Fredrik R. Martin, the Missing Man
Thomas Farnham
Thursday, September 28, 2017
The Coffee House Club
For a time Fredrik R. Martin was perhaps the most distinguished historian of Islamic Art in the western world, a consequence in large part of the brilliance of his A History of Oriental Carpets before 1800, a work that is today, even more than a century after it was published, still regarded as one of the pillars in the field of carpet studies. But Martin himself is now largely forgotten, a man whose fall from favor was perhaps as predictable as his ascendance to prominence was unanticipated. How he achieved and then lost esteem will be the theme of the talk.
