Our most recent exhibition, The New Silk Road, ran from December 2005 to January 2006 and featured carpets from Turkey, Nepal and India, and exquisite embroideries from Uzbekistan and the Caucasus.

While visiting Turkey in September 2002, we were introduced to a weaver and producer of exceptional skill, Ibrahim Kose. It was immediately clear from his work that he has rare qualities, an instinctive sense of structure and feel, and a balanced harmony of design and colour. This meeting gave us the opportunity to bring forward ideas that had previously remained out of reach.

We returned to Turkey in January 2003, and with friend (and translator) Abdullah Gundogdu, discussed in detail the designs we had been developing, largely inspired by some of the earliest examples of woven textiles in Pre-Columbian, Inca and Navaho cultures.

In his work Ibrahim is able to bring to the weavings an inherent understanding, perhaps deriving from the equally ancient weaving tradition this region of Anatolia also shares with the Pre-Colombian Americas.

Visiting his workshop again in April we began to see the results of his work. Seeing the pieces assembled here in London we were astonished by the beauty and simplicity of these exceptional examples of woven art.

The textiles which have arisen from this development process are far beyond our expectations. They can perhaps give us some idea of how such pieces might have originally looked, when first made some 2000 years ago.

However these are not historical pieces. They are wonderfully present and powerful images of timeless design.