"Desert Rose" the occasional newsletter
Contents. Past Issues also
archived below.
Click the link and scroll back up to return. 
- Timelessness - A Pictorial Journey
- Surreal - The Centuries Meet - also - How long to make a Carpet?
- ICOC Istanbul 2007 A Dyer's Tour - A Report
- The Oriental Rug - A Brief History
- Sofre - The Persian Ritual and a Personal Dinner Party
- Oriental Rugs Mathematics, Meaning and Mystique
- Some Weeks are Like That This is funny!
- The Attitude of Altitude Freedom and Fundamentalism
- Islamic Timeline Incredibly rich history
- Palestinian Costumes
- The Spirit of Truth - Belouch
- Designs and Motifs - Mir & Mushka
- Interior Design - Hanging Clues
- How to Tell a Good Rug
- Synasthesia-A Design Genesis?
- Waqf in Central Asia
- Is it a carpet or a rug?
- News 2000 (Aussies
in NY, Buy sell Online,
Archeological destruction,
ICOC
- The silk road - a mystery solved
- India - the textile tourist
- The caucasus -background to the news
- Child slavery
- The silk road - chinese premier repeats history
- Micro vision for textile analysis
- Media fodder with rugs - careful, it's pure kitsch.
- National Textile Museum of Australia it's over for the time being
- Capital gains tax
- Rug care recipes
- Abrash
- Carpet Dyes -the Tale (a sort of feminist view of imported dyes)
- Pure Cognition - seeing with the heart.
- An Illustrated History of Quilts
- How to wash an Oriental Carpet
- News in 1999 Auction Price Record, Carbon Dating, Archeology in Sinjung
Surreal - The Making of a Contemporary Persian Carpet - How long does it take?
I watch a scene completely
surreal in appearance, but firmly
rooted in practical science. Bejewelled, unveiled and kohl-eyed
tribeswomen
chatter in surroundings as modern as tomorrow: Men with white coats and
hairnets move about behind the glass, checking temperature gauges on
metre-diameter stainless steel vats. The haughty women exude a brash
confidence, mistresses of their universe, relaxed and cavalier in their
approach: The men by comparison look like overworked tea ladies.These large rooms, each with a
dozen or so vats deliver a
quality of dyed wool for which the region has been famous since other
locals
dyed the colours in the famous Pazyryk Carpet 2400 years ago. The women
deliver
their undyed spun wools and collect their previous deliveries
custom-coloured
to their specifications. They will use this wool, in beautiful
naturally dyed
shades, in their homes, weaving, they believe, the lives of their
families into
existence. In modern economic parlance they are sheep graziers
value-adding to
their primary production. Their work is not travail, it is kismet,
destiny, and
is destined for far away Australia via my own established carpet
business. I
feel a deep sense of belonging as I continue to play my part in these
age-old
traditions. Certainly these people afford me that love and respect. I
am the
merchant and the Prophet was a merchant. The French colossus Henri
Matisse came
from a family of weavers and I feel deeply honoured to be in such
company.
Southern
Iran, the Province
of Fars, has been a
centre of Persian culture
for millennia. From
the splendours of Persepolis
through the
poetry of Hafez and
Saadi, the Bahai faith
and the common law
of the Zand
rulers, it is no surprise
the provincial capital
of Shiraz is at the
very
centre of the Modern
Carpet Trade. My visits
to Iran in recent years
have
allowed me to see another
great flowering of
traditional culture
underway. Back
in the 1970’s and 80’s I thought the traditions were ending and we were
at a
final crossroads. The forced settlement of the tribes, a deeply
unpopular and
ultimately unsuccessful policy of successive Shahs, coupled with the
need to
compete internationally with cheap copies made in India and China
resulted in a
loss of respect for the true carpet. I never bought them. There are
still
warehouse jobbers attempting to cut their losses and rid themselves of
that
tat. Just look at the “closing down” sales and “ liquidation auctions”
in
western countries and
you will see them
all!
These
days we Australians and Europeans know enough about
hand-knotted carpets that we are prepared to pay for recognisable
quality. The
general public is quite au fait, and no longer chauvinistic. The
Mysterious
East is no longer mysterious; real people live there and their lives
are as
fascinating as people anywhere. Young tribal women and men can now
actively
consider a future in their own traditions rather than joining the urban
factory
poor. Like our original Australians, whose aesthetic abilities and
determination
to tell their tales has resulted in artworks that command the highest
international respect, the tribes of Persia are similarly telling their
tales.
The primary difference in this comparison is that the carpet is a
family
affair, no one signature can be put to a carpet. It cannot be signed by
one
person, only the family or clan name can be the signature. Why?
The
sons who herd the sheep and help with selective
breeding, and their fathers who know when to move to new pastures on
the
migration routes, when to shear, and how to separate the fleece into
its
different uses are the ancient fundamental beginning. Then there are
the jobs
of washing and carding the fleece, spinning the fibres and plying the
yarn,
done by all the family, and the girls who collect the dye plants, the
grandmothers who teach the weaving traditions, the loom makers and
their sons
who warp the loom, all are a necessary and equal part of the final
artwork: the
carpet. The actual weavers, mostly sisters, who squat together, happily
chatting and knotting the same carpet, are just one of many stages in
the
process. Finally there are the all-important finishing jobs, the carpet
washers, stretchers, and repairers-of-mistakes. This is truly a family
affair.
The dyeing and sometimes the loom making are the only jobs done outside
the
family. No money changes hands, nobody is paid, and all have equal
gain.
Traditional leaders, akin to English Dukes and Earls, wear the same
clothes and
eat with their families and share the tasks.
A
Dyer’s Tour -
The International
Conference on Oriental
Carpets - Istanbul
2007
Go to Photo
Essay
A short flight out of Istanbul found us braving a series of bracing frosty mornings in the villages of mountainous western Anatolia. A picturesque setting worthy of a travel brochure with whitewashed buildings and sinuous cobblestone alleyways. Vegetable dye guru Harald Boehmer was taking a knot of keen international ruggies through his beloved traditional weaving area. We saw the plump and hard working village women in action lighting fires and boiling dyestuffs in great cauldrons while the men smoked and looked on: Madder for reds and purples, camomile for yellows and indigo for blues and so on.
A quiet revolution is succeeds as age-old traditions reassert themselves. Younger women can now choose to remain in their ancestral villages rather than joining the urban poor in the cities. The international oriental carpet buyer is becoming more discerning, demanding natural dyes and genuine traditional weaving. This means the traditions established thousands of years ago continue to develop.
After years of exhaustive research Bruggerman and Boehmer published their findings on the dyes in antique carpets in 1980 and went to work right away with Josephine Powell and others, reinforcing natural dyestuff methods in traditional villages. Most of these villages had slowly embraced a range of chrome and acid dyes peddled by European fertilizer firms, in the process losing their famous individually hued palette. But now no longer uncomfortably straddling the first and third worlds, these villagers are now self sufficient and quite well off, with a pride and cultural self-confidence that sets them apart from the tourist meccas of the nearby Mediterranean coast.
Harald Boehmer recently published the indispensable “KOEKBOYA - Natural Dyes and Textiles. A colour journey from Turkey to India and beyond.”
Back in “The City” as Istanbul is often referred to we knew that Josephine Powell had died before the ICOC and so made a beeline for the exhibition of her exemplary collection of naturally dyed flat-woven rugs called Kelims. It was especially heartfelt and warmly welcomed by attendant ruggies. The most stunning exhibition in Istanbul, however, was one of the most important collections of the carpets in the world, the Seljuk and early Ottoman Carpets in the state museums. Also very popular was the Yastiks - the jewel-like bolsters of traditional village households.
A visit to the Topkapi Palace of the Sultans left us wondering, “why?” “With so much wealth and this is all you could do?” Like the story of the Texan boasting to the Afghan, “we have the biggest, the best etc. etc.” The Afghani replied, “yes but what have you done with it?” Now the Afghans are making some of the best carpets of the last 100 years with the knowledge of natural dyestuffs first disseminated by Harald Boehmer. There are now sophisticated natural dye-works in Shiraz, southern Iran where the tribal women can take their hand spun lambs wool and for a small barter get their choice of colours, naturally dyed. It certainly beats going to the alchemist, a shark who could give you any mix of cancerous substances and wool destroying stearates, all ready to fade and run as soon as you breathe on them.
Back to the International Dealers Fair to dodge European Armani suited, black stockinged salespeople, over-aggrandising quite respectable carpets that for the most part are perfectly capable of speaking for themselves. When the carpet is good the sales pitch is redundant. Both the “cold stare down the nose” and the “wall of words” were too noisy for us and belonged with the garish synthetic dyes endemic to the Grand Bazaar.
One thing everyone agreed upon was the Turks really know how to eat and the mantra “fresh is best” sees a wonderful regard for the natural flavours of foodstuffs. One wonders at the synchronicity, the simpatico with the desire for natural colours by these wonderful people.
Thanks Istanbul, thanks villagers, thanks Harald Boehmer, thanks Turkey!
The Oriental Rug - A Brief History
Off - loom
textiles such as felt, knitting, and macramé preceded the loom. By the
middle of the first millennium BC, Central Asian nomadic tribes had
developed and refined the art of spinning, dyeing, and weaving to an
extent unsurpassed to this day.
- 7th – 10th Century AD - Advent of Islam
The nomadic and peasant tribal cultures, which dominated life from the Mediterranean to China, had no written history and few permanent buildings. Islam facilitated urban expansion; women as the newly exclusive housekeepers and home-weavers became the de facto custodians of tribal lore expressed via the designs they wove.
The Renaissance was matched by a concomitant flowering in Central and Near Asia with a new emphasis on powerful and wealthy sedentary city-states and kingdoms: The Ottomans in Turkey and the Safavids in Iran, the Central Asian dynasties in Herat and Samarkand, and their cousins in India, the Moghuls. This is the period of the advent of the realistic floral rug. Cartoons, or graph paper blueprints, began to be dawn first, moving creative intent from the weaver to the designer. Whole teams of artisans became involved. As with European Renaissance painting, the first fashionable decorative carpets were made in ateliers under the name of a great designer. Traditional home-based weaving continued. The first large-scale rug exports to a broader Europe are reflected in paintings of the period.
Circa 1720’s –
Destruction of Urban
Weaves
20th Century - Decline in Quality - Increase in Quantity
Oriental Carpets reflect the momentous changes of the last 100 years. The discovery of synthetic dyes was a by-product of the research into radium and they spread just as virulently through eastern carpets. Increasingly, the traditional symbiotic relationship of weaver to wool producer and dyer became undermined by a new commercial imperative.
Virtually the whole of Central and Western Asia was carved up to suit European equations. The demand for rugs increased steadily and the only consideration of worth also became a European equation: construction. The noble traditional aesthetics reduced to simple technique, with the number of knots-per-square-inch the new benchmark. The beauty of the antique rug, with its glorious, naturally harmonious colours and spontaneously poetic designs, became a thing of the past. This new world order of anonymous mass production and multinational finance saw looms set up in poor countries outside traditional rug making lands. The reasoning was if the construction was the prime benchmark, then anyone could do it.
By the last
years of the 20th century,
the end of 5000
years of great
domestic weaving
was being confidently
predicted. The
denouement to this
sad tale, is however,
surprisingly wonderful
and hinges on a
newfound self-
discovery and pride
in tradition among
some tribal clans’.
Changes have taken
place in the last
20 years and especially
the last 5 years,
which show that
all is not lost.
The future looks brighter than ever, especially for
the weavers, shepherds, and dyers returning to the traditional
relationships. For instance, the weavers weave at home. They weave in
their own time around the household tasks, having and feeding babies
and being the glue that holds large families together. The weavers are
related by extended family to the sheep growers, the spinners, the loom
makers and the dyers. In this way carpet making takes on a soul and
everyone has a meaningful part to play, in what is essentially a value
added home industry. This is the traditional co-operative way those
glowing antique carpets were made before the deleterious effects of 20th
century modernisation.
This return to hand-spinning
and hand-dyeing wool
shorn from sheep
belonging to weavers’ relatives,
and dyed with plants
growing locally;
that had died out
during the 20th.century;
is now the accepted
benchmark. Antique
and art connoisseurs
reject all other
contemporary carpets,
which supports further
re-generation of
tradition. A by-product
of this demand ensures
the future in the
west of specialist
antique rug dealers
because the very
nature of the trade,
the personal scale,
denies access to
chain store “sales” operators.
Of course, the very
word Asia is synonymous
with cheap copies.
For many years we
antique carpet specialists
pontificated that
unlike other sections
of the antiques trade, “never will we stock new carpets” as
if a new carpet was
a reproduction. But
the stunning quality
and adherence to
tradition has made
us more circumspect.
These new oriental
carpets are not reproductions
or re-creations (there
are those also, like
the lovely, decorative
new Zieglers) but
complete originals.
The future? Comparisons have been made with other tribal people like the Australian Central Desert painters: tribal people finding their voice after a century or more of colonisation and stunning the art world. As the Californian architect Chris Alexander said at an earlier stage of this revival, it is, “a foreshadowing of 21st century art”.
Soffre - A Persian Ritual – A Personal Dinner Party
A record price, $14,000, recently paid for a small rug, just a metre square, highlights the discovery by a wider audience of a formerly arcane Oriental Rug called a Sofre. The Sofre is a special event rug with the same name as the dining ritual – SOFREH, pronounced soff-reh, with emphasis on the aspirated “h”. Persian cuisine is totally intertwined with Persian culture and is inseparable from Persian Carpets. Iranian families gather around the Sofreh for dinner, which is spread on the floor, usually over a larger Persian carpet or kilim. Although many modern city folk now use chairs and tables in the western manner, the Sofreh is still the cornerstone of Persian culture and a place of gathering, laughter, and relaxation.
Importantly, the dishes remain constant, rich or poor, city or country, and reflect the naturally egalitarian nature at the heart of Persian society. The Sofre have distinguishing tribal and geographic characteristics, just like traditional rugs. They are mostly some type of flat-weave but with interesting variations not found in more prosaic rugs. A single Sofreh may contain wool, cotton and camel, goat and horsehair all worked in a variety of techniques; Knotted pile, Soumak, Kelim and brocade techniques all in the same Sofreh!
Like the Sofreh, Persian cuisine is individual and very distinct. It is a cuisine filled with strong tastes and wonderful aromas and ranges in taste from sweet, to very sour, or spicy. It is not Middle Eastern. Many Persian recipes are unique in ingredients and ways of preparation. Many Iranian dishes consist of rice and stews with different sorts of meats and vegetables. Iranians spend a lot of time in the kitchen but the cuisine offers simple to very elaborate dishes.
On a recent trip to Iran I was lucky enough to encounter my favourite dish cavorting naked on mine host’s table; a type of badamjan, whole aubergines (eggplants) baked very slowly with whole dried lemons and haricot beans in a simple reduced tomato/onion/garlic sauce. The chocolate-coloured lemons had paper-thin skin and were just starting to crack and release their delicious sour brown goo as the badamjan was dished onto the plate. The usually inedible hard and prickly stems were just under-firm and also delicious. This triumph of the slow Persian oven was served with a glass of dugh, salted, fermented whey, left-over from the making of the fresh white breakfast cheese we devoured earlier in the day. A good dugh is lumpy, slightly off, and even worse, bubbly. Definitely an acquired taste but once acquired always sought-after.
Mine host was Ali, a scion of an old noble trading family, and whose father I first did business with in the 1970’s. Being a traditional “old-money” family his wife and his sister did not join us for dinner. Giggling, they laid the dishes on the table before we moved to be seated, disappearing into the kitchen to covertly listen to our conversation. Around the dinner table a slew of Danish, Italian, and Australian carpet dealers, men and women, avidly shared our great love of Tapetology. Ali was typically educated Persian; easy yet sophisticated, comfortable in a multi-lingual setting but kindly professing to prefer just English. The women listening in the kitchen were typically at home with the patois of foreign languages spoken colloquially, being all round better educated than the men; one of the unusual by-products of years of strict Ayatollah education. That is, more than half of Tertiary graduates are women but their job uptake is far less than their brothers leaving an over-supply of over-qualified women teachers in girls’ schools. Girls simply get a better education than boys in The Islamic Republic of Iran.
The Iranian Sofreh offers some extra staple ingredients that stay on the table during the course of the meal. These small dishes refresh the palate between courses and include sliced cucumbers, peeled steamed sugar beets in winter, various dips, Persian pickles and relishes, and of course yoghurt, alone or with other ingredients such as spinach. The meal starts and ends with fresh fruit such as seedless grapes, small fragrant stone fruit and the ubiquitous sweet melon slices. I was actually told once, in all seriousness, that the reason why Iran was the best country in the world was because there is a year-round supply of melons due to the climatic variations.
Most Sofrehs are usually a metre square or have the rectangular dimensions of a small rug. This is perfect for the nuclear family but one finds long narrow Sofre among various nomadic tribes to suit the enlarged families of the nomadic tribal culture. Brothers remain “at home” so when they marry (often more than once) and have children the family they require ever larger Sofre. Some Baluch Sofre are 3 by 1.5 metres. The Sofre of the great Khans of the Shahsevan and Bakhtiari were rightly sumptuous and glorious. These royal Sofre may have been brocaded in gold on silk but they were generic and not as distinctive as the woollen tribal types. There are Baluchi Sofrehs, Afghan, Shahsevan, Afshar, Lori, Qashgai and Kurdish Sofrehs, special wedding Sofre etc.
Even the most modern Persian still finds comfort in the tradition of Sofre, as old as Persian history, bringing friends and rivals closer for millennia.
Oriental Rugs - Mathematics Meaning and Mystique
Many of us have spent a lifetime trying to fathom and analyse the utterly beguiling business of simply looking at Oriental Carpets. So much of our emotional lives match the colour-fields that are rugs, fleeting, and ungraspable. Great artists like Cezanne, Mondrian, Klee and Matisse all accepted Islamic art as a teacher to help them translate the infinite variables of visual experience into a two dimensional structure without murdering the magical and we still have beautiful intriguing rugs teaching us. To many Western eyes much of Islamic Art seems obsessed by an almost scientific method of visual analysis. If those repeating-patterned rugs have such an apparent scientific formal rigour then why do they remain so wonderfully elusive and charged with mystery? Not all is left to the vaporous musings of obsessed tapetologists however as there are some technical, objective and logical pointers. Lets look at just the dimensions of rugs, the simple measurements of length and width and discover this simple dry subject is imbued with cosmic form!
Firstly, you may have
wandered into a rug
shop and suggested
a square or even a
round rug only to be
looked at askance.
As if you
were asking why is sugar
sweet? The pleasing
proportions of The
Golden Rectangle
have dictated rug dimensions
for centuries. The
Golden Rectangle, The
Golden
Mean, or as it is sometimes
called The Golden Ratio,
is not a new concept.
It has an aesthetic
force that has been
recognized for thousands
of years. The
Golden Rectangle is one
where the ratio of
the length of the larger
side to the
smaller side is equal
to that of the sum
of the two sides to
the larger side. If
we assume that the smaller
side has a length of
one, then the formula
for the
length for the larger
side is X = (X + 1)
over X. The only positive
solution for
this equation is about
1.61, or as some quite
nearly put it at “about
one and
two-thirds”, or even more loosely “two is to three”.
A rectangle of this proportion
has generally been considered
to be most pleasing
to the eye, neither too
thin nor too square.
It has been used as the
basic
format for countless
paintings and buildings
in both Western and Islamic
cultures, from the awe-inspiring
classical carpets and
buildings of antiquity
to the works of Rembrandt
and modern advertising.
Why do most traditional
rugs
follow these proportions?
For instance; 100x60cms
or 200x125cms or 3x2m
etc. The
answer is The Golden
Mean.
Now secondly if we look at the
mathematical series
discovered in the 16th Century Universities of
Herat and Samarkand
and brought to the west by the Italian Fibonacci we see a relationship
with rug
sizes reflecting the Golden Mean.
The
Fibonacci series is made
by adding the two previous
numbers to get the next;
ie. 1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34,55
and so on. In fact any
two adjacent numbers
in this series
will read like the inventory
in The Rug Shop. 2x3,
3x5, 8x5, 13x8 and the
near 6x4, 9x6, 12x9 and
so on. Just choose your
system of measurement,
centimetres
feet and so on, to fit.
The Fibonacci Series
is a formula used to
create a spiral and
that is what the mathematicians
in Central Asia were
indeed doing, attempting
to define the nature
of Allah by investigating
the natural world.
They came up with the
Series by measuring
the spirals in nature
such as the
arrangement of seeds
on the face of the
sunflower.
Now
for the non-scientific. The majority of traditional
weavers and designers
of Oriental Carpets
and Rugs
will all have some idea
of the possibility
of an extra force exerted
by the rug
and will compose towards
that end: The rug as
a metaphysical tool.
Whether she
is an illiterate tribeswoman
in a remote black tent
or an educated master
designer employed by
the Sultan the metaphor
remains. This is expressed
in
English by terms like
power centre, whirlpool,
vortex, etc, meaning
a sort of
axis between the netherworld
and the enlightened
sky around which all
revolves
and a certain “life-force” or “regenerative entropy” fluctuates. The
dance of Shiva, the Shaman’s
dance, the whirling of
the Dervishes, these
ideas are as old as The
Golden Rectangle and
should be seen to be
inseparable with the
movement of the seasons,
human reproduction, and
night and day in the
mind of the rug weaver.
”There is increasing evidence
from neuroscience,”
Oliver Sachs wrote recently, “for the extraordinarily rich
interconnectedness
and interactions of the sensory areas of the brain, and the difficulty,
therefore, of saying that anything is purely visual or purely auditory
or purely
anything.” Sachs describes “ the enormous act of analysis and
synthesis, the
dozens of subsystems involved in the subjectively simple act of
seeing.” He
writes “at the level of the imagination there is a continual struggle
for
concepts and form and meaning. At this level one can no longer say of
one’s
mental landscapes what
is visual, what is auditory,
what is image, what is
language, what is intellectual,
what is emotional, they
are all fused together.”
More on this is in an earlier article in these pages entitled Synasthesia archived on the web.
In fact The Golden Mean, The Fibonacci Series, and the simple dimensions of an apparently coarse tribal rug are inseperable, and part of a long, arcane and magic continuum, about which we have a lot to learn and from which we have much to learn.
Some Weeks Are Like That - A Provincial Tale
The week did not start out well. A long drive to a so-called stately home in the country gave me plenty of time to ponder the possibilities. The Livingstone Family estate sale at Megaw & Hogg. The big house in Adelaide with a collection of William Morris designed carpets made at Killybegs in County Donegal a century ago. Was there also an Alexander Morton as well as some Voysey large drapes? Then just down the road an elderly lady had covered the guest beds in Central Asian Suzani (large scale embroideries). To obtain the former one should run the gauntlet of the English Trade and the latter requires drilling the Arasta Bazaar in the Sultanahmet quarter of Istanbul.
Back
down the hall: was that an early, Circa 1830 Cedar Clothes Press? And
into the
bedrooms each with what must be one of the worst types of rug ever
made: a
colourless dry wool Turkish Kazak clipped to ape the corroded blacks of
true
antiques. By this time I was beginning to question my own sanity and
tiredness
drove me out of the house and back into the storm.
The
tape loop of a bad experience playing in my head: The answer to the
question
“was the house furnished when you moved in?” was
“Those old carpets were so dusty and worn and we didn’t
really like
them and those heavy drapes and old fashioned furnishings - we threw
the lot
out. Some went to the local second hand dealer”.
Twenty-five years ago! Just another little Baghdad
Museum moment,
another little Buddhas of Bamiyan, lowering the
aggregate stock of the
planet.
Back
home the following day and a call from Charles in Caboulture. Some
Persian,
Turkish and Afghan rugs. Age? “Oh yes quite old I bought them from
so-and-so.” Who wouldn’t know an antique rug if he fell over it. The
clincher was the reason for the fire sale of these 12 rugs: he is going
sailing.
If ever there was a group of modern day Philistines. Poor quality
generalisations and only two days into the week. Things weren’t getting
any
better.
Next
day a prospective customer asks for a plain green rug. And the size?
Square. Of
course. Negativity is becoming second nature. Oriental Carpets are
rarely green,
rarely square and never plain and certainly never all three unless they
are
especially made that way to the occidental taste. So I apologetically
explain
this and am told curtly “well they should be!”.
Finally
towards the end of
the week a customer
who is not at all
knowledgeable wants
to buy the two Ghoris
that had been languishing
at the back of the
shop. Made by
sub-groups of the Taimani
in Central and West
Afghanistan they
are referred to
by New Yorkers as The
Kazaks of Today with
their spontaneous
friendly elementality
and unusual use of
undyed wool shades.
Strangely, a prominent
member of the UK trade
recently saw them
for the first time
on a visit here and
had never heard of
the type. Frogs and
ponds. The completely
intuitive novice
cuts to the heart by
sheer talent, untainted
and direct. Allahu
Akbar - God is
Great. I am beaming,
overly glad for her
with her two Ghoris
and then her friend
is attracted to the
primitive Djulykhirs
woven like, and called
literally,
“Bearskins”.
The nearest thing to
Mark Rothko outside
The Chapel, powerful
and metaphysically
brooding, the technique
pre-dates actual knotted
pile in the
history of weaving.
So by the end of the week I had sold a few things, gained some new talented customers and rejoiced in restored faith for this wonderful aesthetic world. And the Cedar Clothes Press? Well that’s another story.
The Attitude of Altitude
Two things. First, traditional handmade wool carpets are a function of altitude. Second, the value of most carpets is related to the level of feminine involvement in the weaving process. The first statement may seem self evident as higher, colder altitudes demand the warmth and insulation of wool. A point is reached with rising latitudes where the summer thaw is too short for the warm-fingered time-intensive work required. There is more than meets the eye however with the second statement.
Take a look at the "carpet belt" which stretches across the world from Morocco in the west to China in the east. For instance Morocco has a traditional carpet weaving culture synonymous with the Berber and Arab tribes grazing their flocks in the mountains and high plains. Boys tend the sheep, men prepare the looms, and the women weave. Coastal weaving is of the flat-woven cotton tapestry type carried out in ateliers with flying shuttle looms manned by skilled men. An exception is modern commercial weaving where rugs are hand knotted with an eye on western markets. These are made in similar ateliers regardless of country or tradition. This scenario holds true across the "carpet belt".
The modern countries of Turkey, Iran, and Afghanistan, the core of the "carpet belt", are almost completely plateaux and mountains. The surrounding countries of Syria, Iraq, Kuwait, the Gulf states, India/Pakistan are mostly under 1000 metres and traditionally produce only flatweaves. The cold northern neighbours, Russia and the "Stans" are mostly at lower altitudes and preferred to make less labour intensive felt rugs. India/Pakistan has a royal carpet weaving culture as opposed to an indigenous grass roots one that stemmed from 700 years of ruling mountain Afghan dynasties.
Distinctive also are materials. Cotton requires broad-acre farming which presupposes flat lowland conditions and is so intensive in it's land use it requires land ownership. Cotton fabric is less insulating and cotton weaving is logically a lowland occupation. By contrast sheep pastures are usually elevated and are mostly lands held in common. Wool production and wool weaving are elevated occupations. This appears to be the case generally but many types of traditional mountain village rugs are part cotton in that they have a cotton warp (the longitudinal base threads). The important connection here is commerce.
Pure wool rug making is basically value-adding to a family's flock of sheep. All materials come from the family or are produced by someone in the wider clan. Cotton is a trade commodity that must be bought or traded by the mountain rug making people to use instead of their own wool. This implies a cash component in the making of a rug, adding a subsequent cash or trade value to the finished product. Cotton therefore is often found to equate with commercialisation of the rug making process.
Look at loom technology and find the number of shafts or "sheds" inversely proportional to the geographic elevation of the loom. Traditionally, knotted pile rugs were made at altitude by family units using simple one shaft looms, while lowlanders produced flatweaves and mass produced rugs. The lowlands are the domain of the fine silk brocades, shawls and other fine clothing fabrics.
It is interesting to note that religious fundamentalism seems to be a function of altitude, or lack of it, calling the lowlands and deserts home while the mountains and the high plains are home to a more conservative adherence to traditions with a more liberal outlook. Look at a map of say, the USA and find that topographically, the "Barble Belt" equates with the "green" areas. Do this with maps of relevant parts of Asia for a similar result.
There are connections between the low country, mass production and religious fundamentalism, and the high country, family weaving and liberalism. Mass production involves working men with jobs outside the family whereas family weaving is done by the women of the house.
Social mores also seem to follow this altitude-specific way of life. Travelling from the shores of the Mediterranean Sea to the Mountains of Kurdistan or Karabagh one sees more women and fewer veils. Similarly from the Persian Gulf to the mountains of Iran and Afghanistan one sees increasing liberalism, even Sufism, and personal eccentricity and creativeness coming to the fore.
Traditional knotted pile weaving flourished in the freedom of liberal but conservative communities driven by family, community and a complex and nourishing mysticism. Family designs, clan motifs, and talismans are all part of a rich vocabulary that evolved over long periods. Like musical harmonies these designs form colourfields in an endless interplay where rug weaving becomes a form of prayer, of connection with the universal, a humble submission to the will of God, the definition of Islam. It is this that gives the Oriental Carpet true value.
Islamic
Timeline
- 570 Birth of Prophet Muhammad, Makkah
- 610 Muhammad's first
revelation
- 622 Muhammad &
Muslims emigrate to Madinah; Year one of the Muslim Calender
- 630 Muslims return to Makkah
- 632 Death of Muhammad.
Beginnings of Shia, the supporters of Ali bin Abi Taleb, Muhammad's
son-in-law, and one of the first Muslims. The Sunni supported Abu Bakr,
Muhammad's close associate.
- 656 Ali becomes caliph
- 661 Ali murdered by the
Syrian Muawiyah. Shia sect developed. Umayyad caliphate established at
Damascus by Sunnis with Muawiyah caliph.
- 680 Ali's son Hossein
killed at Battle of Karbala. Shia formation completed.
- 691 Dome of the Rock,
Jerusalem
- 711 Muslims enter Spain
from Morocco
- 750 Abbasid caliphate
established, Iraq
- 794 State- owned paper
mills established in Baghdad
- 800 Harun al-Rashid embassy
to Charlemagne
- 825 Kwarizmi writes concept
of zero in maths
- 850 Early treatises on the
astrolabe
- 900 Tales of 1001 Nights
- 1010 Firdowsi presents The
Shahnama at Afghan Ghaznavid court, Persia
- 1258 Mongols sack Baghdad
- 1325 Ibn Battuta leaves
Tangier for China
- 1370 Tamerlane rebuilds
Samarkand
- 1429 Ulugh Beg completes
observatory at Samarkand
- 1453 Ottomans take
Constantinople, becomes Istanbul
- 1498 Vasco da Gama and his
Arab navigator set sail from Portugal
- 1502 Persian Safavid
dynasty established with Shia the state religion
- 1526 Mughal dynasty
established in India
- 1722 Afghans defeat
Persians.
- 1732 End of Safavid
dynasty.
- 1747 Afghanistan founded by
Ahmad Shah Durani
- 1869 Suez Canal
- 1922 Ottomans end. Modern
Turkey begins.
- 1932 Saudi Arabia founded
by Abdal Aziz Al Saud
- 1967 Aga Khan foundation
established
- 1970 Hasan Fathy's
"Architecture for the Poor"
- 1978 Islamic Revolution in
Iran, world's first theocracy
- 1979 Abdul Salam Nobel
Prize for Physics
- 1979 Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan
- 1983 Muhammad Yunus founds
Grameen Bank, Bangaladesh
- 1988 Naquid Mafouz Nobel
Prize for Literature
- 1998 Petronas Towers,
world's tallest building, Kuala Lumpur
- 1999 Ahmed H. Zewail Nobel
Prize for Chemistry
O mankind! We created you from a male and a female, and made you into nations and tribes, that ye may know each other, not that ye may despise each other. Verily the most honoured of you in the sight of Allah is here most righteous. The Quran, Chapter 49 Verse 13.
The Silk Road - a mystery solved
Looking at the mostly barren land between china and Persia today it has been difficult for ruggies to understand the logistics of feeding the great caravans that plied the route. Contemporary accounts suggest a speedy back and forth between the great trading oases that would seem impossible today given the bleak nature of much of the countryside.
The existence of mysterious, long (tens of KMs) adobe walls has been known for years and explanations including UFO's and the lost city of Atlantis have been made. With the help of photographs from space, Central Asian researches now state that the walls all share a similar convergence. Coupled with the find of great quantities of bones at the vortices it seems certain that great herds of indigenous ruminants were progressively hunted and trapped to extinction in mass kills. Since the bones of a wide variety of animals have been found researchers now suggest that the extinction were progressive - first the sheep like the argali then the goats like the ibex.
The feasting of a thousand camels loaded with carpets meets an equal number loaded with silk and porcelains and a thousand merchants trading in impromptu bazaars - instant commercial tent towns needed to be fed!
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India - The Textile Tourist
The Calico Museum is famous for it's textile holdings but it's off the beaten track, slap in the middle of a modern bustling Indian city - although Ahmedabad is the starting point to tour India's prime textile state - Gujerat. At Patan to the north is one of only two places in India where the incredible warp and weft Ikat tradition continues. The other is Potchampali, east of Hyderabad in the Deccan.
On the way up to Patan or coming down from Rajasthan is the centre of the juggernaut worship and home to the intricately sewn bead pictures. From Patan to the North West one can visit Barmeer, home of the finest and most restrained embroidery in distinctive red and green. Continue to the camel market at Jaisalmer in Rajasthan. all within a few hours driving of each other - only don't drive yourself.
The West of Gujerat is an intrepid textile hunters dream with bands of nomadic Bheel, and Bangara, moving freely. the maharani of Bhuj museum, at Bhuj in Kutchch has the most sublime embroidered saphs hung all the way round the rooms. from Bhuj it is a short drive to Khavda, home of awsome mixed technique household textiles. Of course Iran and Afghanistan and their varied cultural influences are not far away.
Salar Jang was the Nizam of hydrabad's chief minister and travelled to Europe with a bottomless chequebook befitting the richest man in the world. Fashionable and expensive were his criteria and one can see the fruits his buying trips in the eponymous museum today. Apart from dusty roman marbles the Indian collection is a lot of fun because it was actually used by the court not collected as art. 18th centurty fully embroidered kashmir shawls, metal thread palanquins, rich punjabi jat phulkari ( the word means money), breathtaking kutchch floral embroidery, surat and benares brocades, the most sheer, amazing, really, company period dacca muslins, 200 years of royal chogas......etc, etc.
The prince of Whales museum, Mumbhai, is right in Colaba the tourist hub and a short walk from the Arabian sea. it's textile holdings include patolu sarees, the warp and weft ikat textile that influenced the whole of se Asia, Uzbek Afghan and NW Indian suzanis (they didn't all come from Uzbekistan and the variations are discernable), early kashmir shawls, dacca muslins and some outstanding south indian block printing on cotton from the 14th century....etc.
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The Caucasus - Background to the news.
Grozny; the mainly islamic people of the North Caucasus have been agitating for independance from Russia since annexation in 1840! Ruggies will know of the intense concentration of tribes/nationalities in this tiny area; Chechen, Inguishi, Daghestani, Kumyk, Avar, Noghai, Dargin, Leshgi, Lak Tabaran, Rutul, Agul, Tsakur, Tat, Azeri, Abkhazar, Georgian.
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Child Slavery:
The UN working group on contemporary forms of slavery and the South Asian coalition on child servitude estimate over one million children are employed in carpet factories in India Pakistan Nepal and Bangladesh.
The EEC and the USA have been pressing for action for years and finally something has started to give. In India, looms are now required to be registered with the carpet export promotion council and loom owners have to provide documentation showing the weaver is over 14. A rugmark logo is then awarded.
"Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold
mere anarchy is loosed upon the world
the blood drenched tide is loosed, and
everywhere the ceremony of innonence is drowned
the best lack all conviction while the worst
are full of passionate intensity" ..............Yeats
In Europe public pressure has resulted in cancellations of import contracts totalling more than us$30 million. One doesn't find child slavery carpets with the specialist dealers, rather the discount sale and forced auction end of the market and innocent design stores.
"But haven't children always made rugs in the East?" the simple answer is yes, but there is a huge difference between a child at home sitting with it's mother learning the family design vocabulary and the kidnap and forced labour prevalent in today's world.
Consumer awareness of this barbarism is paramount. Like an algae bloom, child slavery has spread over the past 30 years, feeding on apathy and hard currency. Even previously child free factories have been forced to sack the parents and buy the children to keep costs down and survive the competition.
With old rugs child slavery is not an issue. It is with new rugs that a discount equals a child's hope for life.
The Silk Road - Chinese premier repeats history.
Chinese premier Li Peng, on a visit to central Asia trumpeted a transcontinental rail line from Beijing to Istanbul declaring "We want to build a new silk road". Historically China's rulers have always believed the best way to manage their barbarian neighbours is to corrupt them with the splendours of the middle kingdom's technological wealth. plus ca change.....
Resonant is the Turkish pm"s stated desire, also on a visit to central Asia, to connect the already existing rail lines in the Turkish speaking world (Istanbul to Mongolia).
It is a dream come true for many a ruggie for although the times in which our rugs were made have passed, a comfortable rail tour to the natural and built environments of the time would build the pleasure of "the appreciative passion".
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Microvision for textile analysis
Advances in depth of field now allow magnification of up to 1000 by video camera onto a computer terminal screen and recording on removable media. Users report no loss of clarity and most importantly acceptable colour accuracy. Both the Victoria and Albert and the metropolitan have purchased the system from a Japanese company. The met has 38,000 textiles in its collection and is in the process of putting the lot on database.
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Media fodder with rugs
- The Hollywood practice of making great poofs from old and reproduced kelims finds it's peak in a cat footrest made from a Tibetan tiger rug. the property of Allegra Curtis, daughter of Tony.
- Prince and Princess Michael of Greece reside in Paris but show unusually great sensitivity for denizens of the French capital. Recently published photos show ANTIQUE TURKISH KELIMS and an 18th CENTURY CAUCASIAN BLOSSOM CARPET.
- Karl Lagerfeld says of Elton John "Elton loves everything that is luxury, richness, everything that shines and sparkles". But of old rugs nary a one in sight. another case of appearance versus content.
- Steve Martin, the Hollywood comedian revels in the decorative elements of WILLIAM MORRIS and DONEGAL CARPETS from the arts and crafts period as does the young getty heir.
- Christmas 97 and the Grimaldis attended the traditional Vatican concert. the pope welcomed his guests on an exquisite BIJAR TRICLINIUM CARPET.
- Erstwhile socialite and friend to the English Princess Margaret, Roddy Llewellyn, has in his old Oxfordshire farmhouse a lovely collection of ANTIQUE TURKISH & CAUCASIAN RUGS AND KELIMS. A perfect splash of colour and warmth to the family home.
- US TV's David Hasselhoff of Baywatch fame likes the colourless florality of NAIN CARPETS.
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National Textile Museum of Australia - now closed till further notice!
The strong interest in textiles, from people all over Australia, has highlighted the need for a museum to create a focus for textile related activities nationally. although there are textile collections in many Australian museums, there is no single institution which has textiles as it's focus.
The National Textile Museum of Australia will address this need by building a collection and drawing together textiles, which will be available for study and exhibition.
Exhibitions will show how textiles reflect the artistic, cultural and technological heritage of people from many parts of the world. The development of a program of changing exhibitions has been established.
the museum is located at Urrbrae House, at the Waite Campus of the University of Adelaide, Fullerton Rd, Urrbrae. phone: (08)83036728
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capital gains tax
Legislation brought down this year (1997/98) may include valuable old rugs within the definition "Listed personal use assets". If acquired on or after 20 september 1985 and subsequently sold the resultant capital gain is apparently taxable under this new provision of the tax act.
There is an obligation on the owner to keep records of acquisition, especially the date of purchase. As if that's not enough, the owner must be able to prove acquisitions prior to 20 September 1985!
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Rug care recipes
Accidents do happen and washing your own small rugs and torbas can be fun (seriously!). An excellent product available in Australia is WOOL MIX by Country Homestead (natural eucalyptus) in the tan bottle at the supermarket or brew your own:-
-
Rug wash mixture
6 cups pure soap flakes
1 cup methylated spirits
2 tablespoons eucalyptus oil
Mix and store in a screw top jar with a plastic lid.
Storing your collection? Use camphor or naphthalene and sweeten with this:-
2. Moth repellent herb sachet
1 cup each of dried lavender, rosemary and cloves
Dried peel of 2 lemons
mix, put into cotton bags and store with rugs and textiles.
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ABRASH
Stripes of Abrash in an antique Anatolian Kelim and a fine old Kashan
ON FORTUITY - THE RANDOMNESS OF COLOUR CALLED ABRASH
" I tend to reflect that handmade objects....give off a life force, an indefinable resonance, that mechanically produced objects cannot match" Giles Auty, in The Australian.
And Jon Thomson ..." It was an education for me to witness the amazement and disbelief of an educated Persian carpet dealer, recently arrived from Iran, when he saw the price paid at auction for a kazak, a coarsely woven, crude looking village carpet with a bold pattern and strong colours. ‘They (tribal/village rugs) are so coarse and ugly, how can they pay so much money?’ he was genuinely distressed. For him the ideal of beauty and desirability was a rug with a perfectly ordered, detailed pattern, finely worked in evenly balanced colours without any mistakes."
Abrash in a rare antique coarsely woven Kazak
ABRASH - The Persian word has entered English because there was no existing term to explain the abrupt changes in the intensity of colour often seen in good rugs. It is from the Arabic root meaning silky and is most commonly caused by the weaver using wool from different dye batches or dyed at different times in the vat. Strands dyed towards the end of the process are normally lighter than those dyed at the beginning when the dye has been freshly prepared and is at full strength. This can be an indication of authenticity as it rarely occurs in mass produced rugs, for although they may still be made by hand the very nature of the cost savings of large production runs requires extensive and therefore uniform dyeing.
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Alchemy
was the dyers’ magic prior to our complete knowledge of
chemistry."Today a turquoise from your plain wool, tomorrow pure gold
from your old coppers." Englishman Richard Hakluyt belonged to a
"Middle Temple" and sent a dyer to Persia in 1579AD with the written
instructions..."In
Persia you will find
carpets of coarse
thrummed wool, the
best in the world,
and excellently coloured:
those towns you must
repair to, and you
must use means to
learn all the order
of dyeing those thrums, which are so dyed as neither rain,
wine nor vinegar can stain."
The Mystery
The vast and glorious kaleidoscope of colour found in oriental carpets
came from dyeing traditions now mostly lost, like the nomadic horsemen
themselves, cultural victims of the Industrial Revolution and 20th
century imperatives. The trail of evidence has been picked up in
various areas and disciplines.
The Clues
The published work
of Bruggerman and
Boehmer identifies
dye flora growing
today in Turkey and
then matches constituents
to the colouring
compounds in old
rugs. Exact recipes,
however are more
difficult. Scouring
old Persian texts
has been an interesting
if sometimes puzzling
source, coming up
with descriptions
like this:- "Rose
Colour: Take ratanjot,
a thought of cochineal,
madder or Lac colour
a very little, add
cinnabar and water
and soak for 12 hours.
Add the wool and
steep for 36 hours,
boil for 3 hours,
then bathe in alum
and wash well. Afterwards
dry in the shade."
Extenuating Circumstances
Like the colour of
wine, regional variations
occur even within
the same recipes.
But each village
area and especially
each tribe had their
own palette. This
greatly assists tapetologists
detect the origins
of particular carpets
but does not help
to find and reproduce
particular dye recipes.
Compounding this
was the secrecy that
protected the dyers
guild. Weird and
wonderful ingredients
and transmutation
processes were included
to obscure the important
steps and preserve
the dyers’
standing as a magician
in the community.
The Dyes -
Traditional Organic
Reds were produced from the roots of the madder bush but a skilled dyer
could conjure shades ranging from pale orange to deep purple with the
same root. Blues are vat fermented and came mostly from indigo
tinctoria although the Afshar and Belouch preferred the Anil and
linifolia varieties. Yoghurt and pomegranate produces a bright orange
regarded as the true Afghan colour by Afghans themselves but labelled
synthetic by dilettantes. With every Mohan, Lal and Baksheesh entering
the noble and historic carpet trade misinformation abounds! Both the
leaves but especially the sour inedible pith and skin of the
pomegranate could produce red through yellow hues by the judicious
application of mordants and astringents such as alum, yoghurt, wild
citrus, walnut galls, potash and rusted iron water. The mordant was
used to fix the colour as well as to change the hue. For instance the
West Iranian wild delphinium produces yellow with alum and green with
copper sulphate. Most greens, however, were double dyed yellow with
blue and most yellows show safflower predominant. The beautiful shades
once produced by these dyers were always a complex mixture of plants
and minerals.
The
Dyes - Imported - A Feminist View
The dye, cochineal,
a native of Guatemala,
became popular
in Europe during
the English Georgian
period and was
imported in vast
quantities into
Turkey then Persia
and later via Russia
and India. This
bullish trade died
overnight, eclipsed
by the discovery
in Germany of aniline
dyes - red, blue,
brown and black
at first and others
later. By the 1870’s
these inferior
dyes were widespread,
appearing in rugs
from even the remotest
communities like
the nomadic Tibetans.
Azo dyes were the
second generation
of imported synthetic
dyes, and were,
unfortunately,
light fast. Bright
apricot and orange
colours were most
popular with the
weavers. The advent
of synthetic dyes
in the East was
coupled with advances
in weaving technology
in Europe (invention
of the jacquard
loom etc.). Almost
overnight tens
of thousands of
shawl and brocade
cloth weavers and
fabric printers,
all traditional
male occupations,
became redundant.
At the same time
the carpet weavers,
mostly women, at
home, were released
from the tyranny
of the dyers, and,
a more titanic
change could not
have been forecast
- women could
use the dyes themselves! Many
took on the role
of principle breadwinner
in many households.
This improvement
in status continued
throughout most
of the 20th century.
The emergent wealthy
Trans-Atlantic middle
classes had already
deemed oriental
carpets the height
of fashion. There
was public brawling
at Liberties’ carpet
openings and shady
types profiteering
among the Virginian
plantations. Carpet
making revenue
in the east rose
accordingly.
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PURE COGNITION
We look at an old
carpet made under
the original conditions
and we see a complexity
of design. Symbols
of flora and fauna
and spirits dense
with subjectivity.
The eye recognises
the presence of
colour. Perceptions
change and the attentive
consciousness shifts
from the measurable
world to the immeasurable
as the design is
seen to become less
and less important,
a simple construct,
a value judgement,
even meaningless
xenophobic bigotry,
and, finally a vehicle
for colour alone.
Only colour has a
life of it’s own
and only colour can speak directly - the designs are merely the script.
The arrangement of colour then allows the carpet to release it’s inner
self. This is the point at which we can feel what it is to actually be
human, elevated to our essential humanity, in contact with the carpet’s
makers and the archaic
heart at the bottom
of us all.
This is pure cognition - seeing with the heart!
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NEWS 1999
�
Price Record. Highest price for any type of oriental weaving at auction
- A pictorial Safavid velvet panel 156x137cms, last third 16th century,
at Sotheby's London for A$2,150,000.00. The top prices ever paid for a
knotted pile carpet at auction still belong to three Mughul Indian
court carpets. That two were in New York and one in Germany probably
says something about dynasties past and present. Interesting to note
all the top 20 prices paid publicly belong to the 1990’s.
The now evident recession
proof performance
of old carpets and
textiles has resulted
in a rash of high
class fakery affirming
the continuing importance
of the specialist
dealer. No longer
are the fakes found
just at the cheap
and cheerful decorator
rug shops - how egalitarian!
�Carbon Dating.
C-14 testing of Turkoman
rugs and trappings is
pushing the dates back
by hundreds of years
in line with Anatolian
kelims in a field where,
just a generation ago,
not much could confidently
be dated before1800.
The Accelerator Mass
Spectrometry testing
was done at a Zurich
lab and involved over
60 Turkoman carpets and
trappings from private
collections as well as
The Hermitage and the
Russian Ethnographic
Museum in St. Petersburg.
� Archeology.
The Silk Road exhibition
at the Shanghai Museum
last year showed 142
items from Xinjiang excavations.
Possibly the oldest,
a woollen embroidery
dated around 1000BC has
yellow, blue, green and
white triangles on
a red ground. A rug from
the Han-Jin Dynasties
has a light red field
with a turquoise border,
and at least 8-10 colours.
A viewer was struck by
how lively the colours
of these early woollens
still appear.
Much earlier Xinjiang
mummies have been
found in full dress "chapan" .
They show European racial features and have knitting and needles
identical to the earliest finds in Sweden. Where did woollens
originate? And by whom? We’ll
keep you posted.
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Synasthesia – A Design Genesis?
When the Sufi Master Abdul Qadir began teaching, the jealous scholars of the city sent him a full glass of water, implying that there was no room for yet another learned man. Abdul Qadir placed a rose petal on top of the water without spilling a drop and sent it back, saying "Whoever among you can hear these flowers, can hear his Lord Almighty.”
| "a vigorous experience produces a dilation of perception" |
Research suggests that tribal peoples such as the indigenous Australians and nomadic peoples of Iran have a much higher rate of synasthesia than found in modern western societies. Just as some important western artists had the condition it is postulated that at least some of the great artists who developed the original designs and wove the best carpets and kelims were synasthetes.
Hearing colours and seeing sounds is apparently the result of the brain being active and creative and emotional rather than the static, passive reciever-and-filter of tradition. Some scientists hypothesise that synasthetes may be further along the evolutionary road and that periods of minor synasthesia may be common.
For the illiterate, emotional nomadic weaver, the story of a carpet is a totality of experience as well as a narrative. It is a combination of the motifs and colours and intensity of passion that produces a connection with the carpet and implies a synasthetic response.
Before this age of mass production and economic imperialism, where the market drives the production, an Oriental Carpet was a statement of the weaver’s personality and pedigree. It was also a vehicle for strong magical totemic tools. It follows that her emotional relationship with her weavings would have been highly charged. That a vigorous experience produces a dilation of perception and allows a development of unusually creative parts of the mind is the next stage of the riddle.
Did these guls, these achiqs, these trees of life have multiple meanings beyond metaphor? Some people see water when they see a good old rug. Others simply see glossy wool. Some nomadic Belouch music relates both to life passages and two dimensional designs relevant to the seasons and weather. This cross disciplinary research shows that oriental carpet scholarship may be entering a new phase.
Maybe the last word should go to the tribal Elder in Bruce Chatwin‘s “Songlines“. He impressed Chatwin for when given a brand new vehicle by the authorities, he drove it into the desert and upturned it for protection from the sun.
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Waqf
in Central Asia
Much is
made in the West
of the presence
of Christians in
Central Asia and
their influence
on the culture
of carpet designs.
The reality that
seems to be emerging
is that these
groups were very
small in comparison
to the local population
and were being
either completely
ignored or just
tolerated and as
such should be
considered insignificant
to the rug enthusiast.
Generational changes
in scholarship
are humorous when
one views collectors
turgidly seeing
Christian crosses
in every gul. The
clarity of hindsight
and a greater wealth
of information
however has it’s
own responsibility.
Although there
were Abbeys of
Nestorian monks
from early Christian
times and whole
villages following
the teachings of
Mani, called Manichaeists,
current scholarship
points away from
the idea that they
had any lasting
influence on the
pervading Muslim
culture. In fact
most weavers were
only nominally
Islamic with local
sects of unorthodox
Sufism being more
important. Buddhism
was a great early
influence. Some
experts point to
pre-Buddhist Tibet
as a crucible of
the weaving culture
with Buddhist Tibet
having a great
design input right
through to the
19th century.
It is now accepted that minority Islamic groups such as the Naqshabandi
and Qaderi Sufis
have had an influence far beyond their numbers. We do know that since
Seljuk times
Naqshabandi networks have been a barely underground political force of
some importance and
intriguers and political commentators ignore them at their peril but in
terms of their
affect on the weaving culture one turns to the recent research into the
Muslim practice of
Waqf. This deeply embedded custom is where a hereditary line would be
responsible for the
upkeep of local shrines, ruins or indeed any building or chaman of
historical or cultural
importance. In a highly convoluted form of modern branding the
hereditary caretakers would
accept sponsorship payments from tribal Khans, effectively selling the
rights to be
associated with the shrine. The profits may often support charities for
the disadvantaged.
Great honour and social acceptance went to the tribal group associated
with the
Waqf. The
Waqf would also provide an essential diplomatic connection with the
settled peoples and
respect would be gained by dialogue. The great Khans developed their
Waqf before any
period of military expansion.
The Fosters Melbourne
Cup as a Central
Asian idea! Only,
to better match
the Central Asian
Waqf one would
have The National
Trust selling the
rights to specific
buildings as well
as having powerful
local families
self-aggrandise
by judicious maintenance.
God knows how expensive
the upkeep of an
old building could
be and the noise
one could make
about it! Occasionally
other powerful
families with nomadic
connections could
prove they were
better caretakers
and by doing it
cheaper would have
more largesse to
spread around the
settled community
and thus wrest
control of the
shrine and it‘s
profits. It all
sounds very
modern, does
it not!
Certainly recent
knowledge of
the Waqf shows
it provided a
deep connection
between the nomadic
pastoralists
and the settled
farming and small
business populace.
We can now forget
the idea of never-ending
antagonism depicting
the nomads as
noble and insular,
pillaging at will
with the decrepit
farmers cowering
behind their
garden rakes.
Was this Hollywood
cowboy reality? “Oh the farmer and the cowman should be
friends” goes
the 1950’s
musical Oklahoma!
It is still too
early to attribute
actual specific
abstract designs
but the weight
of knowledge
is heading in
that direction.
The Turkoman
practice of making
outsize Wazirat
carpets (with plain
centres to the
guls) for local
government buildings
is part of
Waqf.
Imagine appearing
in court in a
property dispute
and having your
own coat of arms
on the floor
of the court!
There are depictions
of the ruins
of Persepolis
in late South
Persian weavings.
Various shrines
appear in Kurdish
and Bakhtiari
carpets. The
Timurid minarets
and the Jome Masjid
of Herat are
woven into Chahar
Aimaq rugs. Even
the conservative
Turkomans wove
realistic depictions.
The Sulaymanli
Mashad Shrine
pardahs and the
Jangal Arouq
prayer rugs are
examples. These
designs are well
known simply
because they
are realistic
and obviously
representational.
But it is in
the understanding
of the carpet
lands’ sense
of metaphor that
is important. Take
the motifs ak su,
running water,
and gol-i-badam,
the almond flower.
It is generally
posited when woven
they were not
disassociated
single thoughts but would have
been a metaphor for something
like spring, sex and marriage. Indeed the very reason for going to the
shrine would most
probably be fertility, or health of a family member. The power of the
Naqshabandi Sufis
and the Waqf in the minds of the weavers would have these motifs refer
to specific places
and specific events. The blessing by the Sufi and the running water at
the shrine and the
almond flowers in the cloister would have a strong appeal to the
nomadic weaver as a
connection to the shrine experience. Later on weavers would just refer
to these motifs
without knowing their specific geographical Waqf reference. For
instance the triangular
motif called mushka is woven into a carpet to reflect a blessing from
the Sufi. This
blessing is traditionally written on paper and placed inside the
talismanic amulet, which
is either textile or metal . The carpet design then becomes a
reflection of a real event
and a specific motif that started from a fixed place subsequently
becomes a design
continuum, a motif used over and over. This is a new addition to the
origins of design.
DESERT ROSE will
report more on
the difficult
Central Asian
idea of Waqf
and it’s
relevance to
the art of the
Oriental Carpet
as the research
proceeds. Meanwhile
browse the web
to http://www.naqshbandi.net.
Look at a
thoroughly modern Waqf at www.muhaddith.org.
Back to Top
Is it a Carpet? Or a Rug?
|
SIZE |
EASTERN NAME |
ENGLISH NAME |
COMMENTS |
| Under 100x60cms | Pushti, Yastic, Torba, Jollar | Small Rug, Bag, Bagface | Small pieces are named by their usage. The Turkish Cheyrek is a big Yastik |
| 100x60cms to 190x150cms | Zaroneem, Qalinche,
Chu’aal |
Rug
Small carpet |
Oriental Rug or small oriental carpet are the preferred generic terms. Persian Rug, small Persian Carpet, Tribal Rug etc. Zar is a Persian measure just over one metre and neem means half. Qalin is a carpet and the che ending means small. |
| 200x160cms-240x190cmsx | Dozar, Qalinche Sechadeh | Carpet | In English this is an Oriental Carpet. Similarly Teppiche and Tapi Orientale. In the USA it is still an Oriental Rug. |
| Over 240x200cms | Sezar, Qalin, Ghali, Mian Farsh | Carpet | Oriental Carpet, Turkoman Carpet, Main Carpet etc. In the USA it is still an Oriental Rug. |
| Long, Narrow | Kennareh Kelleye | Runner Gallery carpet Long rug | Karadja Runner, Hamadan Runner, Kurdish Gallery Carpet, Kurdish Long Rug etc |
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NEWS 2000
Aussies at the Centre of the Universe
- Edward Wilkinson, late of Lawson’s Auctioneers, Sydney, has taken up a plum job with Sotheby’s New York. Formerly a committee member of the Oriental Rug Society of NSW it is reported that Edward is now working with tribal art expert Jane Fitz, and has major responsibility for online auctions.
- Melbourne rug dealer John Leach recently closed [Aug. 99] his store after nearly 25 years and relocated to New York to work in the industry. I contacted John last week and he agreed to write an update. He writes, ‘The trade embargo on Persian (Iranian) goods is still being enforced in the US and the vacuum created by this loss of product created a need for a quality replacement weaving. US ingenuity and finance has been pumped into India, Pakistan, Egypt, Nepal, Tibet and Romania, to name just a few countries, to develop quality new rugs. The new breed of entrepreneurs quickly saw that the need could be satisfied by creating a product more suitable to the times. U.S. and European artists, architects and textile designers are being invited to submit designs, which can be translated into floor coverings, and these carpets are being woven and consumed by the voracious consumer here in New York and America in general. Regards to all, John Leach
. Buy, sell and discuss it ONLINE:
- Even the really committed and hard to please tapetologist will find the forums at www.turkotek.com just fascinating. Steve Price and Larry Joseph deserve a medal for this site. If you have a picture of a rug - maybe you don’t know what it is or it’s age. Send it in and have experts and dilettantes from around the world comment on it. Posting to the discussion boards is in the really simple UB code. There are rules so read them first
- Barry O’Connell’s http://orientalrug.topcities.com/ is as comprehensive a rug site as one can find and a true enthusiasts hub being the largest and busiest Internet site devoted to Oriental Carpets and related arts on the Internet. There are three discussion boards and over 8,500 pages of information, discussion and picture as well as comprehensive lists of the world's best rug dealers,repairers, Internet dealers, book dealers and more.
- www.ebay.com is a large auction site. We sold all our noble ruins on offer in a few months with this friendly source. The Australian site is at www.ebay.com.au
- www.cloudband.com is a another commercial hub or portal.
- sothebys.amazon.com have a pretty mixed bag for sale.
Archeological Destruction
An amateur reporter has managed to get to Bamian and film the great Afghan Buddhist site. The film was shown on Belgian TV and tragically it showed that almost all the murals have been defaced, the carvings have to a large extent been destroyed or where portable, carted off to Pakistan for sale. The two gigantic Buddhas still stand but have been further damaged by bullets.
The International Conference on Oriental Carpets
Ann Long of the specialist
booksellers Gaanetgetal recently reported to the Oriental
Rug Society of NSW on the ICOC in Italy. Anne showed the fabulous two
volume limited
edition Anatolian Carpets: Masterpieces from the Museum of
Turkish and Islamic Arts,
Istanbul. The price is $1550. Another
grand production is Ahmet Ertug’s Turkish
Carpets weighing in at $440. Ikats: Woven Silks
from Central Asia - The Guido
Goldman Collection has 424 colour plates of these
outrageously coloured textiles,
$395.
These are all late ’90’s publications and reflect Clement Greenberg’s
prediction of the importance of art reporting at the end of the 20th
century. Contact Ann
Long on 02 4234 0865.
The Spirit of Truth - Belouch
To be too sensitive about a statement being true or false in the traditional carpet making lands is to be uncomfortable, out of touch. The most important thing is the spirit behind the statement. Was it meant to be kind and helpful? Yes? Then the facts can be wrong. For instance never ask for directions as the answer is always "straight on". When queried it can change to be either left or right, but is never "I don't know, sorry, can't help".
A Belouch rug can also be a Kurd, a Persian, or even a Mongol! Rugs and Carpets that come under the general banner of Belouch actually represent at least a dozen distinct tribes and numerous sub-groups. These groups have at times presided over their own dynasties but always returned to a life of shifting alliances in the frontier areas between the Persian and Moghul Empires, and the Tartar states to the north. This area roughly equates modern day west, central and south Afghanistan, eastern Iran, western Pakistan and southern Turkmenistan.
A number of the tribes federated in the 19th century. The men of the previous couple of generations had sacked both the Persian and the Moghul Empires, and decided they were better united than fighting each other. They called themselves "Chahar Aimaq", meaning The Four Tribes even though they numbered about ten. This federation comprised groups with different ethnicity, language and religion and became politically redundant by the 20th century.
When researching the Belouch I found an incomprehensible scale of anomalies that showcased my rigid western thinking, and uncovered a cavalier attitude to tribal attribution by the locals. For instance, when did a major part of the Yacoub Khani become the Salar Khani? Answer: When they changed their name. Why the change of name? Was it the murderous tribal politics, affiliations. No. Simply the women made the choice because the clan head was handsome and strong! Obviously these rug makers have little store in our finely wrought attributions.
The Mushwani, 
selectively filleted
into a separate tribe by western tapetologists were, as an ethnic
Pashtun group,
unheard of in their supposed homeland. The expression mushwani meant
running
mouse and was a slang term for the various groups living towards
Chuckansur in
the south as well as the name of these groups' preferred design.
There does seem to be a need for some serious work on the 10 million farmers, pastoralists and nomads that lived in Central, West, and NW Afghanistan and Eastern Iran.
What about the term Hazara, one of the largest weaving groups? Or Pashtun, or the local terms for the pure nomadic rugs, Kouchi and Moldau, or even Kowdani? These are never used in the west where selective tribal attributions follow fashion as much as truth. The word belouch in modern Persian can refer to any impoverished person living outside town, a gypsy, or even a beggar.
Belouch, being incorrect in most cases, seems to be the only generally usable term as most people know it refers to attributes such as small size, soft, shiny, geometric, even dark toned and subtle, when it is used.
It is the spirit of kindness that is more important than truth in Central Asia!
Designs and Motifs - Mir & Mushka
The designs such as Mir and Mushka transcend simple folk art. The tribal and village women who used to weave these motifs believed they had the power to protect and transform their world. They were the open sesame, the abracadabra talismans of the traditional world and probably represent 2000 plus year old Shamanic beliefs kept alive in the female realm. The voodoo of Central Asia was one of witches' spells where every rock could hold a malignancy, every change in the weather a meaning, every bird a spying sorceress. A malevolent and frightening world from which the weaver protected her family.
The Mushka
is an
amulet, a charm to protect against the evil Djinns, witchcraft spells,
and the
evil eye. It can be made from cloth and contain a prayer written on
paper sewn
inside. This is then worn attached to clothing and may even be put on a
favourite horse or donkey. The triangular or V shape itself holds the
protective
powers and can be seen on many traditional old rugs, sometimes in the simplified
form of three convergent lines.
The mir-i-boteh,
or
simply boteh, is called the mango in Hindustani India because it's
shape
resembles the fruit. Made famous by the Paisley shawl in Europe, the
boteh's
Persian origins have been under review by rug scholars.
In the country patois of old Persian, mir means everlasting, and boteh means a flower in the botanical sense. It is a metaphor for infinite time. The everlasting flower is not a flower but a seed pod and the shoot from the top is just that, a new shoot, representing life, and because of life, death.
In new or city Persian mir is the respectful term for a royal personage and boteh means a type of firewood. The top of the cypress tree is the required shape and it also fulfills the sense of immortality. Cypress trees are planted to signify a cemetery from a distance.
Our New Turkoman Rugs.....How our new Afghan Turkoman Rugs are made
The best undyed hand-spun sheepswool yarn comes from Ghazni, and nearby mountainous areas of Afghanistan. These areas are famous for their sheep breeding and the high quality wools that have given Afghan Rugs their reputation of being hard-wearing and lustrous.
Then a special pre-wash and mordant, followed by the dying of the yarn using all natural herbal ingredients. This highly secretive process is called vegetable dying and is the secret to harmonious colour, as well as beautiful true colours close to the antique Turkoman rugs.
Adult weavers gather in a light and airy family premises in a mountainous region because these Afghan Turkomans do not like the plains, and will not be separated from their families while they are weaving. Traditional Turkoman weaving is social, a pastime for the enlarged family .
The Turkoman do not make the mistakes made by the Tibetan refugees a generation ago who pandered to western tastes and altered their traditions forever.
After weaving, rugs are ready for washing and a quality inspection by our local partners, and exported direct to us.
These beautiful rugs are made by Afghan Turkoman weavers, to keep their culture, their dreaming, alive. The area is the rugged highland Afghan/Pakistan frontier (we are keeping the town secret). Their country and traditional lifestyles have been devastated by an ongoing war which began with the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, then continued into a brutal civil war, followed by the longest drought in living memory.
Please remember that when you purchase these rugs, you are not only buying a beautiful high quality heirloom rug, but by your purchase you are also helping those needy refugee weavers. Their products are the only source of income for supplying them with the basic necessities of life.
Interior Design - Hanging Clues
Oscar Wilde said that good taste is easy. Simply buy the best!
Agonised over the building? Redecorating? Just changing things around? Something missing? Look to your rugs and consider hanging one or two on a wall to add drama, warmth, and real atmosphere.
Oscar Wilde also sang "all the furniture's in the garden and the garden's in the house".
Paint the floors and put rugs on the wall!...Which room? Which rug?
In a study or office choose a rug of about 1.5 to 2.5 meters long and hang it so the bottom of the rug nearly touches the floor or skirting board. This aids cooperation, and success. It can even add a certain sense of complicity, even importance to transactions.
This floor upwards method is also effective in a rumpus, or games room. Especially effective with longish rugs that have more than one medallion, is hanging them from the long side. This suggests informality, relaxation. Most rugs don't work on their side but if they do they are the perfect backdrop for portrait photos. Those photos of Stalin types with the sideways multiple medallion rug behind them brood power and menace. Cover the rug and you have a laughable old military head.
For a main public room, lounge or living, the height of the hanging rug is most important. You should temporarily try different heights to obtain the best effect. The personality of the rug will make this obvious so read the rug itself, instead of following an overall view as you would with a painting. A rough formula is to add another 10-20% to the height at which you would hang a painting.
A large kelim, soumak or suzani embroidery on one windowless wall can be very dramatic. Teaming with your collection of small textile pieces such as bagfaces or embroideries can lighten the touch and add interest. These small pieces are also perfect for a foyer or vestibule, or waiting room.
The received wisdom is to add lighter textiles to a bedroom but this idea is a negative solution to a room which is too English and too small and dark anyway. Our workable proven ideas include putting your dark Afghans and Turkomans on your bedroom wall. They engender, enhance and enlarge that special space between sleep and wakefulness. People have had brilliant thoughts and solved problems just gazing at the repetitive Turkoman patterns while waking up.
Sick room. Hang a rug that the sick person likes on the wall at the foot of the bed. It will drain illness away. Take the rug out after recovery and I guarantee it will look a worthless rag! It has given it's life so the person may recover. It will then regenerate from a good belting! And being with other rugs. For a person who has a long illness go out and buy an old prayer rug or one with intriguing tribal talismans. They work, crazy as it sounds to our western ears.
Floors. Dining tables require at least 60cm extra on all sides. The fashion used to be one large rug per room but these days many small rugs add life and colour and can be changed around with the seasons. But for that old fashioned period feel, one large carpet is it.
Smoothedge is the term for the spiky strip used by wall to wall carpet layers around the edges of rooms. A strip of smoothedge cut a centimetre short and fixed to the wall allows a rug to be taken down and shaken and put back up again in a few seconds. Easy housekeeping and good for the rug, no permanent sewing of strips, no brass bars, and no bunching.
Interior Design - How to Tell a Good Rug!
Handmade or machine made? One can usually first see if the design is too stiff and uninteresting, without resorting to the technical proof: opening the weave to discern the telltale crossover at the base. One has yet to see a good, "alive" machine made rug.
Colour Do you recognise any colours that appear in our everyday modern western life? Are there blues like a plastic bucket or a kid's toy? Are there those ghastly mixed colours loved by decorators like teal blue and mushroom pink? None of these are desirable. Are you looking under spotlights or even worse, fluorescent lights, and so are the colours true? Still wearing those sunglasses?
Condition is important to value and has this effect: Basically the more decorative or floral a carpet the more condition is important. If it has some strong tribal identity and could conceivably be considered enough of a work of art then condition is of less importance. The astute but impoverished buy rugs with some wear, and care for them.
Legitimacy ie. If it's a Kazak then is it a Turkish, Russian, Chinese, Indian Kazak? Carpet designs are now reproduced all over the world including the original countries of origin. Remember the Surfers Paradise boomerang, a nice piece of plywood for the tourists. And a genuine Australian!
Rarity You may not know this and many an Ali Baba will swear uniqueness. Like the person who returned with her "unique" rug to the shop to choose another to match, only to find another identical piece hanging in the sold spot. She got her refund.
Fineness of knotting is an old furphy and is the least important aspect to a good oriental carpet. What good is the fine knot if the colours run?
NEWS -2001 OUR NEW RUG SHOP
Our "by appointment at our home" way of doing things is about to change. Later this year we shall be going public at a beautiful period shop in the intact Federation village of Bangalow. Our prime top end main street position will show the beauty of good old rugs and textiles to a wider public as well as developing a clientele for our other interests which include antique porcelains, statuary, furniture, and jewellery.
Bangalow is a centre of preference for antique shopping in NE NSW and SE Qld due to a growing level of sophistication. New highways make even downtown Brisbane less than 2 hours by car.
BEV. MAY
Bev May, well known and much loved Brisbane based restorer died in January following an illness. She had been restoring rugs for over 20 years having originally started out with our Paddington shop, and learning from Ahmed in Sydney. She really developed her skills very early and went out on her own. There are just so many beautiful old rugs in SE Qld that have her artisanal mark.
MORE DESIGN NEWS - ARMENIAN CARPETS
The amazing range of designs and their ready development in antique Caucasian and NW Persian carpets of Armenian origin has always bemused carpet scholars. Armenian inspiration seems to exist in most carpets of this area. By contrast the natural design evolution in other areas was much more conservative, requiring major social upheaval for change. Davit Zargarian, a young Armenian friend, grew up around Tehran, Iran and says "I remember as a kid in art classes being told to pick a persian carpet (real or imaginary) and draw it over a few weeks. We would visit various relatives and get ideas and inspirations from their rugs and then fuse these designs into one rug. Our parents and grandparents were also taught art this way". This was obviously a culture of artistic and decorative change and development as against the conservative tribal genre where every motif was charged with meaning.
RUG AMERICANISMS
Atlanta Area Rug Show,
Jan.19, 2001 (The term "area rug"
describes an oriental carpet.) After several years in development,
Karastan is
introducing the Ralph Lauren Home Collection rugs. Consumers can enjoy
them at
major stores such as Macy's. The rugs are both hand and machine made.
Suggested
retail range is US$400 to $2,000 for 6ft x 9ft. Many of Karastan's
Ralph Lauren
Home rug designs are based on rugs in Ralph Lauren's
extensive personal
collection.
Phil Haney, senior vice president, said "The Ralph
Lauren brand is bigger than the entire rug industry".
"It's
all about change.
We've got to respond to the demands of the marketplace." - Gene Newman,
president, Noonoo Rug.
Pet Stains on a rug? You are urged to escape them at www.planeturine.com.
Hollywood actress Kirsty Alley, when asked in an interview, "do you remember what you bought with your first movie pay cheque?" replied, " I bought a rug. It went in my bedroom. And I thought. All right! I'm rich!"
New Tibetan Rugs have been categorised by an Industry watchdog as a focus of child slavery. "Most so-called Tibetan Rugs have nothing to do with Tibet or Tibetans and more to do with enslaving Nepalese children" it was reported.