Turkish Chamber in Dresden
 

I have visited the Turkish Chamber in Dresden last month. The museum stuff didn't mind people taking mobile phone pictures. It is pretty dark inside, sorry for the quality.

Some more

Even more pictures

"Black Sea" yatagan

Fabulous! Thank you.

Excellent show!

Thank you Tatyana!

I had no idea they had a lot of examples of non-Ottoman weapons!
With their meticulous archiving system, it would be very interesting to know the dates of acquisition of Laz Bicagi, Caucasian kindjals etc. Might it be possible that they appeared much earlier than we suspect?

Or was it just an exhibition of Oriental weapons in general? Was there a catalogue?

Great items!

Thank you Tatyana!

Not only are these rare and gorgeous items, but they appear meticulously cared for, and not hanged and forgotten like some museums.

Thanks for sharing!

The majority of the items was published in the two Turkish Chamber catalogues. The larger of them (in German only) has the full Ottoman core collection with very good descriptions. It features all the items from the main displays. These are Ottoman and Eastern Europe items till 18th century.
There are also two small displays which show later 19th century items. These items are not published, and the content of one of these displays was changed once in the last couple of years.
Alas, there are no more detailed descriptions to the items in museum - the focus is on audio devices given to the one day tourists :-)
The Saxonian electors and kings were adding items to their collection up till the beginning of 20th century, and there are definitely many great later items in the collection which are unshown. For example, I know that alone the quantity of Keris in Dresden is around 10,000 ! No one of them is shown at the moment, and I know from Alan Maisey who has seen them, that their condition is really pitiful, although they are kept in a very modern store... Also many early oriental blades on display show deep pitting and were obviously cleaned from rust chemically...

I have the "big" one, but was unaware of the rest.

What a pity about the "not shown" ones.....

Are private collectors the only owners who oil their treasures?

Probably the main ones who do so regularly and with attention to detail. I'm sure there are some professional conservators with museums who do a great job, but their time must be spread out trying to care for an enormous number of individual pieces, meaning that any one piece probably does not get the full attention it deserves.

Ian

Ian is right. Alan has told me also that at the storing rooms in Dresden where Keris and other ethnographic weapons are kept (there are tens thousands of items!) only ONE restorer is working. And only this person dare to make something with blades - oiling (or waxing?) included! There are a lot of volunteers, mainly students, but they dare not to touch baldes beause they are not qualified to do it, and they can help only with paperwork...

Thank you very much Tatyana for showing these items :-).

The museum exhibitions are often very nice, but mostly the museums keep the visitors away from the reserves, saying that they dont have staff enough - which in most cases is the truth due to budget cuttings.

Many years ago I was in Wienna and saw the National museum. The exhibition was fantastic, newly made, and you could see the weapons from all sides. However, when I saw the reserves I was chocked, seing all the weapons laying there unattended - they did not have the staff to take care of them.

This also goes for libraries where old books, palm blade manuscripts and other valuable things have little chance to 'survive'.

If they in Dresden have one conservator, he should use half his time to train the students how to do the job, so in a relatively short time they would be able to help him - at least with the most common work, so he would have time to do the job he was trained for. Maybe even call for collectors, who knew what it was all about.

Several years ago in Vienna I saw a beautiful Algerian nimcha with a label " tulwar" ( or something like that).
Luckily, the director was there by a crazy chance and I approached him. He was horrified: he never had time to actually inspect the main exhibition. He took me to his office and pulled out old boxes with original documentation. Small cards, faded ink.... That was the extent. He also showed me pics of literally hundreds of Oriental arms and armor for sale from a major Italian collection. The museum had no funds to even think of acquiring one.....


Jens is right: training volunteers to perform simple manual tasks or computerize archives is the only feasible solution. History is being lost under our collective noses.
I hoped Dresden would be an exception, but fat chance....

sad facts
 

gentlemen you must look at it and realise that we are the sole curators of ancient goods for the comming generations! the goverments and museums in the whole world are running out of money,also the interrest of the mainstream-people these days is in fastfood and computer-games .i have seen from india to france even in the usa collections where remarkable items are rotting without a chance of conservation! a further problem is the tigthening of laws on privat owned antiqities because with the new laws you shoud be able to prove where the item has come from and where it was the last 20 years! men in my age have tausends of objekts bougtht legally over many years ,now we stand with our collections in the rain an are more or less criminals! i wish to apologize for being such a pessinist! greetings iskender

Very true, as for owing items with even a small amount of prohibited ivory etc, I am myself am conserned about purchasing items from outside my own country for fear of confiscation, and what happens when you want to sell them somedy? I have noticed more sellers simply labeling an item as "bone" or "horn" rather than take the risk of saying "ivory" or "rhino".