Chuval, Saryk or Ersari?

[James Morris Junior Member Find all posts View Profile Close James Morris]

Hiya
Rug collector for a while, but not at all in the turkoman area. First post - please be gentle ...
Was attracted to a chuval face recently ...




It's wool weft and warp. The warp is particularly course/wiry and a mix of natural colours. The weft looks to be a dyed chocolate brown.

The pile is mostly wool with few silk highlights. Asymmetric knotting open to the left.

All colours look to be vegetable dyes apart from probably the brighter red (carmen?), which appears to be fugitive (slightly staining some of the adjacent white wool areas).
The darker red appears to be of a darker plum colour (rather than the lighter red of the earlier periods).
The limited silk highlights appear sparingly (bright pink and what might either be a faded light blue or light green): In the "windowpanes" of the main guls; the horizontal elements of some of the chemche gul; and as an occasional highlight in the border.

The leads my inexperienced eye to suggest later 19th century Saryk? If one can overcome the asymmetric knotting (which no longers appears to be the acid test ...)
Wondered if anyone had any views on whether it's later than that, and whether its Saryk, Ersari or a more general tekke would better describes it?

Appreciate anything I learn about this. ...
Thanks for looking
James

[Filiberto Boncompagni Administrator Find all posts View Profile Close Filiberto Boncompagni]

Welcome to Turkotek, James.
I am not much knowledgeable about Turkoman rugs so I'll leave to others the answer to your question.

My point is, rather, the following...
If you click on the "Read More" in the yellow window just under the title of this page, the one that starts with"Read here, please:" you will see

Please use your full name. We do not permit posting anonymously or under a pseudonym

Your name seems rather a pseudonym.
May I suggest you to edit your profile changing it accordingly? If you don't know how to do it i can edit it for you, of course
I bet you last name starts with a "M"
Regards,
Filiberto

[Filiberto Boncompagni Administrator Find all posts View Profile Close Filiberto Boncompagni]

No problem James. It's not the first times (nor the last) that such a thing happens.
Now your username is James Morris and you are promoted to "Member" - no need for validation

[Steve Price Administrator Find all posts View Profile Close Steve Price]

Hi James

I won't venture a guess at tribal attribution, but I'd guess mid- to late 19th century for age. The drawing and elem don't suggest anything more recent to me, and it could be older. The stray reds don't necessarily mean synthetic dyes. Here's a link to a more detailed treatment of that subject: http://www.turkotek.com/salon_00053/salon.html. It has discussion linked to it; that's where most of the information is.

I'm struck by the use of silk in your piece. Turkmen weavings with silk are unusual, but not especially rare. What's odd about your chuval is that it isn't just magenta (pink) silk, there are three colors and all are confined to small highlights. I don't recall seeing any Turkmen pile weaving with that. I do have one Belouch group khorjin face with three colors of silk in the pile; a total of 10 silk knots and no more than two that are adjacent.

Nice catch!

Steve Price

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

Hi James,

My inclination would be to call this a middle Amu Darya, Kizil Ayak piece. Every Saryk bag that I have ever seen has had moderate to full warp depression, including a couple middle Amu Darya pieces we have. The open left knots are consistent with certain Kizil Ayak types, described by Peter Poullada in a good review published in Hali #148 in 2006. And peter does mention occasional, sparing, use of silk in Kizil Ayak work. Late Salor pieces from the same region are also open left but also have fully depressed warps, and when silk is used, it can be considerably more extensive.

Regards
Chuck

[James Morris Junior Member Find all posts View Profile Close James Morris]

Thanks for the comments.

The article on fugitive dyes is really interesting. I own one rug that pre-dates synthetic dyes which has a fugitive black. Hard and fast rules seem so very rarely so.
Thanks also for pointing out the lack of warp depression. I'd overlooked that.

I had suspicions it might be later when I first handled it: the warp was so wirey that I initially thought it might even be synthetic until the burn test confirmed that it was indeed hair.
I've also had lack of success finding another similar main gul (in so far as the outline of it has "more corners" than others I have found).

It has considerably piqued my interest in these, however.
It's a shame the ones I like which comes up at auction appear to be reaching such astronomical prices !!!
Best
James