Carpet Mystery

Anton Felton, M.Phil, F.C.A., C.T.A., was born in 1935 and educated at University College School and University College London. He qualified as a Chartered Accountant and advised many bestselling (and not so bestselling) authors on taxation and copyright, helped to negotiate their contracts, edit their books and archive their records.

His other great passion - in addition to that for his wife, their four children and six grandchildren - is for Jewish carpets. In 1997 he wrote the first book ever on Jewish Carpets, seeing them as neglected but significant cultural chronicles and has exhibited and lectured on them widely in Europe and America. His latest book “Jewish Symbols and Secrets - A Fifteenth-century Spanish Carpet” in an original study, uncovers the meanings and messages of the Marranos hidden in a grand carpet and reveals the secret Jewish lives of the nobles who commissioned it and of the artisans who wove it.

Anton and his wife June came to live in Israel in 2010. Since then he finished his last book, is researching for a book with pictures and text of the history and iconography of two hundred different Jewish carpets; is writing a history book for his family placing their forebears into the socio-economic and ideological context of their times to understand who, and why, and where they were. So that through the history of this one family one can see the broad picture of the Jewish experience in Europe over the last two hundred years.

On the social side he is making and enjoying new friends; giving his children and grandchildren a good time on their trips to Israel and exploring the country with them. The rest of his time is spent trying to find a parking slot, shopping, reading – and thinking.