One of my New Year's promises to myself was that I would write shorter, more frequent posts rather than long posts at the completion of a project.
As we are already 25 days into 2019 and this is my first post, I not sure how successful this plan is going to be, but this is the saga of one of my recent rabbit holes.
Back on December 7, I discovered the existance of a book called Tablet Weaving from Anatolia and the Ottoman Court. This excited me because:
As we are already 25 days into 2019 and this is my first post, I not sure how successful this plan is going to be, but this is the saga of one of my recent rabbit holes.
Back on December 7, I discovered the existance of a book called Tablet Weaving from Anatolia and the Ottoman Court. This excited me because:
1. Other than a paragraph or two in the IPEK essays and the clear evidence on several extant kaftans, I have found no other information on tablet woven çhaprasts.
2. I have some beautiful silk brocade that it just crying out for fancy çhaprasts when I construct it
3. Jay was messing about trying to figure out how to make a tablet woven çintamanti pattern, but not having a lot of success
Obstacle #1. The book was not available anywhere except from the university in Istanbul that published it. But the University had a FB page and after several queries they posted an email address to contact about purchasing.
Obstacle #2 When I finally got an answer back from the University they wanted a wire transfer. Paypal does not send money to Turkey, Western Union will only wire for a cash pickup not into an account and my bank closed all the branches close to me ages ago. FB hive mind to the rescue and I learned about an international personal wire transfer service called TransferWise from someone that has used it repeatedly.
Obstacle #3 The wire transfer info didn't map correctly to the info needed to successfully complete a wire transfer and I got no response back when I asked for additional transfer info.
At this point, I was frustrated as ---- but damned if I was going to give up. So I google stalked the author. I didn't find any direct contact for her, but I did find the web page for a project she'd been involved in with a "contact us" email. I sent my "seeking assistance in obtaining copies of Dr Altihan's book in the US, please" email off into the interwebs and kept pondering options. At some point in all this, a West Kingdom Facebook friend who was also trying to get her hands on a copy and I agreed that whichever of us could successfully connect with someone to buy the book would buy two copies and we'd split the cost.
Then the most extraordinary series of events occurred. The head of the project I had emailed, emailed back saying she was no longer living in Turkey, but would contact the author. I was delighted to get any sort of response. But 2 days later, I had an email in my inbox from a woman in L.A. introducing herself as a long time friend of Dr. Altihan's who had been in Istanbul this past summer and brought 3 copies of the book back with the hope of finding a U.S. distributor. Dr. Altihan had contacted her and asked her to sell me those copies.
We began a pleasant back and forth email correspondence. She is focused primarially on rugs and was kind of fascinated to know that there are people out there that are independently studying Ottoman culture and recreating it. She also gave me an extended list of off the beaten path places to go to in Istanbul, and who to ask for and tell them I was a friend of hers. She also offered to bring a few more copies back on her next trip to Istanbul this summer if there were other folks I knew that would be interested.
The interest on the SCA Ottoman board in the possibility of additional copies becoming available was immediate and excited and I told her that there was definite interest.
And today, the books arrived! It includes finger braiding, not just tablet weaving. And pictures! So many closeups! Including details I had never seen before on extant items that I thought I was familiar with. And patterns for most of the examples she uses. It's so much more of a hands-on, how to than I expected.
And the icing on the cake was that when I turned to the title page, all three copies were signed by Dr. Altihan!
So I am kind of over the moon right now, and off to spend some quality time with my new book!
Obstacle #2 When I finally got an answer back from the University they wanted a wire transfer. Paypal does not send money to Turkey, Western Union will only wire for a cash pickup not into an account and my bank closed all the branches close to me ages ago. FB hive mind to the rescue and I learned about an international personal wire transfer service called TransferWise from someone that has used it repeatedly.
Obstacle #3 The wire transfer info didn't map correctly to the info needed to successfully complete a wire transfer and I got no response back when I asked for additional transfer info.
At this point, I was frustrated as ---- but damned if I was going to give up. So I google stalked the author. I didn't find any direct contact for her, but I did find the web page for a project she'd been involved in with a "contact us" email. I sent my "seeking assistance in obtaining copies of Dr Altihan's book in the US, please" email off into the interwebs and kept pondering options. At some point in all this, a West Kingdom Facebook friend who was also trying to get her hands on a copy and I agreed that whichever of us could successfully connect with someone to buy the book would buy two copies and we'd split the cost.
Then the most extraordinary series of events occurred. The head of the project I had emailed, emailed back saying she was no longer living in Turkey, but would contact the author. I was delighted to get any sort of response. But 2 days later, I had an email in my inbox from a woman in L.A. introducing herself as a long time friend of Dr. Altihan's who had been in Istanbul this past summer and brought 3 copies of the book back with the hope of finding a U.S. distributor. Dr. Altihan had contacted her and asked her to sell me those copies.
We began a pleasant back and forth email correspondence. She is focused primarially on rugs and was kind of fascinated to know that there are people out there that are independently studying Ottoman culture and recreating it. She also gave me an extended list of off the beaten path places to go to in Istanbul, and who to ask for and tell them I was a friend of hers. She also offered to bring a few more copies back on her next trip to Istanbul this summer if there were other folks I knew that would be interested.
The interest on the SCA Ottoman board in the possibility of additional copies becoming available was immediate and excited and I told her that there was definite interest.
And today, the books arrived! It includes finger braiding, not just tablet weaving. And pictures! So many closeups! Including details I had never seen before on extant items that I thought I was familiar with. And patterns for most of the examples she uses. It's so much more of a hands-on, how to than I expected.
And the icing on the cake was that when I turned to the title page, all three copies were signed by Dr. Altihan!
So I am kind of over the moon right now, and off to spend some quality time with my new book!
