Zoom Lecture Program: "The Beauty of Boteh: a Textile Journey Across Village and Tribal Rugs" by Hadi Maktabi. Saturday, December 12, 2020 10 a.m. Pacific Time. (Log-in 9:50 a.m. Pacific Time.) Tma/sc (Textile Museum Associates of Southern California.) Free / live from Beirut. Registration Link: https://zoom.us/webinar/register/2016070689406/WN_SqSJMfqdTmyjEr0bYg329w (Please Register first; a Log-in link will be sent to you automatically.) What is the source of the boteh, or paisley, design, and how has it spread throughout the oriental rug world, transforming into both elegant and sophisticated swirling configurations, and more tribal geometric forms?  It can be seen in a large variety of rugs and trappings, from high end urban Kermans to rustic Farahans all the way to nomadic Q’ashqais—and that’s just within Qajar Persia. Hadi Makabi’s program will discuss how this famous motif travelled from Kashmir shawls onto Persian textiles and ended up ubiquitously on rugs in the 19th century, by way of costumes and urban decorative pieces. This high-end association influenced rural and ethnic societies irrepressibly. What is wondrous is that the motif is still relevant today and has a seemingly endless variety of reinterpretation. Born into the 4th generation of the Middle East’s oldest dealership of Oriental & antique carpets, Hadi Maktabi initially specialized in Mathematics at Oxford University before completing his PhD in Islamic Art with a focus on Carpet Studies under the tutelage of the late Jon Thompson. He has been an advisor to a number of museums including the v&a, Louvre, the Carpet Museum of Iran and the Imam Reza Shrine Museum of Mashhad. a regular contributor to Hali Magazine and other academic journals, Hadi taught art history at the American University of Beirut for ten years before founding his own gallery for antique carpets & textiles in Beirut. His main focus is the period of 150 years linking (or separating?) the Safavid Age to the Revival era, which formed the topic of his doctoral thesis and subsequently was developed for his book The Persian Carpet: The Forgotten Years (2019). Registration: https://zoom.us/webinar/register/2016070689406/WN_SqSJMfqdTmyjEr0bYg329w For more information: info@tmasc.org