site.btaThe Dutchman Who Has a Vision of a Bulgarian Kilim Museum and Calls Bulgaria “Our Country”

An exhibition of Bulgarian flat-weave carpets, or kilims, is on at the Bulgarian Cultural Institute in Paris under the title Stories in Colour. 350 Years of Bulgarian Kilim Tradition. On display until June 14 are 41 kilims from Chiprovtsi, Pirot and Kotel, all of them made from the 19th to the first half of the 20th century, and all of them owned by a prominent collector: the Dutch-born and Bulgarian-based Jacob van Beelen. The catalogue that goes with the exhibition describes him as “a friend of Bulgaria and owner of the richest private collection of over 900 authentic century-old kilims from various parts of Bulgaria”. Asked by BTA about his motivation to do the exhibition, he said that his kilims are “a feast for the eye” that must be shared with other people.

Jacob van Beelen refers to Bulgaria as “our country”. 

He has a vision about a national kilim museum being established, to take good care of the kilim heritage and educate people about it. 

Following is the full text of the interview in which Jacob van Beelen answered BTA’s questions a week after attending the opening of the Paris exhibition.

Q: Tell us about the exhibition and how the opening went. Do you have any feedback from the organizers?

The exhibition Stories in Colour of Bulgarian kilims from the 19th and the first half of 20th century in Paris was organized by the Bulgarian Cultural Institute, on invitation by the director Desislava Bineva. In total, 41 kilims from Chiprovtsi, Pirot and Kotel are on display until June 14. The opening on April 18 was attended by at least 150-160 people, among them the Bulgarian Ambassador to France, Radka Balabanova-Ruleva, many French people and many Bulgarians who live in France, among the international audience. People even travelled from foreign countries to visit the event. 

The organizers and staff of the Cultural Institute are very happy with the exhibition, as it promotes one of the many good things Bulgaria has to offer and will certainly attract increased interest to our country.  

The catalogue with the same title holds 85 full pages of high-quality images of kilims and 69 images of kilim ornaments, together with an introduction to the kilim tradition of Bulgaria, the differences between the diverse kilim regions and detailed information on the scale of kilim weaving in Bulgaria. 

Q: What was your motivation to do this exhibition?

I am a collector and have gathered over the last 15 years or so over 800 kilims from the 18th century until after 2000. I don’t like to keep them in storage. They have to be seen, to give joy and to inspire viewers. 

After my exhibitions in Veliko Tarnovo, Kotel, Chiprovtsi, Lovech and Zheravna over the last 5 years, I have received very good feedback, many of the kind “I didn’t know that Bulgaria had such a rich kilim tradition…”. 

It is my opinion that Bulgaria deserves a permanent exposition of their kilim tradition, it certainly will attract many visitors from the country and from abroad. 

Kilims, as an exhibit, are not only for specialists or people interested in antique textiles, but also for a broader audience as they are a feast for the eye with their design, colours and ornaments. 

It is my vision that such a National Museum for the Bulgarian Kilim Tradition should also house a study center and regular workshops in dyeing and weaving, to keep that tradition alive. For this, a large building is required. Lucky enough, Bulgaria has plenty of them empty and available, sometimes for decades, and some of them have a very suitable location. 

A detailed plan for such a museum, on which basis discussions with Institutes and interested investors can be held, is available.

Q: Do you remember how your passion for Bulgarian kilims started? How did you build your collection? 

It all started when I bought my first house in Kotel. It was a large wooden house built in 1848 [picture 1 at the end of text, house at the left], and was very well maintained. My house was neighboring the Galata school, where a permanent display of antique Kotel kilims is housed, and only 120 metres away from the weavery of Kotel kilims. What better I could do than cover all the wooden floors of the eight rooms and the corridors with a nice traditional Kotel kilim. 

Kotel in that period was a very poor municipality but with a long kilim weaving tradition, and when the locals understood that I might buy kilims, they offered me many and after a few years, I ended up with several kilim one on top of the other in each of the rooms. 

Around 2010, I added my first two kilims from Chiprovtsi and one from Teteven. Still, I didn’t call myself a collector at that time: I was just decorating my nice house in traditional style.

This changed in 2013 when Timothy and Penelope Hays, a kilim-collecting couple from Washington DC, visited me in Kotel, and asked me to give them a tour of the town. They then asked me for kilims from the Ludogorie and Aytos regions, and I had to admit that I had never heard about them, nor did the local population of Kotel know about them. The local information was that only Kotel, Chiprovtsi and Teteven had a kilim weaving tradition. 

Timothy Hays became my mentor for Bulgarian kilims and after my move from Kotel to Veliko Tarnovo I became a vivid collector for many years. 

During my travels in 2018 through Turkey, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, I was able to add some 30 antique Bulgarian kilims, which were impossible to find any more in Bulgaria. In the years that followed I found some 50 old kilims from all over the world. 

My latest find was an old Chiprovski kilim of the Karakachka type, with a very rare mihrab (niche) design, which I found via a Lebanese antique dealer living in the south of France. The kilim [photo 2 at the end of text] arrived in Paris two days before the opening of my exhibition and is now on display there. 

So, in total I have succeeded in bringing “back home” some 80 Bulgarian kilims.

Q: What do you do to prevent the collection’s deterioration with time?

Maintaining my collection became a major responsibility for me. For three years now, I have rented a large old house close to my house. I use all kinds of measures to protect the kilims from moths and bright sunlight. Frankly speaking, it is not easy, and soon better storage conditions will be needed to preserve this unique collection for future generations.  

For this and other reasons the establishment of a National Kilim Museum with better storage facilities is badly needed.

Q: Can you tell us about the upcoming conference in Istanbul? Is it a get-together of collectors or more of a researchers’ meeting? What do you plan to say there, in a couple of sentences? Does it have any scientific relevance? What may the implications be for Bulgaria and its cultural heritage?

From June 6 to 9 this year, a large International Conference on Oriental Carpets (ICOC) will be held in Istanbul. The previous one was in 2018 in Washington DC. 

After unsuccessful attempts in the past, now for the first time ever a paper on Eastern Balkan Kilim Weaving has been accepted by the Academic Committee of the 15th edition of the conference. 

After the deadline of February 15, 2024, out of 78 proposals the Academic Committee could only accept 27. In my paper I will address four themes: the Bakamski type kilims from Chiprovtsi (the oldest type of documented Bulgarian kilims), Sarköy kilims (under this name old kilims from Chiprovtsi, Pirot and Samokov) are international known and famous among collectors, the kilim and dye tradition of Kotel and Sliven, and Manastir kilims from the Ludogorie/Deliorman region and the Turkish villages north of Aytos. On the market, there is a lot of confusion about these four kilim types, as before the Paris exhibition catalogue, there was no information on the Bulgarian kilim tradition available in a language an international audience would understand. I sincerely hope that my presentation at ICOC XV in Istanbul will contribute to better attribution of Bulgarian kilims and more use of their place of origin (i.e. Chiprovtsi, Pirot, Kotel, Ludogore, Aytos, etc.).

Q: Can we speak of an international community of Bulgarian kilim collectors and/or connoisseurs? Would you mention the most prominent among them? Do you keep in touch with any of these, do you exchange or sell kilims within this community or with people outside it?

Private kilims collectors in Bulgaria are, to my knowledge, fewer than 10, and about all of them focus only on one of the kilim schools. As far as I know, I am the only kilim collector who tries to build a representative collection, covering all regions and places where kilims were woven and through all periods, from the oldest Bakamski types until recent. 

Internationally, the group of collectors, connoisseurs and traders specializing in Bulgarian kilims is relatively small, compared to Persian, Turkey’s and Caucasus carpets and kilims. The greatest collector of old Sarköy (Chiprovtsi, Pirot and Samokov) kilims is a private banker in Istanbul. He visited my first kilim exhibition in 2019 in Veliko Tarnovo and, after I suggested, he went to the kilim festival in Chiprovtsi two years ago. 

The American family I mentioned above, the Hays, also own a fine Sarköy collection and by far the largest collection of Manastir kilims. 

There are collectors in Germany, Austria, USA, Australia, England, Scotland, Serbia, France, Italy and Turkey who have some smaller collections of Bulgarian kilims, often among kilims of other regions. On the Internet and Facebook there are several platforms for discussing kilims, of which one only dedicated to Sarköy kilims, and at international specialized auction houses some Bulgarian kilims have found good interest over the last 20 years.