Steve Price

Hi Trevor and Margret

Collectors often forget how readily tribal people adapt their traditions to new purposes, and your essay is a nice reminder. I own a Turkmen motorcycle saddle cover (dated around 1960, as I recall) that is traditional in terms of design, materials and workmanship; they simply adapted to a format appropriate to the new beast of burden.

The rapid morphing of motifs into new motifs with new meanings astonished everyone when the early Afghan war rugs appeared. Botehs became hand grenades in no time at all. It's been a few years since my last visit to Turkey, but one of the things that was obvious in the countryside is that the "black tent encampments" now use modern reflective fabrics for the tents, at least during the summer months.

Regards

Steve Price

Patrick Weiler

Trevor and Margaret,

It is not surprising that there is confusion about kapunuks and khalyks. They look a bit alike and the names are not common, so they can easily be mixed up. The khalyks do have the two long sides and a shorter middle flap, supposedly woven for the wedding caravan, but as with virtually all tribal weavings they most likely had additional uses, even if just as a decoration within the yurt.
The kapunuks were supposedly an interior decoration surrounding the door of the yurt and did not have that middle flap of a khalyk which would hit the guest right in the forehead when entering a yurt.
As for changing the format for a different function, you will find numerous "door surrounds" on the internet for sale. But these are actually a section of rug which has had the weft and pile removed, leaving some extra warp dangling for effect. It could be likely that settled "Ersari" weavers took the old kapanuk format and re-jiggered it for their village home, eventually making their way to the marketplace.
You can find HUGE Ersari engsi-design rugs which would be even larger than a western door, much less a small yurt door. They were probably made using a traditional "popular" design but for commercial sale as floor rugs in western homes.
If you have been in any rug stores in the last decade, the gabbeh - originally a loosely woven sleeping rug - has now become a virtually unrecognizable vestige of its former self and is a tightly woven, simply designed floor rug of sizes not even possible to use for sleeping, from tiny mats to huge room-size versions.
If you think about it, the commercial aspect of weaving was ingrained even in the original tribal culture, because the future bride (and probably her family, too) would weave functional pieces for her dowry - like a down-payment to the groom and his family to show her potential future weaving output.
When are you going to show us your Turkmen Kap and Mafrash collection??
Curious Collectors want to know!

Patrick Weiler

Trevor White

Now, Steve! Why didn't I think of that for our motorcycles. Could that be the source of those flying carpet phantasies? Actually, the idea about decorating trucks instead of camels was an afterthought after reading the extract from the Russian lady anthropologist.
Patrick, you add even more colour to Steve's comments about my 'sketch'. You also confirm the main issue I was alluding to - that innocents like us really have problems in 'profiling' their carpets and rugs ... as do the experts! Dialect/language terms, designs, colourings, materials, uses, tribal crossovers, weaving centres, commercial pressures and all the rest change. Textbook/article quotations from supposedly local nomads suggest that they no longer know the whys and wherefores of a piece - mainly because nomadic life has been disappearing during the last century. Well, it seemed pretty well alive when, about 8yrs ago, we spent 3wks in Mongolia.
With that newly caught Turkotek infection, last week I resurrected the set of National Geographic CDs from 1888-1996 (I'd forgotten them because they ran under Win95 -but they do indeed run under WinXP) My expectations of a rich harvest of info were disappointed by the dearth of items about Central Asia. However, nomad life was in full swing in 1952 and 1936. Indeed, an extensive 1918 article about "Russia's Orphan Races" indicts the commercial pressures from the West (particularly American) for destroying not only the traditional crafts but also the social fabric.
Patrick, as to showing our household decorations, we are running up to our Carneval/Mardi Gras in Bern. Next week I'll read the User Handbook of my new digital camera and maybe get a couple of images to you.
Trevor and pp Greti

Patrick Weiler

Trevor,

It is interesting that you mention National Geographic. I was visiting James Opie's shop in Portland, Oregon many years ago and spoke with one of his employees. One of his jobs was to research the entire National Geographic library for rug references. This was when Mr. Opie was writing his book Tribal Rugs, A Complete Guide To Nomadic And Village Carpets. It is quite a comprehensive book and includes many delightful photographs, not only of carpets but of indigenous weaving cultures. It contains no pieces like yours, but the book Turkmen by Mackie and Thompson contains several kapunuks and a khalyk.

Have a very Mardi Gras!

Patrick Weiler

Filiberto Boncompagni

Hi Trevor,

I received the following from a commentator that prefers to stay anonymous:

The only article of which I know that treats the "khalyk" centrally is in "Turkoman Studies I," a volume published by Robert Pinner and Michael Franses, in 1980. The relevant article is "The Turkoman Khalyk" also by Pinner and Franses, pp. 192-203. It's all in black and white, but there are a number of images of khalyks and related weaving in it and a tabulation of information at the end on some of the khalyks known at that time.

The first sentence of their summary is: "Neither the name nor the function of the khalyk are certain." A little later they indicate "...Today we use the term to indicate pieces used to decorate either the breast of the wedding camel or the front of the bride's litter..."

I write because it appears that no one in the discussion has referenced this source article.

It is possible that something was done in Hali, but I don't have a Hali index that let's me check that quickly.

Another person whom I think has strong views about the khalyk, and maybe also some additional information about it, is Tom Cole. I haven't talked to him about it for awhile, and so don't know his current thinking.

Many thanks to the anonymous contributor.

Regards,

Filiberto

Trevor White

Thank you, Patrick and Filiberto, for your info – in particular about those authors. I did encounter the names of Opie, Mackie & Thompson and Pinner & Franses in my frenetic search for additional information. Because they earned widespread appreciation for their contents I obviously put out a feeler for them – in the’Net and, particularly, Amazon. Yes, copies are available … but, for me at least, at eye-watering prices. So much so that I would prefer to get a good-quality rug for less than a book about rugs.

Going back to the shift of rug-making for a ‘personal’ use (daily or cultic)’to commercial, or for a sedentary life after a nomadic life, I was prompted by a fuzzy picture of a Moroccan ‘fantasia’ – a horse festival. The horses bore colourful breast decorations that could easily appear to be small ‘chalyks’. I also asked myself whether the gurus, when naming a piece, always take into account the extent to which the tribe traditionally used/uses horses, camels, or donkeys (or all of them) for transport – and so have corresponding artifacts. I mention this because books, etc. about rugs often sketch the background of a tribe and its nomadic roots, but rarely include the pack-animals available. Sometimes it is not even clear whether the tribes use desert tents (Bedouin-style) or circular yurts/gers.

Patrick, you ask to see some of our stuff. I’m not sure what illustration size and number I can include. So, risking Steve’s/Filiberto’s wrath I try with two. The first is one of my favourites, obtained in 1984. It is an Afschar-Sumach cradle from S. Persia, 76cm x 78, cotton warp, wool weft. It forms a truly dramatic display in our little dining-room! (By the way, Steve is trying to help this computer illiterate to attach images. It could be that this needs rotating 90deg anticlockwise. Check was gravity does to the tassels!)


acquired just a few days before our Carnival. A large, old-established furnishing and carpeting store in Bern, with a small but quality oriental section, is down-sizing and shifting its tent to another location. It was heavily discounting some respectable pieces. I have already confessed to having no more wall or floor-space for rugs but, as you know, I just had to look … no more … honest! Well, there was this discounted ‘chordjin’ (Iran, double saddlebag, 119 x 66cm). One half had faded in the sun, but evenly. It was originally priced at US$ 445, but had come down several steps. A ‘light moth damage’ was claimed, but neither of us could detect anything visible. I succumbed to temptation. Not having anywhere to put it when I got home, I tossed it on our leather sofa – that does bear a few feline marks. Two members of the family immediately decided this was its place! The picture shows one of them staking its claim – much better than using it as a floor mat in the car, don’t you think? After all, I paid the best part of US$ 38 for it!