 1993

Authors:

Christopher Alexander

Publisher:

Oxford University Press, New York, NY, U.S.A.

No of pages:

351 pp

The seventh volume of “The Center for Environmental Structure Series” on architecture published by Oxford University Press is a book about carpets. Alexander assembled what many believe to be one of the finest collections of early Turkish carpets in the ...

Public Events

"Ancient Color and Geometry: Anatolian Pile Carpets from the Christopher Alexander Collection" exhibition in M.H. de Young Memorial Museum in San Francisco 10/11/1990 to 17/02/1991

M.H. de Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco, CA, U.S.A.

Exhibition

C.E.S. staff:

Christopher Alexander, Bob Theis, Annie der Bedrossian

Organized by:

M.H. de Young Memorial Museum and The Center for Environmental Structure

The exhibition of the Christopher Alexander collection of 80 Turkish carpets in the de Young Memorial Museum was held during the 6th International Conference on Oriental Carpets. Alexander designed the exhibit in all its detailing personally with one thing in ...