In north-western Afghanistan, artisans did something unexpected. They took the graphic codes of the Western Art Deco movement of the 1920s, those refined geometric forms, those clean lines, and rewove them in their own language, with their own wool, their own hands, their own memory. The result belongs to no particular era.
This 298 x 199 cm (9'9" × 6'6") kilim is a striking example. Its large panel of vivid orange crossing the centre like a column of light, flanked by striped bands of green, blue and pink, composes a surface one would not have expected to find in a kilim.
