Deliberate Wonktitude

[PaulSmith Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close PaulSmith]

Hi Chuck,

I think that elem is spectacular! The parallel-line horses are my favorite! I am also intrigued by the different orientations of the "running dog" minor border on the two vertical sides.

Given the quality of the weaving overall, I would say she had pretty good skills. And of course the drawing of the elem is intentional. It is just the sort of thing that makes you wonder (as it indeed made you wonder... me, too) what was going on besides weaving, as that part was executed. Head slaps? I guess that's possible. Just as likely would be encouragement. Or even contributions from other weavers in the tent. I think we have evidence for some aesthetic preference for a least some expressions of wonktitude among even the Turkmen. But for Baluchis and Kurds it was clearly a feature, not a bug.

Cheers,

Paul

[Chuck Wagner Administrator Find all posts View Profile Close Chuck Wagner]

Hi Paul,

The elem is pretty kewl. But it distracts from the wonkitude in the field. Take a gander at the variations in size, placement, spacing, and rendering of the major and minor guls. Was it random, were they evolving, was it strabismus, was it the difference between weaving in daylight vs. a dark yurt interior, slaps on the head... ...i dunno. But a rather pleasing overall appearance results from a rather chaotic execution.

Regards
Chuck

[Steve Wallace Junior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Steve Wallace]

This is my very wonky Yomut chuval - changing the gul design, inner border on the left the wrong way, randomish versions of the minor gul. I can't imagine much of this is deliberate, but still may be of interest. (Of course, being a non-expert, I didn't notice any of these aspects when I bought it - hang it on the wall for a decade or two and you keep seeing them.)

[PaulSmith Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close PaulSmith]

Hi Chuck, Steve, et al.,

I focused on the elem because it's extraordinary. The little changes in details in the field are pretty common in older Turkmen pieces, though, so I would expect to see it in an old chuval like that. While you humorously imply that the weaver would be criticized for that sort of thing, I see no evidence that it wasn't part of their aesthetic agenda. It's not like you see many (any?) where it starts wonky, and then all of a sudden falls into perfect repetition (which I would think would be the effect of the slap-upside-the-head thing from grandma). I'd say it was far more likely that she was praised for her work. As I said previously, whatever significance they ascribed to those alterations, they were common, even typical in older work. It causes me to move my eyes around, making observation a very dynamic process. I would say that to compare your Yomut with Steve Wallace's example, yours appears to me to be entirely intentional, while Steve's piece perhaps seems to demonstrate a weaver trying to get the hang of drawing the outline of the main guls, though I sure don't know. The distortion of the gul outline is pretty similar to the intentional-looking medallions in the example Frank Petruziello posted on the first page. In any case, she seemed deliberate in changing the details inside the gul (as with my Tekke dowry rug), and both pieces demonstrate shifts in the running dog minor border (not sure where that falls in the intentional continuum). As Steve mentioned, you hang these things up and then notice little details you had missed before. THAT aspect I believe is intentional.

My favorite example of this is in my "Qarai" Mina Khani, where I had the thing for a decade before I noticed the nine-knot center of camel wool in the top central white flower. It was another six years before I noticed that the next flower down had a center of magenta silk (see the detail image). I haven't seen anything else like that in this carpet, but give me a few more years... Obviously, these were intentional.



Once we get to late 19th-c pieces, things start to repeat more mechanically, which I believe was a response to the commercial market (Europeans wanted exact repetition, I suppose). These weavers COULD make exact repetition if they wanted to, but they chose not to. It had to be choice, IMO, because you so rarely see perfect repetition, even though they were capable of it.

Regards,

Paul