FOLK ART : Exhibit Pays Tribute to Endangered Craft

Besides destroying life, war threatens traditional expressions of art, music and architecture. In Bosnia and Afghanistan, the cultural casualties include kilims-- flat-woven rugs originally made for personal use by women of the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia during the latter part of the 19th Century and the first half of the 20th Century.

For four days beginning today, Westsiders have an opportunity to view an exhibition titled “Textiles From Vanishing Cultures,” curated by Valerie Justin, co-founder of a textile gallery in the Pacific Design Center. The show represents more than 20 years of collecting and studying kilims.

“There’s a warmth to these textiles,” Justin said. “It has to do with the spirit of the women who wove them, (women) who knew that what they were doing was also a legacy of one generation to another.”

Justin is co-founder of the Pillowry, a gallery specializing in woven goods including kilims, pillows fashioned from kilims, Oriental rugs, saddle and food bags, shawls and blankets.

A Connecticut native, she came from a middle-class family but, in her words, “broke loose early” after graduating from the University of Connecticut with a degree in political science. She went to New York to become a documentary filmmaker.

But filmmaking soon took a back seat to living the New York life. She married film producer George Justin and settled in. Years later, when she needed a rug for her apartment, she went to an auction house. She had no background or interest in rugs, but there it was--a kilim, not just a rug but a piece of folk art. “I immediately responded to it,” she said.

Weaving is among the oldest of crafts--so old that many cultures attribute its invention to a god or goddess. In Egyptian tombs, excavators have found woven linen from the Badaric era (which lasted until 3400 BC).

The flat-woven rug is technically a tapestry-woven rug originating in the Near East. The weaver uses a loom, sitting in front of her tent or village hut. The finished rug, usually the only furnishing in the home, is placed on the floor or hung across the entrance.

The weavers, mostly Muslim women, live in agricultural societies with conservative traditions. But these cultures are vanishing--particularly in war-torn Bosnia, where many of the world’s kilims are made, and in Afghanistan, where continued conflict has altered tribal life.

As Bosnian women have been forced to leave their villages--subjected to rape and bloody “ethnic cleansing” campaigns--they have left their weaving traditions behind, Justin says.

“It’s inconceivable that they are able to take their looms with them,” she said. “When they relocate to cities, they lose their identities, they have to take the veil and they no longer weave.”

Because the kilim was never a commercial undertaking, it retains its folk integrity and style. Justin, who has written a book about kilims, maintains a traveling exhibition of kilims that recently returned from Oklahoma.

“The exhibit has been traveling for four years, and now I’m going to add other tribal pieces from other semi-nomadic cultures and hope that it will find a permanent home and be used for study purposes,” Justin said. “In this cold technological world--even though kilims don’t connect to a family’s traditions in Oklahoma, for instance--people do connect to tradition.”

Justin wants to expose more people to these textiles, which she considers reminders of vanishing cultures. “There are breaks in tradition,” she said. “But by preserving these pieces, at least the world will remember what was once part of its continuity.”

The kilims will be displayed at the Ken Hansen Showroom, No. 770 in the Pacific Design Center’s green building, 8687 Melrose Ave., today, Friday and Sept. 6 and 7. Hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Information: (310) 289 9400. The exhibit is free.