Hash Gul Revisited...Again

Here is the picture of the bag I promised a month or so ago during Louis Dubreuil's 'Hash Gul' discussion (archived at http://www.turkotek.com/misc_00021/hash_gul.htm).


We bought this bag in Konya in 1991. It appears to be reciprocal brocade. The back is not original. Yes, those are feathers adorning the top.

Happy New Year to all.

Rick

happy new hash gul

Bonjour Rick et bonne année

Your picture is very interesting. This piece can be an anatolian one. I have recently dicovered a book in which authors decribe a 'turkmen' tribe in anatolia which make bags with the 'proto' hash gul motif, i.e. the one that is on the Crivelli'srug and on yours (no S design in the cartouches but only two squares).
Do you think your piece is an authentic bagface made in this narrow format or could it be a fragment of a greater bag cut to make a "torba like" artifact ?
Tomorow I'll post book references and pictures of the anatolian variant of hasgul.

Thank you for your contribution.

It would be fine to have close up pictures to see the structure of the weaving and its back.

Bonne année à tous

louis Dubreuil

Bonjour à tous

I have found in the book "FLATWEAVES OF TURKEY", Arend Bandsma and Robin Brand, an example of cuval that seems quite near of the picture of this post. Authors say that this is a Hotamis cuval. You can read the comments they do about this item.









It seems to me very interesting that there could be a possible historic connection between some Yomut tribes and this Turkmen group now isolated in central Anatolia and coming from north Syria. We have to work on this possibility.

The motif displayed here is the same as that in the "Crivelli rug" which is an old anatolian weaving, maybe woven by the common ancestors of Hotamis and Yomud.

If somebody can have historical informations on the genealogy of those tribes those informations can be interesting.

Maybe the 2005 year can be the "hash gul" year!

Salutations à tous

Dear Louis and all,

Here is a close up of the bagface. I am far from an expert, but it looks like reciprocal brocade to me. It is not zili, like the bag you showed, but the colors certainly feel similar.



It is certainly possible it was once part of a cuval face. The back of the bag is not original, and I cannot see the edges of the face (I have the bag mounted--it is pretty fragile.

Rick

Complimentary?

Louis, Rick

Find below an image of a Hotamis kelim I Googled.





Dave

Re: Complimentary?

quote:

---

Originally posted by David R.E. Hunt
Find below an image of a Hotamis kelim I Googled.

---

Hi Steve -

As I'm sure you know, the use of nouns as verb forms isn't a particularly recent development. It used to, and may still, drive English composition teachers mad.

What may be more distinctive about recent instances is that they seem often to occur now as the result of the dominance of some brand or brand name.

When I was young, "Frigidaire" (although still a noun usage) was often used to refer to any "refrigerator" regardless of brand. I don't know if anything was ever "Frigidaired" (for "freezing" or "keeping cool")

More recently, folks often talked about "a Xerox" or about "Xeroxing" something instead of "photocopying" it.

I don't know video games, but I'd be surprised if there hasn't been at some point a particular video game or producer that became a generic term of this sort.

The Xerox exmple also shows how quickly particular usages of this sort can become obsolete. Xerox is no longer as dominant as it was in the photocopying field and its use as a generic verb has, I think, declined.

I just looked around for some possible similar usages in the rug world. One thing I see quickly that may be a candidate is the term "kashmiring," which most will know refers both to a kind of embroidery stitch used to make inexpensive repairs and to the process of repairing using such a stitch. I'm not sure of its origin but it sounds geographic.

I think we sometimes see "selvege" used as a verb form, as in "the rug was selveged with dark goathair." And "warped" and "single-wefted" are also possibilities.

So the basic move has gone on for some time.

Regards,

R. John Howe

Hi,

I turkotek,
You turkotek,
He turkoteks,
She turkoteks
We turkotek
They turkotek

I turkotekked
I'm turkotekking

Aren't we all turkotekked?

Best turkotekkings,
Vincent

Below, the motif from Rich Paine's piece followed by motifs from Louis Dubreuil's Hotamish kilim, his 15th century Crevilli rug, and the center motif from three c. 1900 Baluch chantehs (small bags). (For published examples of Baluch chantehs with this motif see Black & Loveless, Rugs of the Wandering Baluch and Boucher, Baluchi Woven Treasures.) This distinctive octagonal motif has two squares joined to make rectangles that lie against four of the eight sides of the octagon. Whether this motif should be termed 'hash gul' is unclear to me, but in any event the continuity from 15th to 20th centuries seems striking. Best regards, Frances

hash gul

Bonjour Frances

Thank you for your picture synthesis. Indeed this is why this motif is interesting : a great continuity and stability from centuries and also the fact that this motif is found on "sophisticated" rug as the Crivelli star and on utilitary yomut or balutch bags.

For the name this remain a mystery. The only author who spokes of this motif is Jourdan. In the english issue of his book it is named "hash gul". I don't know if this is a phonetic transposition of the yomut name or a translation. It would be interesting to look at the german issue of the book to see how this motif is named. I have asked Mr Jourdan about that but he was unable to find his notes about this motif to give me an acurate answer.

We can see that, unfortunatly, in a "well named" recent "definitive" guide of rug design there is nothing about this motif.

Meilleures salutations

louis Dubreuil

Constraints of Symmetry?

Louis and all


Just a couple of further variations of this design.




And again, this time in a late 19th century Bkharan coat of Russian gold brocade



And a detail of a persian minature, crca 1420 from "Antique carpets from the Near East" by W. von Bode.



I still say the most common and central relationship of this design lies more at the limitations imposed by geometry of design upon a two dimensional surface than common ancestry or history of use other than perhaps a regional characteristic. Follow this link to a discussion of symmetry and design at the Textile Museum

Dave

Bonsoir Dave

The two figures don't follow the same rules. In the case of the motifs you show this is the well known "intricated octagon pavement". Each octagon shares a quarter with the diagonally placed others. In the case of the hash gul the octagons are not intricated as the figure we can obtain by recombining shared quarters doesn't give a similar motif. Hash gul octagons work always as individual shapes. In the Crivelli example the hash gul is well a singular motif working like a gul.

I have difficulties to follow the pure "geometrical way" (the symetry and its rules) of considering rug design, or the other theory of the "matter way" in which design is the slave of the weaving technic. We can find the hash gul either in piled rugs and in flat weavings of different technics and the motif remains the same. I have a personnal tendancy to believe that it is rather the weaving technic that is the slave of the design. The aim of the weaver is to reproduce the more faithfully motifs that she have inherited. In this transmission there is often a derivation from the original shape. In some cases, as for the hash gul, we can see however that the shape remains strongly stable during a long time.

Meilleures salutations à tous.

Louis Dubreuil

Close enough for me...

Dear Louis and All-

While ther are differences, some seeming more sophisticated than others, they all still look close enough to be related by symmetry. While there could of course be more to this relationship, I for one require further evidence. I state again,


"the most common and central relationship of this design lies more at the limitations imposed by geometry of design upon a two dimensional surface than common ancestry or history of use other than perhaps a regional characteristic."


I am not so much saying you are wrong, as there could be some form of familial relationship, just stating that I need a little more evidence .

Dave

There hangs a kilim, or what's left of it.

At the top you can see something like a Hash Gul. A diamond and 4 S shapes.
Hotamis? I donotno.

Best regards,
Vincent

Bonjour Vincent

I think the device you pointed at is nearer of the design of the dave's Balutch bag face than of the original hash gul.
Your kilim is nevertheless quite interesting. There is in it a particuliar device situated in the third and fourth bands that makes me to think to the kurdish Malatya/Sinan kilim bagface I have posted some weeks ago.

Amicales salutations à tous

louis Dubreuil

PS I have found two other examples of "Hash-guloid" devices in a piled Qashgai bagface in "Yoruk the nomadic weaving tradition of the middle east" (plate 74) used as a scatered field motif, and in a bakhtiari tacheh (from a french exhibition catalog of the Galerie Sofreh). In this case it was used as individual motif, in the bottleshape piled part and as an lonely little piled motif in the non piled part. I'll soon send pictures to Steve.

Bonsoir à tous le amateurs de hash gul, here is the following story: three new discoveries in the rug documentation

First: two little simplified hash gul on a Chahar Mahal tacheh, found in the French exhibition catalog "tacheh" made in July 2001 by the "Galerie Sofreh". I think there is always a link with this gallery on Cloudband. The center of the hash gul is square on the diagonal, not square on the horizontal line.







Second: three kinds of hash gul devices on a Qasqai bag found in "YORUK" by Antony Landreau (1978), page 106, plate 74. We can see in this bag face three kinds of hash gul forms. The picture is dark, so I have put it in negative. We can see the hash gul in A, B and C variants. A are little devices free and scattered in the field, B is in the center of a Memling cross or free in the field, C is in the center of a cross we can find four times in the central medallion. Here also the center of the hash gul is a square on the diagonal line.





Third: central motif on a Hazara (Mushwani) bag, found on Hali 53 (page 192). In this case the hash gul is well centered and is the main design of the bag. This form is very near of the Crivelli rug. The center motif is a little diagonal square in the middle of an horizontal rectangular shape making the center of a cross.





These three new examples show that, contrary of the Yomut use of the motif (employed as a "pavement pattern" and with "S" in the cartouches), we can find in late XIX or XX pieces the hash gul as a scattered or single field motifs or as a center motif of crosses. In these examples the cartouches are not filled with "S" and we find forms that are very near of ancient forms like the Crivelli one.

Meilleures salutations à tous

Louis Dubreuil

It's everywhere....

Bonjour Louis and all

Another still, from a balouch prayer rug.





So we Hotamis, Balouch,Quashgai, Chahar Mahal, Hazara, and of course the suspect of origin, Turkish. But how are they related, other than by geometry. Better yet, can we demonstrate a relationship which cannot be explained by geometric association?

Need to define some group or groups of weavers, all somehow related and sharing a core or cluster of characteristics, such as geographic proximity in conjunction with the use of this gul, over an established time frame. Pervasive use would also be a prime indicator, but I'm not sure use as a filler device would qualify.

Dave

Method

Hello David

I am thinking to a method of "tracking" HG and of comparison of the motif and its uses in different weaving cultures. I have the project of building some comparative tables, as we can find in the "definive Stone" book, but more complete, including datas like spoken languages and relations shared or not by the tribes who use HG. I think it could be usefull to do the same thing with other shared motifs or design as "memling gul", "endless knot" or others, in order to compare their repartition with the repartition of HG. Maybe a comparative repartition map could be interesting.

It's my objective for next weeks.

Amicales salutations

Louis

German Hash gul

Message for German speaking turkotekers

I would like to know how Uwe Jourdan wrote "hash gul" in the german edition of his book about turkmen rugs. In the english edition he spoke of this motif about a Yomut kordjin. I suppose there are the same items in the german issue. It is just to know if "hash" is an european phonetic transcription of a turkmen word or a translation in english of a turkmen word meaning "hash".

Thanks for advance.


Louis