Patrick Weiler

Steve,

The Salon poses the question of whether or not some Turkmen weavings were containers made for storage and transport use or only for decorative purposes as trappings. One might assume that trappings were more likely to have survived due to less wear and tear than containers would have experienced. If trappings were commonly made for wedding use and display, along with a suite of containers as part of a dowry, one might think that there would be a lot more of them around than Turkmen containers.
It has been stated that Turkmen did not weave salt bags, but many of their neighbors did. The reason may be that the Turkmen used other containers for this purpose, or they did not require such containers for their animal husbandry techniques. So, was this practice of not weaving salt bags but weaving trappings something uncommon to other tribes?
Trappings of other rug-weaving tribes do not come readily to mind. Do you think this practice was exclusive to Turkmen weavers?
My assumption is that the weaving of elaborately decorated items for household use was expensive from the standpoint of materials and time and most weaving groups used containers as decorations when they were not being used for carrying and transporting.
Would everyone share their non-Turkmen trappings with us for this Salon?

Patrick Weiler

Patrick Weiler

Here is an interesting little flatweave piece which could fall into the non-container decorative weaving (trapping?) category.
The dimensions are 13" wide by 22" tall. (33cmx56cm)
The remnants of the outer selvage and the column at each side of the field are very dark goat hair, with a shiny appearance and bristly feel. The rest is wool but the field could be camel, due to the color and the fuzzy ends of the wefts where there is a hole near the diamond motif in the field. The warp ends are softer and different in appearance to the camel-colored wefts.
The camel field has striations in color, giving the appearance of a desert landscape. Note that there is a bit of a bow to the weaving, with the middle being a bit wider than the ends. The salon makes mention of "sagging" caused perhaps by carrying heavy loads, but in this case the weaver had inserted extra wefts partway into the piece which tends to give the weaving this extra width in the middle. You can see these extra wefts most noticeably near the bottom where there is a darker brown stripe coming in from the left, but the stripe narrows a bit at approximately one-third into the field. This is the point where the six dark wefts were reduced down to two.

Both ends of this piece, which is way too small for a floor rug or even a sofreh, are finished with two-strand twining in various colors and weft-substitution rosettes on a dark ground between two stripes of red twining.
There are no closure system remnants and both ends appear to have been finished in knotting, indicating that there was no back to this piece.

The diamond near the top of the piece is done in diagonal sumak wrapping, in colors of light purple, yellow, light red, yellow/green and dark brown.
Here it is shown from the back.

This motif on the empty field almost gives this piece a "minimalist prayer" type format.
The bundled warps at each corner could have been used to hang this piece, but did it have a function other than decorative? The lack of a closure system indicates that it was not a storage container. It is too small for a ru-korsi or sofreh, although food could have been served on it. It is too small to have been used as a pillow, yastik or balisht.
It is too long to be one face of a khorjin and too short to be folded in half for a chanteh.
Who made it? The rosettes are common in Varamin area weavings. The "running-dog" or "wave" inner border at the top and bottom of the field are often Kurdish devices. Tanavoli, in Rustic & Tribal Weaves from Varamin, notes that "The Kurds are among the most prolific weavers in the Varamin region, producing a great variety of storage bags, pile rugs, gelims, and other covers."
"The Kurds of Varamin also use a noticeable amount of weft-substitution in their woven bags."
A number of Varamin pieces in the book use camel wool.
So, if this piece had no commonly attributed standard function, could it be a non-Turkmen Persian trapping?

Patrick Weiler

Steve Price

Hi Pat

When I used the term, trapping, in the main essay, I was thinking of animal trappings for processions on special occasions and carelessly forgot that there are lots of other things that can be adorned with textiles (interiors and exteriors of homes, living and dead people, to name a few). Just to avoid confusion, perhaps it would be best to note the kind of trapping something is likely to be.

Asmalyks, for instance, are thought to have had a pretty specific use: adorn the sides of camels during wedding processions. My question ought to have been phrased something like, In addition to the things that are readily identifiable as animal trappings for special occasions (pentagonal and heptagonal asmalyks), were many things that might today be mistaken for juval or torba faces used instead? If so, it could explain the fact that so few unambiguous asmalyks exist that are not Yomud (a few Tekke, a very small number of Ersari, two or three Chodor).

This isn't intended to cut off discussion of other sorts of trappings, just to remind us to be specific so we don't wind up comparing findik with patlacan.

Regards

Steve Price

Patrick Weiler

Steve,

Something as simple as a mirror cover could fall into the trapping category as a woven item which had no container use and is considered decorative. They had a specific use, though, outside of being decorative, and were not used to adorn animals as far as we know. So we can dismiss items such as this from the discussion.
There are rump covers which technically had the job of being decorative. Baluch versions of these are known. Would horse covers be considered trappings? Many tribal people wove them.
There are also pile bands which are not rugged enough or long enough to be used to tie down heavy loads but were used to decorate animals. Animal head covers could also fit into the trapping category. But the Turkmen took the trapping tradition to unexcelled superiority with their very large weavings which had little practical use other than as adornments.
Surely they were used to decorate the home/yurt after the marriage ceremony. They were also most likely used as "covers" in the tent or home, so it could not be said that they were otherwise useless.
Is it possible that these trappings imitated functional bags? This could be similar to the chyrpy which is worn over the head, but resembles a coat, and has fake sleeves which are not usable. There is a similar garment worn by Karakalpak women, called a jegde:
"The Karakalpak jegde was an unlined mantle, which was worn draped like a cloak but was placed over the head rather than the shoulders. It had very long false sleeves, which were folded so that they hung down behind the back where they were fastened together at the cuffs by a short cord."
From: http://www.karakalpak.com/jegde.html
I guess you could call these Human Trappings.
The same culture which would turn a coat into a hat surely was capable of turning a bag into a decoration. This transition may well have taken many generations, but also could have happened very quickly and was imitated widely within their culture.
A likely explanation could be that a bag with the back removed, due to wear or damage, was still used as a cover within the yurt. Originally, complete bags were used to decorate the bridal camel. Someone decided to not put a back onto the bridal bag and to use it later as a cover. Why go to all the extra time, expense and trouble of adding a back if the weaving was intended for use as a cover after the wedding anyway?
An interesting similar example is the famed Qashqa'i hat. It was designed by a Qashqa'i leader (I believe this was in the early 20th century) and was quickly adopted by the rest of the tribe, becoming a universal identifier.
A similar instance in our western culture could be the false shutters one finds on many suburban homes. Originally used to protect the windows and interior of a home and during storms, they are often found as merely decorative appurtenances at the sides of windows. They are sometimes smaller than the windows that they flank.
"By the 1920's, although some shutters were still used for practical reasons, most were strictly decorative. Those that were purely decorative however, were still functional or had the appearance of being functional."
From: http://www.oldhouseguy.com/shutters.php
Should we restrict our discussion only to large Turkmen weavings? The Turkmen turned large coats into small hats, and large bags into even larger animal adornments.
Just trying to determine the rules of engagement here.

Patrick Weiler

Steve Price

Hi Pat

I wasn't trying to restrict the scope of the discussion at all. My intention was only to get people to distinguish the various categories of trappings. I think it would be easy to get bogged down if we confound primarily decorative items with things more likely to have deeper significance. Trappings used on occasions like weddings, birth, coming of age, funerals, and such are likely to have motifs, colors, layouts and other properties that are significant to those occasions. They are likely to be seen as serving various functions - protective, invoking supernatural powers, and so on. Items of personal adornment or interior decor probably have little significance, although they are probably derived from things that did.

To bring it to something more concrete: the essay ended with closeups that included a number of motifs. I suspect that they had special meanings at some point, although I doubt that we can know what those meanings were, but that's a different issue. Most saddle covers were probably of not much more significance than to decorate the animal; perhaps they also advertised the importance of the owner. But I don't know any reason to think that the owners believed that the saddle covers imparted any special protection or power because of their motifs or colors.

I apologize if it looked like I was trying to prevent discussion in one direction or another. My only concern was (is) to take precautions to prevent confounding categories of trappings.

Regards

Steve Price