Marla Mallett

The owner of this website business is also an author, textile researcher, lecturer, fiber artist and former university teacher. Here’s a little of her background.

Marla's rug/textile research has focused on Oriental rug and flat weave design evolution. She has presented papers at international ICOC carpet conferences in Vienna, San Francisco, Hamburg, Philadelphia, Milan and Washington, and has conducted focus sessions at ACOR (American Conference on Oriental Rugs) meetings in Santa Monica, San Francisco and Seattle. She has lectured to numerous museum, university and weavers' groups, and has made presentations to rug societies in New York, San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, Washington, Cleveland, Indianapolis and Los Angeles.

Oriental Rug Review and Oriental Carpet and Textile Studies have included Marla's articles and papers. These have ranged from technical discussions, to treatises on design evolution, to an exposé of probable archaeological fraud. In 1998 she published a guidebook on Oriental rug and flat weave construction, Woven Structures, hoping to increase understanding of basic weaving techniques among collectors, curators and dealers. A second edition was published in 2000. Structural questions that have surfaced since that time are addressed in the WOVEN STRUCTURES UPDATE pages of this website.

Marla brings an academic background in fine arts along with practical weaving experience to the field of antique and ethnographic textiles. She attended the University of Iowa, where she received BFA (magna cum laude) and MA degrees in Fine Arts. She taught fiber arts classes at St. Cloud State University in Minnesota, and at the Atlanta University Center Colleges in Georgia.

For over 20 years, she operated a weaving studio, focusing on structural design and producing large commissioned wall hangings for public and private buildings. Her fiber art won numerous awards and was featured in countless city, state, regional and national exhibitions.

Marla has dealt in antique and ethnographic textiles since 1976, at first placing this fiber art through the interior designers and architects who had been commissioning her own weavings. Her clientele gradually extended to private collectors. Over the past 42 years, Marla has traveled extensively in the Middle East to search for outstanding textiles and to study nomadic and village weaving practices. Recently her textile searches have taken her to Southeast Asia. She does restoration work occasionally on pieces sold through the business, as time permits.

This website has been active since March of 1999. It now displays about 400 textiles from the current gallery inventory, and includes numerous informational articles, bibliographies, essays, and an update of the book Woven Structures with contributions from other rug/textile researchers. Thousands of textiles have been sold from the website, with pieces sent to nearly every state in the US and numerous countries around the world. According to ISP statistics, the site now receives about 3000 visitors daily. Approximately one third of these visitors are returning to the site, having bookmarked it—a gratifying statistic. It is gratifying also that over 450 other sites on the web provide links recommending Marla Mallett: Textiles. The textile business has been registered with Dunn and Bradstreet (D&B) since its inception 34 years ago and remains in good standing.

Since 1965, Marla has lived in Atlanta, Georgia. She has one son, David Mallett, who is an archeologist. Her husband, William (Chris) Christopher, is a specialist in rare vinyl recordings.



PUBLICATIONS BY MARLA MALLETT

Woven Structures: A Guide to Oriental Rug and Textile Analysis, Atlanta: Christopher Publications, 1998; second edition, 2000. For further information, click here.

"Tracking the Archetype: Technique-Generated Designs and Their Mutant Offspring," Oriental Rug Review, Vol. 14, No. 2 (Dec./Jan. 1994), pp.10-25. A revised version of this is posted here.

"Structural Clues to Antiquity in Kilim Design," Oriental Carpet and Textile Studies, IV, Ed., M. Eiland, R. Pinner and W. Denny, 1993, San Francisco, pp. 113-124.

"The Goddess From Anatolia: An Updated View of the Çatal Hüyük Controversy," Oriental Rug Review, Vol. XIII, No. 2 (Dec. 1992/Jan. 1993), pp. 24-31. Posted here.

"A Weaver's View of the Çatal Hüyük Controversy," Oriental Rug Review, Vol. X, No. 6 (Aug./Sept. 1990), pp. 32-43. (Also reprinted in Vol. XIII, No. 2). Posted here.

"The Classification of Anatolian Brocades," Oriental Rug Reveiw, Vol. XII, No. 1 (Oct./Nov. 1991), pp. 16-26

"The Terminology Tangle: Another View," Oriental Rug Review, Vol. V, No. 10, pp. 7-9. Posted here.