'Ottoman Turkish Carpet Collection', Applied Arts Museum, Until 10 March

The Budapest Museum of Applied Arts possesses the world's second-largest collection of Ottoman Turkish carpets, but this valuable collection is hardly ever on display. 

The recently deceased curator of the museum, Ferenc Batári had long been planning to pot the collection on a permanent exhibition. At presents, collectors and visitors researchers from Hungary and abroad can see a representative exhibition showing 44 pieces, which can be seen for 2 months. 

In the 16th and 17th centuries several valuable eastern products, decorative horse furniture, expensive textiles, arms and carpets were brought to Transylvania and the Kingdom of Hungary. The carpets were regular features of the home decorations of Hungarian nobliliary manor-houses in the era of the Turkish occupation of Hungary; they were not placed on floors but on tables and walls, under the feet of the bride and groom at weddings, over the bier at funerals, as well as put on church benches, but wonderful carpets covered the insides of celebration and army tents too. 

The princes of Transylvania Gábor Bethlen and György Rákóczi I. had the chance to buy or have custom made carpets in Istambul. The popularity of these early carpets continued in the 16th and 17th centuries and several different types of Turkish carpets were popular in Hungary for a long time."

Source: budapestinfo.hu