STUDY DAY 2012 | DECEPTION | FAKES, PREMATURE AGING, REPRODUCTIONS AND REATTRIBUTIONS: when is an oriental carpet the ‘real’ thing? with Susan Scollay

A surprising number of the world’s leading museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, have collections of oriental carpets that include fakes. Many of these originated in the workshops of the Romanian master of ‘carpet forgery,’ Theodor Tuduc (1888 – 1983). This talk examines Tuduc’s legacy in the world of museum-based carpet collections and will also consider the associated process and ‘problem’ of reattribution.

Susan Scollay is an independent art historian and curator specialising in Islamic art and culture. She is a contributing editor to HALI, the prestigious, London-based journal of carpet, textile and Islamic art. Scollay was guest curator of Fluid Borders: Ways of Seeing Oriental Rugs held at The Johnston Collection in 2010. Her recent curated exhibition, Love and Devotion: From Persia and Beyond closes at the State Library of Victoria in July and will be shown again at the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, December 2012 to April 2013.

This lecture is presented as part of STUDY DAY 2012 | THE DELICATE ART OF DECEPTION | revealing fakes and forgeries held on Saturday 13 October 2012, 10.00am – 4.30pm

rug, Belgium, circa 1970’s, The Johnston Collection (A0026-1989)