The Hajji Baba Club is a non-profit organization seeking to promote an exchange of ideas in the rug, carpet and textile world. Textiles of Central Asia, (the Caucasus) Turkey, Iran, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa, Central America, and the regions of Europe who traded with the aforementioned provide much subject matter for our informational seminars. Spanish carpets, Nasrid textiles, Italian t
extiles and obviously the Silk Roads are of great interest to the members of this club, many of whom are scholars and collectors. At our monthly meetings, lectures and discussions are presented and promoted so that we can gain a greater understanding of these carpets, textiles and artworks; the materials, their structure, the dyes, designs origins, and ethnography. Prominent Hajjis often present papers at symposiums and conferences, such as The International Conference on Oriental Carpets, and Volkmanntreffen, The Textile Society of America, work full time at auction houses, consult, and work as docents at museums. We have members who are prominent dealers and own large businesses and others on a smaller scale, while some are artist/collectors. The club itself was founded in about 1932 by Arthur Dilley, an " Antiquarian " collector/dealer, along with Joseph McMullan, Arthur Gale, Tony Lau, Fred Kramer, Parsons Tod, W.Russell Pickering, Ralph Yohe and many other rug scholars and enthusiasts along the way. (Although I feature many of James F. Ballard's carpets, rugs and textiles on this page, unfortunately, he passed away before this club was formed. According to our historians he had much influence on Joseph McMullan, who was younger than he was. These people seriously influenced collecting of carpets for generations to come. We try to keep that alive! A link to the website will provide the enormous history of our club written by Tom Farnham, with amusing anecdotes about our founding members explaining their collecting philosophies, with many fine examples of their well known carpets. Our founding Hajji Babas also donated heavily to the Textile Museum, founded by George Hewitt Myers, as well as forming the foundations of other rug and textile collections of major museums, such as The Metropolitan Museum of Art, where many carpets are on regular rotation gifted from our founders. Some our our current members still donate and exhibit from their collections. More recently, The Marshall and Marilyn R. Wolf Collection exhibited their Turkmen Jewelry in The Kevorkian Gallery, adjacent to the Islamic galleries at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
