Tekke Dowry Rug... similar examples?

[Martin Andersen]

I have now looked around the net and in my books, and I can't say I have found any dip khali wedding/dowry/bridal rug that I would say looks really really old. A bit strange. Would love to see if any other of you have seen any?

These small formats may have had a rough time, more prone to damage ending up on western floors as "br?cke rugs"?
Perhaps Paul your dowry rug is ca as old as it gets.

Best Martin

[Steve Price]

Martin - There's not much we can do about the umlaut, but there are two fairly simple workarounds. One is to use an "e" following the umlauted letter; "u" becomes "ue". This is the common way to transliterate the "u" with an umlaut. The second is to just omit the umlaut. German speaking folks will understand it and it's irrelevant to anyone who kann auf Deutsch nicht sprechen.

Steve Price

[Martin Andersen]

Thanks Steve - and okay I quit the umlaut. I only used it because some of the auction houses label the wedding rugs with the english/german mix "brucke rug". And "bridge rug" (which I don't believe is an English term?) is a kind of good image of the function of a small rug bridging between larger rugs, marking out a walking path, a path of wear and tear that might have been the demise of many a small format rug.

Best Martin

[Martin Andersen]

Here some fine, perfect and old samples with the tekke chuwal gol type, kind of similar to Pauls rug. Beautiful and pure perfection, but I can still see Pauls rug bringing something else to the table.


https://iili.io/fMrFY7.md.jpg (https://freeimage.host/i/fMrFY7)

https://iili.io/fMr6ue.md.jpg (https://freeimage.host/i/fMr6ue)

https://iili.io/fMrZ6Q.md.jpg (https://freeimage.host/i/fMrZ6Q)

https://iili.io/fM49AF.md.jpg (https://freeimage.host/i/fM49AF)

https://iili.io/fM4Hwg.md.jpg (https://freeimage.host/i/fM4Hwg)

Best Martin

[Paul Smith]

Wow, now there's a nice collection of Tekke mats! Thank you for posting those. I agree that there's something... wilder (?) in my example, but I suspect that I will not get an explanation of the mystery in it. Still, I have a better sense of its context.

[Martin Andersen]

If I where to present your rug I would start with a focus on a detail like this:

https://iili.io/fMPDF4.jpg (https://freeimage.host/da)

The layout of your rug is actually very spacious compared to the other Tekke samples in this thread.
And the chemsche gul is beautiful and clearly defined. For me this secondary gol is more interesting and far superior to the ones in the other samples.

[Paul Smith]

Hi Martin,

One detail that has haunted me is the band of cotton. I certainly know of Turkmen pieces in which all the whites are cotton, and I know of lots of pieces in which a quadrant of a gul or some other element is silk or cotton, but I cannot (yet) find examples where a section of a piece replaces all of its ivory wool with cotton, as it is here. It sure doesn't seem haphazard, and I don't buy the explanation that "she ran out of ivory wool," though its start and finish don't correspond with filling certain elements. Is that a thing that has turned up elsewhere?

Regards,

Paul

[Martin Andersen]

Hi Paul

I can't really see where the cotton band is (the whites in your photos are a bit washed out), but anyway I haven't encountered a deliberate partial use of cotton as you describe it. Cotton as white in the Tekke rugs is rare but when used it sure has a massive aesthetic effect.
Chuck might be right. And perhaps we are looking at some kind of Tekke "art brut" in your rug :) (personally I love "art brut").

Another totally speculative reason for why the weaver could have chosen to emphasize the middle section of the rug could perhaps be the rugs intended use as a threshold marker. According to Moshkova the wedding rugs were specifically placed as a threshold in the door of the wedding yurt. That is to say on the ground, half inside and half outside the yurt.

It's a bit of a stretch, and I can only say perhaps one of the weeding rugs I have looked at here could be said to perhaps have an intended marking of the middle section. This otherwise very controlled weaving the darker outline in the minor borders does give some kind of focus on the middel section of the rug as a whole. And difficult to see but perhaps the red groundcolor is darker in middel section?, perhaps a slight abrash adding to the effect?:

https://iili.io/fWvbfV.md.jpg (https://freeimage.host/i/fWvbfV)
On the other hand, this rug is 3 ft. 11 in. / 119 cm in width, perhaps a bit much or at the upper limit for a placement in a Tekke yurt doorway? But of course there might have been a lot of variance in yurt door widths, as there is variance in widths of the ensi. Ersari yurt doors for sure must have been even wider in general (if not all of the ensi were made for the Russians :))

best Martin

[Martin Andersen]

(The Jourdan Tekke Chuck posted actually also might have a dark abrash in the middle section, well not sure...and it might be random)

[Martin Andersen]

Just took a re-look, and random or not, this 46 x 47 inch beauty has a rather clear color shift in the red groundcolor exactly in the middle:

https://iili.io/fWStcB.md.jpg (https://freeimage.host/i/fWStcB)

And, to me more important, it has a distinctive break in the middle of the main border, introducing the "arrow" pattern (sorry can't remember its correct term), otherwise mostly known from the border of other distinctly dowry pieces like the khalyk:

https://iili.io/fWURl2.jpg (https://freeimage.host/da)

https://iili.io/fWsqqg.jpg (https://freeimage.host/da)

There is food for some thought in this :) As we know the Turkmen wedding ceremony was central in the Turkmen culture, and in the rugs. The wedding as such was an elaborated symbolic threshold, the bride going from her old family to her new. Some of the small wedding rugs perhaps were, more or less subtle, the actual physical expressed threshold in this. Not marked as a closed "borderline", but marked as an open and floating transition.

And perhaps Pauls rather expressive weaver took an extra hit on this, heavily emphasizing the line of the threshold with beautiful white cotton :)

Best Martin

[Martin Andersen]

Three more samples with the "arrow" pattern in the main border perhaps marking the middle of the of the rug.

The first in good classical order with the Tekke main gol. The "arrow" pattern being the only break in an otherwise complete uninterrupted "octagon and star border". (perhaps with some supporting intentional abrash):

https://iili.io/fXJeaI.md.jpg (https://freeimage.host/i/fXJeaI)

The second looks really old to me, unfortunately only with the "arrow pattern" in the middle left side of the main border. Longer than the others but only 3 feet 7 inches wide, so absolutely a candidate for a placement in yurt doorway :

https://iili.io/fXdTcN.jpg (https://freeimage.host/i/fXdTcN)

The third in the wild Tekke "art brut" style :) With heavy emphasis on the middle section. The expanding gols are perhaps a bit in family with the ones on Pauls rug, but I would say this rug is later and a lot less attractive:

https://iili.io/fXJvyX.jpg (https://freeimage.host/da)

I am of course very selective in this. If this "marking of the middle" of the wedding rugs is a feature, then it is not a common feature in the extant rugs. But fun to look out for.

Best Martin

[Chuck Wagner]

Hi Paul,

I haven't opined on a date range for your piece yet. So, totally subjectively, I would guess mid 19th century; maybe earlier but the colors "feel" a little later to me. Later 19th century work is typically more crowded and guls are compressed vertically. The openness of yours - already noted above by others - suggests earlier.

You can get closer to an answer by throwing money at the problem.

I did that with a torba I thought was on the older side. I posted the results in the thread below; mercifully, it was ignored by most so we didn't get into the usuall rughead dogfight over radiocarbon dating. In order to feel better about it all you have to do is convince yourself that a mid 20th century attribution is highly unlikely. The remaining possibilities tell you the set of possible date ranges.

Here's the link:
http://www.turkotek.com/VB37/showthread.php?t=394 1

Regards
Chuck

[Paul Smith]

Hi Chuck,

That is an interesting idea, to get a C-14 test. It is about half of what I've paid to have a katana certified by the official NBTHK in Japan. I will give that some thought. It would be fun to have science involved. Oddly, this rug came to me with a considerable amount of super-fine brown sand in it, and I had wondered if I should have saved it for some sort of analysis.

Regards,

Paul

[Paul Smith]

Hi Martin,

I've tried to take a better photo that shows the difference between the wool and cotton pile. As I was setting it up, I noticed tiny little cotton knots added to the vertical lines between the major guls, so that is one application here where it is not replacing ivory wool. I can see this marking something like a threshold. Anyway the cotton starts right at the top of the lozenge gul center on the bottom and goes until just before the gul on top.

https://i.postimg.cc/SKktK7pN/closeup-w-cotton.jpg

Editing here because I just thought of a much better way to show the change in the pile...

https://i.postimg.cc/rssHkStZ/Wool-Cotton-Pile.jpg

In that recent set of three mats, I was intrigued with the "Tekke art brut" model for a variety of reasons, but in particular that the bottom elem in the image seems to be greatly compacted, compared to the top. My other small Tekke mat has this quality, with the knotting at one end exceeding 300kpsi! I was told by someone more knowledgeable than I that this was a mistake/incompetent weaving, but I suspect it's more complicated than that. Though the weaver of the "Tekke art brut" piece was definitely pushing the envelope. Here is my example, which also seems to demonstrate some sort of break in the middle, with the ivory in the chemches, or any number of spots in the odd border...

https://i.postimg.cc/8kYLP6y8/IMG-2766.jpg (https://postimg.cc/QVpFfHGS)

Regards,

Paul

[Martin Andersen]

Hi Chuck

Thanks for the link to your torba, I hadn't seen it.
A very very nice torba for sure, and it looks like it's in excellent condition.

Perhaps we should re-open your 2017 thread? Not that I have a ton to add, but who knows what might turn up.

Best Martin

[Filiberto Boncompagni]

Perhaps we should re-open your 2017 thread?

Hi Martin,

No need for that. The thread belongs to the last Salon and we never closed it. :monalisa:
Welcome back, by the way :cheers:

Filiberto

[Martin Andersen]

Thanks Filiberto :) :cheers:
And very nice with open-ended threads, time runs quickly.
All the best Martin

[Martin Andersen]

Just a small observation after looking at the lively star and octagon border of Pauls rug.
Perhaps the triangle/diamond filling of the center in the chuwal gols evolved from a flower/star center. Generated by limited space - and liveliness :)

https://iili.io/fjJlvS.md.jpg (https://freeimage.host/i/fjJlvS)

[Martin Andersen]

Clive Rogers just sold this fragment/upholstery at LARTA in London. His description here:

Taken from an early small Tekke rug the circular fragment is taken from a Victorian footstool. The fragment includes parts of the original border as well as field as seen on the face. NB early small Westerly Turkmen tribal rugs are extremely rare unlike larger main carpet counterparts. Dip Khali ( half size ) rugs seem to have have little relevance to Turkmen culture ( Ersari aside ) being possibly made expressly for the bazaar following Russian contact. Whilst what I would call ?erak khali ( quarter size ) small mat sizes seem to have a more venerable tradition.

https://iili.io/fjzSdF.md.jpg (https://freeimage.host/i/fjzSdF)

Congrats to its new owner. Its a very nice piece. The secondary gol is really beautiful (even the murderess upholster kind of respected it, almost centering it), highly interesting, and kind of reminiscent of the possible development of the very earliest secondary gols transformation into the kurbaghe and chemche gol. I would personally think this is the oldest sample in this thread.

Upholstery for sure have been the faith of many early small format rugs when arriving to Europe in the late 19th.c. And this piece is a historic testament to that. I kind of hope the new owner will leave it as it is, Clive Rogers had the nice historic sensibility to present it as is.

Best Martin

[Martin Andersen]

I'll just ramble on, hopefully someone will correct me when I am wrong...

The secondary gol on Clive Rogers fragment is rare, I haven't seen it like this before, with a thin single knot blue/green outline. Kind of makes me wonder if this really is a Tekke or something else:

https://iili.io/fjSXXn.jpg (https://freeimage.host/da)

The pattern itself is in the Tekke known from the aina gol format, and from the Salor in white and a beefier form in the center of the Salor gol.
As a secondary gol I have only seen it on Eagle group/Yomut pieces like this:

https://iili.io/fjShss.md.jpg (https://freeimage.host/i/fjShss)



Unfortunately I don't have the measurements of this beautiful Tekke fragment. But I suppose it could actually be a wedding rug, the scale of the drawing of the border seems to suggest it:

https://iili.io/fjSwqG.md.jpg (https://freeimage.host/i/fjSwqG)
If so, it sure could be a contender as the oldest wedding rug I have seen till now. Probably in the really really old category :)

best Martin