An example with silk in the pile
 

Hi All

This piece is obviously related to most of those Joel presents by the palette, vocabulary of motifs, and lustrous wool. It is 2'7" x 2'3", knotted asymmetrically open to the left, 9 x 13 = 117 knots per square inch. Unlike the vast majority of the genre, it includes silk in the pile. It has 20 silk knots, some white and some magenta, each one isolated from the rest (that is, each is a single silk knot surrounded by wool).

Regards

Steve Price

WIG and silk
 

Hi Steve,

In the brief survey of examples from major 'Baluch' publications in the mini-salon, I inadvertently omitted one from Besim's Mythos und Mystik - Belutschen-Die WIG Kollektion (2008). This thread focusing on bags that contain silk knots allows me to conveniently drop it in. According to the description, it contains pink and green silk, though in the photo in the book they look violet and yellow. :o





I'm not sure how unusual the inclusion of silk knots is in these bags. Out of the seventeen bags that are posted in the mini-salon, at least five contain silk (and there are a number of others for which I don't have any information on the materials). Of course, these weavings were chosen for distinguishing themselves from the "vast majority" of run-of-the-mill star in octagon bags, but perhaps there are little bits of silk in more of them than we would expect.

Do the single silk knots increase your enjoyment of your bag?

Joel

Hi Joel

Single silk knots scattered throughout the pile in Belouch bagfaces (I have two such pieces) do give me a peculiar kind of pleasure. The silk is so nearly invisible from more than a few feet away that I always wonder why it was put there. We've had a few discussions of that topic; here's a link to one. It's very different than the use of silk in Turkmen pieces, which is generally conspicuous.

I have no data on the frequency with which silk is used in Belouch pile weavings, but my impression is that it's nowhere near the 30% or so in your sample. A dealer who's handled many hundreds of these would probably be a good source of information on this question.

Regards

Steve Price

Greetings, Joel & Steve...

Alas, I have never owned a decent example of a mighty Star-in-Octagon/Bird-Tree khorjin face, and I just gave away the one I had as a gift this last holiday. It was late and unremarkable, save for concentric purple and yellow silk diamonds dead center in the star. I am inspired by the examples cascading forth, though. Hear, hear!

However, I do have a funny postscript to that link to the previous thread on bits of Baluchi silk. An irony about the Mina Khani Baluch I posted with the subtle camel-colored flower center in post #15 in that old thread...Not only did it take me years to notice the camel-colored center as I reported, but it took another year after that thread before I happened to notice that in the same location in the next white flower down was a center of magenta silk. From a couple of feet above, you'd swear it was the same rust-colored madder as elsewhere, but I just happened to catch the light and, sure enough...there it was. I wonder if these things are put in as something that takes awhile to discover.

Carry on!

Paul

Looking back on this long-running mini-salon, I discovered a little touch of silk in one of the bags that I had posted in the essay to start things off. There I showed this bag:




and included a close-up of the central star:





What I had missed until closer examination was that, unlike in that star, the magenta in the first white star down in the right inner border was silk. ;)





Joel