Tickets: $20 General Admission | $15 Alberta Craft Members

Alberta Craft Council and the Nickle Galleries present a curated tour of: Earth and Sky: Carpet Cultures of Asia

Part One: Earth and Sky: Carpet Cultures of Asia examines hand-woven textiles—particularly carpets—from across Asia, foregrounding the perspectives of weavers, their families and communities. It explores how ‘carpet cultures’ are shaped by shared experiences of weaving, carpet use, trade, and creative imagining. Carpets are revered across Asia but particularly in Iran and the Iranian diaspora. Immigrants frequently mention how carpets evoke some of their earliest memories of home—tactile, acoustic, and emotive memories. Earth and Sky seeks to tease out these subtle, evocative connections, deepening understanding of carpets, their makers, and the cultures that foster them.

Earth and Sky assembles some of the largest and oldest carpets in Nickle Galleries’ collection—many having never been exhibited. Among these are a series of rare 17th and 18th C carpets from the Caucasus and Northwest Persia, several vagireh (rug samplers), a recently conserved two-sided Kurdish carpet from Eastern Anatolia, as well as two reed screens—one from either end of Asia. The exhibition explores carpets and performance, making and knowing, and carpets in everyday life.

Curated by Michele Hardy from the collections of Nickle Galleries.

Part Two (behind the scenes): Woven Bags and Boxes from Nickle Galleries Collections

Nickle Galleries curator Michele Hardy will lead this intimate, behind-the-scenes tour of the textile vault, sharing evocative textiles from the collection.

Weavers across Asia produced large and small carpets for tents, cottages, and occasionally, palaces. They also made smaller items: saddle cloths, tent bands and various bags for their own purposes. In this short introduction to the Nickle’s Carpet and Textile Collection, we will examine some spectacular small pile-woven textiles, consider how they were made and what they were used for.

Michele Hardy is a curator, anthropologist and textile specialist who has worked with the collection for almost two decades. She is the grateful recipient of the Alberta Craft Council’s Tom McFall Honour Award for 2023.

This tour is for ages 12+