Woven History
A Huntington Woods collector brings an early 20th-century tradition
10,000-year-old past
to the present.
with a
BY ELIZABETH APPLEBAUM
W
hen David Morrison looks at a rug, he
doesn't see just colors and shapes. He
sees life.
"When I hold a carpet, it's like I have someone's
life in my hands," he says. "It reflects the spirit, the
village, the history of the person who made it." Rug
production is more than 10,000 years old and has
been an industry in virtually every country, "which
is why it can tell the entire history of the world."
Today, Morrison of Huntington Woods is the driv-
ing force behind a project to re-create seven rug
designs from the Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts.
Opened in pre-state Israel in 1906 and active until
1929, Bezalel was founded by Boris Schatz, a devotee
of the Arts and Crafts movement, which
rejected mass production in favor of hand-
craftsmanship. "Bezalel carpets were part of
the aesthetic of the founders of the institute,
who took on the responsibility of producing
the most beautiful crafts," explains
Morrison. "Schatz took a motley group of
Jewish refugee weavers from all over the
Middle East and got them to weave togeth-
er. Some designs are more aesthetic, some
are more biblical, but all are identifiable as
Bezalel. And all are spectacular."
Exactly where Morrison discovered thanks to Anton
Felton, author of J sh Carpets and the world's fore-
most scholar on the subject. Felton, who lives in
Sussex, England, had become interested in Jewish
carpets "years ago, when I was incredibly poor and
working my way through university," he says. "I
moonlighted as a bookkeeper to a carpet trader. One
day, he showed me the Solomon and silk Kashana he
was in the process of selling ... I was fascinated."
Felton worked without pay. "Most people told
me, 'You're absolutely bonkers.' They said there
was no such grouping as Jewish carpets; that the few
that existed were but odd, misbegotten maverick
mules born at the interface of the cultures and of no
.
A ROYAL FIND
For the past several decades, most
Americans understood "carpet" as nothing
more than the thick, 1950s wall-to-wall
stuff that took over the floors of nearly
every home.
But recently, Morrison says, real carpets
have come to the fore.
Morrison's first encounter with a Jewish
carpet was as a teen, when he stumbled
across a small one at a shop in Royal Oak.
Depicting Rachel's Tomb, it sold for just
$75. Morrison was "dumbfounded. I had
never seen a carpet with Hebrew on it."
He snapped it up.
Then he met the vice president of car-
pet collections for Sotheby's New York.
She knew immediately what a treasure
Morrison had in his Bezalel School find —
which today would sell for thousands —
and that more was out there.
With brilliant colors and lyrical imagery, a Woven Legends reproduction of a Bezalel
design brings to life the poetry of the "Song of Songs."
account whatsoever," he says. "I have spent the last
half-century proving the contrary to be true."
In those 50 years, he has found that carpets with
Jewish iconography date back to the 16th century.
Often commissioned by wealthy patrons of commu-
nities for their own use (for a dowry, for example) or
for use in a synagogue as ark covers, they were not
used as floor coverings.
Felton posted a notice in Hall., the magazine for
carpet connoisseurs, wondering if anyone else was
interested in Jewish carpets. Morrison, browsing a
copy of the magazine, came across the notice, and
the two men corresponded. But "what really put me
on this journey was my meeting with Anton" at an
international carpet convention in 1995.
"We became fast friends," Morrison says.
Inspired, Morrison developed an idea to
reproduce seven vintage Jewish carpets
from the Bezalel School and make them
available to collectors and fans at a fraction
of the cost of the originals. Felton quickly
signed on to the project, called Carpets of
Jerusalem, providing expertise on every-
thing from when a carpet design was creat-
ed to its significance. Throughout, Felton
found himself inspired by Morrison.
"David is like a catalyst," he says. "He has
enormous persistence and persuasion."
To make the rugs, Morrison turned to
Woven Legends, a Philadelphia-based firm
that creates museum-quality naturally dyed
hand-woven carpets from handspun wool.
They are, says Morrison, "the best." And
their ideals are in keeping with Boris
Schatz's original ideals for the Bezalel
School.
George Jevremovic, head of Woven
Legends, found the Bezalel carpets
"intriguing."
"The first thing I noticed when compar-
ing pieces was how varied they were in
weave," he said. "Some were woven by
artisans who clearly learned to weave in
west Persia. Others seemed to indicate a
tradition in west Turkey.
"What united their work," he continues,
were the ancient themes of the Holy Land.
"
Continued on page 26
JNPLATINUM • S T E 11 E R 2005 •
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