A Tribute to Robert Chenciner (1945-2021)

Samantha Knights QC pays tribute to Robert Chenciner, scholar of Caucasian art, tradition and craft, author of numerous books on ethnography, and dear friend.

Credit: Jessica Williams; Chenciner ebullient and celebrating at a friend's wedding, London, 2016.

Robert Chenciner, who has died aged 76, was one of the leading scholars and writers on the ethnography and material cultures of the Caucasus. He was a Senior Associate Member of St Antony’s College Oxford since 1987 and an Honorary Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Dagestan Scientific Centre, since 1990, and a longstanding friend of Pushkin House where he curated a unique exhibition of village art in 2009.

He was an avid traveller in these regions. He studied and visited Dagestan, Chechnya, North Ossetia, Azerbiajan, Georgia and Russia since 1983. He wrote monographs, articles, and lectured widely, including at Pushkin House, on the region. He authored and co-authored over 12 books including Dagestan: Traditional and Survival (1997), Madder Red: A History of Luxury and Trade (2011), Kaitag: Daghestani Silk Embroidery (2007), and Tattooed Mountain Women and Spoonboxes of Dagestan (2006). He finished the manuscript of a further book on Dagestan in the last months of his life which will be published posthumously.

But perhaps his most extraordinary book and one that gives untrammelled insight into his world was Dragons, Padlocks and Tamerlane’s Balls: A Material Cultural Memoir of Textiles, Art, Metals and Myths (2013). As entertaining and quirky as it is informative the book is an illustrated visual memoir covering his wide-ranging career: from his work aged 18 on Swedish padlock keyhole covers, rugs from the Caucasus and Central Asia, and his pioneering work on the vanishing art of women’s tattoos in Dagestan.

On a trip to Azerbaijan in 2003, notionally as election monitors for the OSCE, he introduced me to his lifelong friend, a tribal head chief, linguist and fellow anthropologist from Dagestan – Magomedkhan Magomedkhanov or Khan as he was known. Over many cups of tea, hours waiting for elections to take place, and much red wine, the two of them told tales of life in the Soviet Union and beyond. Various others came to pay their respects to him on the trip including the directors of the Museum of Baku who came with wooden spoon boxes and the multiple documents needed to bring folk art out of the country. The elections were merely the back drop to a trip with far greater focus for Chenciner. A few years later the Baku wooden spoon boxes formed an important part of the Pushkin House exhibition he curated - Carved and Coloured Village Art from Tsarist Lands - in 2009 with John Cornall. The exhibition was as polymathic as its main curator: multidimensional, filled with a personal collection of rugs, burkhas, ‘prialkye’, spoon boxes and many other objects of the Caucasus – the likes of which rarely come to light. And it had a personal narrative – the story woven of Chenciner’s life and journeys in the region. Friends and strangers travelled from far and wide to see the collection.

Credit: Marian Chenciner; Chenciner with his daughter Louisa, at the exhibit of his Kaitag collection, Institut du Monde Arabe Paris, 1994.

It was around this time that Tattooed Mountain Women and Spoonboxes of Daghestan was published - one of Chenciner’s books co-authored with Khan. It was nominated for the much sought after Bookseller/Diagram prize of oddest book title of 2006 (which in my view it should have won). Chenciner’s interests, intellect and curiosity for the little known and little explored knew no bounds. He was the first person to have written a monograph on Dagestan in the English language, one of a handful of Westerners who regularly travelled there safely under the protective ‘krish’ of Khan. The launch was more a mini-exhibition and pageant than book launch – Chenciner had arranged a display of his collection of spoonboxes, original photographs and artefacts alongside the launch in the open air theatre of Regent’s Park. There were Caucasian burkhas on display – giant dark swathes of felt which might double up as a tent for the night for those who came from afar.

By the time I knew him, Chenciner had embarked upon another very important line of work writing expert reports for refugee and immigration cases from Russia, former Soviet States, Mongolia, and Albania. This became a serious and life-long commitment, and one which he continued until weeks before his death. He cared deeply about each case, and the plight of refugees and their struggle to gain status. He once opened the door to me announcing that he had written 53 Albanian blood feud cases. It was true. His was utterly prolific in his composition of expert reports (by the time of his death they numbered over 1000); no mean feat given the demands of court litigation which often involved answering additional questions, and redrafting at the eleventh hour.

If you ever dropped in to Chenciner’s home Lloyd Square, you would be invited into the kitchen and plied with all sorts of treats – delicious coffee, wonderful flat Turkish breads, local cheeses, honey from Armenia, and a glass of whatever was open. And then the conversation began and might end up high up a mountain in the Altai or in the foothills of Elbruz. Evenings spent with him, his beloved wife and daughters Marian, Louisa and Bella were the best sort – foods of all kinds, spontaneous conversations, and filled with laughter.