A Boteh a Day Keeps the Covid Away

[Chuck Wagner]

Hi Pat,

While we await your other chanteh, here's a nice (what I claim to be) Afshar bagface using botehs as the field motif. I found the pallete to be quite attractive, also that the botehs are unconstrained by the edges of the field, a la some Turkmen pieces we've discussed in the past. This one has been posted here before, quite a while ago.

http://www.turkotek.com/show_and_tell/AFBOT01.jpg

http://www.turkotek.com/show_and_tell/AFBOT02.jpg

Regards
Chuck

[Dinie Gootjes]

Patrick, that is very interesting about your beads. I didn't know they made faience beads in Persia, and even in the 20th century. Your beads are very different from the ones on my bag. I don't have the big bag any more, but I have a small bag, probably made for export, with some white beads. They are clearly glass, not just a glass-like glaze, but they don't have the clay inside. I do have a loose glass bead, probably Chinese, in which you can see the white clay I was talking about.

https://i.postimg.cc/K8sLMs32/IMG-5590.jpg

[Patrick Weiler]

Dinie,
You are right - my beads are completely different than yours. Lumpy, crude and misshapen at best. But they do the trick - no evil eye damage! Also, your small chanteh has a Luri-looking appearance, more so than Khamseh.

Chuck, posting a nice Afshar bagface with a desirable boteh field does not excuse you from letting us know what your boteh long-rug is. Or what the dimensions are.
:confused:

Here is the other chanteh face with the nested-botehs border.

http://www.turkotek.com/show_and_tell/PAT_W_kham2.jpg

This one is 11-1/2" wide by 10" tall 29 x 26cm. It has 10h x 12v 120 asymmetric open left knots per square inch. It is a bit finer than the earlier piece, and the warps are more depressed - which gives it a more equal knot ratio. The trefoil or tripartite shrub is sometimes ascribed to the Nafar component of the Khamseh Confederation. With its dark blue field and deeply saturated colors, it is almost monochromatic in appearance compared to the brighter, lighter two-sided chanteh posted earlier.

Patrick Weiler

[Dinie Gootjes]

Here is another chanteh with the boteh border. It has a rather nice back, and five rows of the Q'ashqai frieze. The wefts are purple. Q'ashqai???

https://i.postimg.cc/B6pFH5vH/chanteh-2-003.jpg

https://i.postimg.cc/PfmX3fbV/chanteh-2-001.jpg

https://i.postimg.cc/RVSBg7Zq/chanteh-2-005.jpg

[Chuck Wagner]

Hi,

As long as we're all having fun re-interpreting reciprocal "S" borders as botehs (and after all, that's what art is really about; providing fodder for interpreters...), I'll join the party - and provide anecdotal evidence that there are weavers with ADD out there, as well...:

http://www.turkotek.com/show_and_tell/QKM1.jpg

http://www.turkotek.com/show_and_tell/QKM4.jpg

http://www.turkotek.com/show_and_tell/QKM7.jpg

Regards
Chuck

[Joel Greifinger]

Chuck,

Back in his Salon on the Lurs, Pat Weiler posted a border with 'X's like the ones on your bag. In his, the border also morphed, but a bit differently:

"Notice the main blue border design. It is rosettes along the bottom. It changes to rosettes alternating with X motifs, then morphs into the X alternating with a device that looks something like a DNA chromosome."

http://www.turkotek.com/salon_00097/chromosome.jpg

Joel

[Patrick Weiler]

Dinie,

There were Luri components of the Qashqai Confederacy and that may be where your bag came from. It is interesting how the weaver used both white and light blue in several motifs. From the back it is pretty conclusive that this was not fading. The interlocking boteh border, which Chuck claims is a "reciprocal-s" border, :laughing_1: is interesting in your piece due to the random color selection - instead of a more regular sequence.
Chuck, that is a very nice bagface! Charming, quirky, colorful. Have you posted it upside down? Often, the weaver starts with one design and makes a subtle change, as in your piece. But here the change is at the "top". And there are a couple of "real" botehs near the top of the field in the "upside down" orientation. It is hard to tell if there was a closure system from the pictures. The design in the central medallion is quite unusual also!

Here is a NW Persian boteh runner which was made by a weaver not wearing boxing gloves.
:clap:
It has some rather abrupt abrash at the far end, but I couldn't use my telephoto lens to capture it in the dark hallway. This was likely a rug bought in a department store sometime in the first half of the 20th century. It is not "collectible" but functional. Even as "formal" as it is, the weaver put a small animal or two here and there along the sides where some free-form artisanship could be displayed.

http://www.turkotek.com/show_and_tell/PAT_W_bbb02.jpg

The brown may be undyed sheep wool.

http://www.turkotek.com/show_and_tell/PAT_W_bbb06a.jpg

Patrick Weiler

[Lloyd Kannenberg]

Hi Patrick and All,

Here is a bagface from the Khyzy District of Azerbaijan. Nooter?s Figure 34 shows a very similar piece, the only obvious difference being the border system, this one being a familiar north Caucasian form. Carefully drawn, with yellow blossoms at the midpoint on each side. Nested within each of the four large botehs is a smaller boteh, complete with a stem and two little leaves at the
bottom. I doubt that this is a variant of the ?mother and daughter? motif, but who knows?

http://www.turkotek.com/show_and_tell/ghyzy.jpg

Interesting to me is the similarity of the boteh form and the not-so-dark blue field of this piece to Patrick?s NW Persian boteh runner. It would be interesting to trace the evolution and branching of the boteh family tree. For example, do Sunni and Shia weavers consistently use different styles? We might even learn something!

Lloyd Kannenberg

[Patrick Weiler]

Here is the Baluch version of a Marasali Shirvan boteh rug. Sort of. Well, maybe it was the template for all those much older Marasali Shirvan rugs.
:cheers:

http://www.turkotek.com/show_and_tell/PAT_W_bbb06.jpg

It is 30" x 43" 77x109cm with 8x8 asymmetric open left pile. Speaking of pile, it is "evenly worn", sort of like me. It is nice that both flatweave ends remain. The dyes all appear natural, even a light pink which is not faded or bright - leading me to assume it is from an exhausted dye bath. Which also describes me with this coronavirus lockdown - exhausted. It has some nice blues to add to the festivities - particularly noticeable in the little crosses along the bottom of the field. And there is a nice sprinkling of various tiny motifs along the sides which add interest.
White ground Baluch rugs are rather uncommon - certainly less than ten percent of the production. It certainly is a change from the more somber colors of most Baluch rugs.

Patrick Weiler

[Joel Greifinger]

Here's another piece making a return trip to a Turkotek discussion thread. When I first posted it in early 2009, I was bewildered by what its intended function might be.

https://i.postimg.cc/mDykG1RV/Malayer-horse-cover.jpg

http://www.turkotek.com/misc_00101/boteh_files/872-web.jpg

http://www.turkotek.com/misc_00101/boteh_files/879-web.jpg

After a few preliminary comments, Wendel Swan posted this strikingly similar NW Persian piece:

https://i.postimg.cc/qMTf3Dst/IMG-0010.jpg

That one also came with a matching pair of what looked like salt bag faces.

https://i.postimg.cc/L4fKhF1K/IMG-0008.jpg

The pieces had been presented at the Mystery Rugs session at the ACOR in Boston in 2006. While the owners of the pieces believed that they had purchased the parts of a mafrash, there was no way that they could be assembled in that manner. Instead, the conclusion was that this was a horse cover set, and that the 'salt bag' shapes were flaps for where the rider's legs would rest.

I spent some time searching for others of the type, but the only one I ever located was this one that belonged to a very nice Norwegian dealer, who had installed it as a floor covering (of all things) in his home. It, unfortunately, doesn't have any botehs. :pie:

https://i.postimg.cc/jSqyLKCM/Kermanshah-at-home.jpg

Joel

[Dinie Gootjes]

Come on, Joel, that last piece is full of white botehs, in at least three sizes. You only have to be willing to see them. :laughing_1:

[Chuck Wagner]

Pat,

On the long runner questions you posed:

I have always thought it to be nomadic Bakhtiari. It has three medium brown weft shots and based on some stuff that Jim Opie published, that seemed to fit. I haven't thought about this one in a long time. If someone has a different thought on attribution I'd like to hear it.

Digging a bit, I found an old (like, 13 years ago...) post on the same rug so here are some images. In those days Nikon digital cameras oversaturated the red end of the spectrum; the red isn't nearly as hot as it appears to be in the closeups. It's a little more than 16 feet long and a little less than 3 feet wide.

http://www.turkotek.com/salon_00121/s121_t4_files/bakhtiari_back1.jpg

http://www.turkotek.com/salon_00121/s121_t4_files/nwiran03.jpg

http://www.turkotek.com/salon_00121/s121_t4_files/nwiran02.jpg

Regards
Chuck

[Patrick Weiler]

Chuck,
Thanks for those photos. The Bakhtiari weavers included nomadic and settled weavers who made a variety of different types and structures of products. I don't have Peter Willborg's book, but did ask him about a piece on the wall in my office. It is approximately 10' long and 45" wide (though it is wider at the bottom end) and 6h x 8v = 48 symmetric knots per square inch and 2 dark brown wefts. He said it was from Saman Town in Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari Province.

http://www.turkotek.com/show_and_tell/PAT_W_booteh1.jpg

There are botehs in just one "section" near the bottom of the rug.

http://www.turkotek.com/show_and_tell/PAT_W_booteh2.jpg

The variety of motifs can be found in many tribal Bakhtiari and Luri weavings.

Patrick Weiler

[Richard Tomlinson]

Hi guys

I see everyone digging into their chests of rugs ... just out of interest ... approximately how many rugs (bags etc) does each of you have? And do you think you the number of pieces you have is .... 'unreasonable'? :laughing_2:

I did a count the other day - I have 36 !! Almost half are on display scattered around the house, the rest in boxes. Probably not too bad after 20+ years of collecting. But then again I sell to upgrade ....

Cheers
Richard

[Filiberto Boncompagni]

30 on display. Others in boxes, 20/30 perhaps? :confused:

:cheers:

Filiberto

[Patrick Weiler]

Richard,

I have about 30.
30 which I can see from my lounge chair without getting up and actually counting. I have pursued your strategy of "trading up" over the years - as well as adding one or two here and there. Admittedly there are a few which should be culled mercilessly from the flock, though I am a soft-hearted collector with perhaps inadvisable sympathy for the less-admirable examples.
:deadhorse:
:rainy_day:
"Unreasonable"? What's that?
:nerd2:
Patrick Weiler

PS. A weaving walk-through identified an accumulation in the triple figures. Not enough to open a rug store, though.

[Richard Tomlinson]

Good on ya Pat and Filiberto.

I'll assume the silent majority are evading the thought of counting .... the horror .. the horror !!

Regards
Richard 36 (+2 late arrivals today) ... should be 37 in a few weeks ....

[Joel Greifinger]

I'll assume the silent majority are evading the thought of counting

Richard,

Counting is for collectors. Since I am a self-described "enthusiastic accumulator", counting might interfere with growing my floor piles and storage chests. :pie:

Returning to botehs, :wizard: in one of those piles or chests (who knows which :laughing_1:) is this Afshar bag face with its 'mirror' boteh motifs. Love the closure tabs.

https://i.postimg.cc/bJ8tMPvS/Afshar-paired-boteh-bf.jpg

Joel

[Jim Miller]

Joel
Nice bag all around. Lovely colors and border too.
I do not think I have seen closures with that design before.
Jim

[Jim Miller]

http://www.turkotek.com/show_and_tell/jim3.jpg

A simple boteh field but with enough variation in size and position to not appear repetitive. Not sure where this was woven. Northwest Persian would be my guess. It is small 22x22, double wefted without any depression, has symmetrical knots, has several rows of sumac on both ends, has 6 strand reinforced selvedges, hand spun cotton warps, and corroded blacks.

http://www.turkotek.com/show_and_tell/jim2.jpg


http://www.turkotek.com/show_and_tell/jim1.jpg