Tekke main carpet

Greetings, Turkotekkers!

I just acquired this Tekke main carpet and wondered if anyone had a sense of its age...I apologize for my inability to find a place where I could get far enough away from it to get a clear straight-on image of the entire rug. And I haven't washed it yet either...






Some detail images, too--









The knot density is c. 144 per inch (16h x 9w), and there is a bit of pale yellow details in it. In the lower right quadrant there are vertical dotted lines connecting the minor guls. I love the border, with all the little elements between the octagons, and the use of both four stars and a few crosses in them.

Obviously there are some condition issues, mainly in the center. Since I'm going to hang this, I was assuming the right thing was to find appropriate colors of linen fabric to back any holes (should I remove any patches of other carpets?). On the selvedges, it has that ugly overcasting, and it appears that I've lost the last quarter inch or so on the sides. I was thinking of removing that overcasting, but if there is no real selvedge there, is that a good idea? Any advice on how to approach the condition issues would be very appreciated...

Thanks!

Paul

Hi Paul,

That is a grand carpet. It should make quite a statement on a wall. I am not the one to comment on age, but to me it looks "old enough".

One detail that struck me for some reason was the presence of "crests" on a few of the "bird" figures in the main guls. I have seen that in the main guls of the Ersari and some other Turkmen groups, but somehow don't seem to associate that with the Tekke gul. I haven't snooped around for other examples. Perhaps others could comment?

James

Hi Paul and James

Exactly my own thought on the “Crests” or “Horns”. I haven’t seen them on the main gull before, they are normally on the chuval gull. And they actually look very beautiful here on the main gulls, they give a strange kind of grandeur to the drawing.

"crests" or "horns"


Regarding the age I probably know no more than yourself. But in general: The roundness of the main gull, the squareness of the border octagons, the stars in the octagons and the limited amount of surrounding borders goes for ages. And the 5 rows of main gulls and the tallness of the carpet go a bit against age. My own conservative guess on the age would be 1875 +/- 25years, but that is certainly just a guess.
A beautiful carpet.

Regards Martin

Hi Paul,

Wonderful rug. You're right, the detail and scale of the various doodads in the border is great. Judging by the way it drapes, the handle looks very good, too. Excellent color. A fine candidate for the "Save the Orange Committee."

I will leave the age parsing to more qualified persons, but I think James hit the nail on the head, "old enough." As far as the crests on the birds is concerned, very interesting. It seems that the opposing bird in a pair has the crest. Are we opening an ornithological can of worms? (Please excuse the mixing of metaphors.)

I would definitely leave the patches alone. Are any visible in the images you posted? As to the selvages, I doubt there is anything more frustrating to find in a good old in a rug than that some troll of the past chose to cut the (presumably compromised) original selvages back to the nearest available straight line. The outrage is compounded when the cut is then covered clumsily and in the wrong color. (Although that might be preferable to that ubiquitous machine serged, light purplish gray overcasting one finds so often.) Still, I would be reluctant to remove the overcasting now, unless I were getting comprehensive restorative treatment for the rug. In spite of my remarks, it doesn't look bad.

Are there any top notch rug cleaning specialists in Washington State? Speaking as a driveway washer of numerous rugs, I would approach this baby with the utmost care and caution. Whatever you do, enjoy it.

__________________
Rich Larkin

Martin, James, Rich...

Thanks for your observations!

"Old enough" is exactly what made me jump on this one! I don't think this one is that "tall" though--85"h x 77"w. I think this one must have had the standard red with blue stripes kilim ends. I hadn't placed what exactly was different about the guls, though...

Rich--

In the image with the carpet on the bed, right in the middle you can see an odd blue patch in the middle of one of the guls--2" x 2". I will leave it undisturbed, then...I know of a high-quality carpet washing outfit in Seattle, but I was thinking of tackling it. My current method is to make a huge tub with a clean tarp and sides of 4x4s, I fill it with the garden hose, and I can let down one of the sides to let out water during the interminable rinsing. I would do the Orvus treatment and I have a very soft paintbrush with which I can very gently work the pile. In spite of a few holes, a couple patches, etc., most of the carpet is very solid. Most of it seems nearly full pile, actually.

Hi Paul,

Yup, I see the patch. I'd leave it be. If you do the washing yourself, your method sounds right. It is hard getting the imbeded dirt out thoroughly without stressing the rug. Full rinsing is very important. Top line competent rug cleaners have equipment designed to do these things effectively, and know what can be done safely.

__________________
Rich Larkin

Hi All
I hope someday someone will try to make a public database with all these beautiful carpets. A database were one could make cross references over design variations, structural info, and perhaps estimated age. It is provoking how close - and yet far from each others these highly disciplined carpets are
Regards Martin

Main

This 5 X 9 format, assuming it isn't cut, is inordinately rare. This makes it older rather than later to my thinking. Jim

Hi Jim--

Thanks, I was hoping you would check this out...The rug is absolutely not cut, though it has losses to the sides and ends. And it's much cleaner today after washing, too!--a river of frothy mud seemed to come out of it! I am curious how old you think it might be, only because I notice that experts seem pretty confident about figuring the age on Turkmen carpets: mid-19th, c. 1880, etc., as opposed to the vagueness on age of Baluch rugs, for example.

Paul

strange main

I haven't seen the paddles or radiata separated from the octagon of the main border....see how these lift off forming an ovoid shape of boat or gull paddles! This is the second rather unique feature I have noticed. Usually when I see so many of the "paddles" I think a later dating but this one is too strange and I suspect it is mid 19th century. Jim Allen

Jim--

I see what you mean. They look a little like fish skeletons. I appreciate your taking a look at the piece...It seemed so beautifully proportioned with such interesting drawing. Throughout the carpet there are constantly shifting little design details that seduce the eye. Such powerful colors. It sure seemed like an old one, but I lack your experienced eye. I love these old Tekke main carpets, but I thought I would never be able to afford anything like this and all of a sudden there it was at precisely the moment when our government told us we needed to spend our tax rebates. It was my patriotic duty to buy this rug.

Paul

Well done, that's a real find!

In my humble opinion I would propose a mid-19th century date, based on the apparent handle of the rug as well as the design. The border octagons for example seem quite freely drawn and widely spaced, with colors that apparently alternate at random.

Hi Paul

Hope you will post a few photos of the colors after wash.
Regarding age of these rugs there seem to be rather big differences in how the experts date them in the literature. I suppose the difference between an Azardi and a Pinner dating could easily be 100 year? But then again it may just be me who fails to understand their specific criteria’s .

Regards Martin

Hi Martin

Date attribution is often based on intuition and on marketplace lore. There isn't much of a database of rugs of any genre that can be documented to be more than 125 years old, so how could anyone develop criteria based on the physical characteristics of such rugs? This doesn't even slow down the pseudo experts who insist that their attributions are infallible, of course.

Pinner was pretty conservative about date attribution, Azadi is very aggressive about it. Turkmen pieces predating the 19th century are generally considered to be extremely rare; a decade ago, many thought they were essentially nonexistent. In Wie Blumen in der Wuste, Azadi attributed a significant percentage (my recollection is that it was around 20%) of the rugs in the exhibition to the 18th century and earlier. Even if he was right (maybe he was, maybe he wasn't), an intuitive attribution doesn't rest on solid ground.

Regards

Steve Price

Tekke Main

I have to admit I just now realized how spaciously the octagons are arranged in the top and bottom borders. There is a lot more free undecorated space than usual. This rug is certainly from before the prolific period and looks to be a fine collector's piece. From the look of it I bet it was a spanking good deal to boot. Jim Allen

Everyone--

Here is an image of the cleaned rug, though I don't find that it does much better than the other images in capturing what this rug really looks like, even though the colors have intensified. The frustrating thing is that the red I see in the actual rug has a definite purplish shade to it, but it sure looks more tomato-ish in these images. I think the flash and my wimpy little digital camera are the problem...



I understand about the difficulty in providing accurate age information, but on the whole there seems to be more of a sense of accuracy in 19th-c Turkmen rugs and weavings than in many others, notably those wacky Baluchis. Before 1820 or so it all seems to get substantially more vague, certainly. I had always understood that dating Baluchis were a problem because there weren't many acquired in the West until the latter 19th c., and somehow I thought that was in comparison with the much-better-documented early Turkmen acquisitions in the West. It is part of my lore as a Baluchophile, isn't it? And proof I can even work a Baluch reference into a thread about my own Turkmen rug...


But, aside from the really early Turkmen rugs which may or may not be as ancient as we would all sort-of wish they were, aren't there examples from the early and mid 19th c. that are nailed down with historical evidence?

Paul

Hi Paul

I don't think there's a single Turkmen pile weaving that can be documented to have existed before 1875, although C-14 dating shows several to be much earlier than that. The casual ease with which people attribute Turkmen textiles to windows of 25 to 50 years going back to the 18th or even to the 17th century can give the impression that someone REALLY knows. Sadly, that's not the case.

Regards

Steve Price

"sadly"?

Hi Steve--

I guess it's sad, in a way. For scientific certainty it's a deal-breaker, but in a more positive light it does bring aesthetics to the foreground. We clearly can intuit that we must be looking at a bunch of rugs predating 1875, but the only way to try to sort them out is through observing and handling them. Added to that is the insurmountable obstacle of knowing so little of Turkmen (or Baluchi, or...) culture before 1875. Still, a pretty seductive mystery!

Paul

Hi Paul

We clearly can intuit that we must be looking at a bunch of rugs predating 1875, but the only way to try to sort them out is through observing and handling them.

I'm not convinced that all the observing and handling in the world will give reliable date attributions in the absence of standards - pieces of documented ages, in sufficient numbers to make generalizations possible.

Regards

Steve Price

I'm convinced that in Tekke weavings generally thought of as being made in the third quarter of the 19c as opposed to those generally thought to be made mid-19c there is a very easily visible falling away from higher quality wool processing post mid-19c.
This can be most easily seen by comparing them, from their backs, under x10 magnification. Focus on their yarn's loose fiber ends. It's easy and you don't even have to know why they are so different to notice the difference. Sue

Hi Sue

The issue isn't whether differences exist between Turkmen rugs. Clearly, they do. The question is, on what basis do those differences become reliable criteria for age attribution. Let's suppose that the difference you say that you observe is real (and I have no reason to think it isn't) - some rugs have wool that has been processed better than others. How do you know that those in which the wool processing is better are older, rather than younger or of the same age? This is, in my view, the crux of the matter.

Regards

Steve Price

Hi Sue,

Does this correlation imply that we can generally rely on current approaches to establishing the relative age of Tekke weavings?

James

Steve, Because it's just one of many symptoms of systemic collapse.

Hi Sue

If there was a modest database of Tekke rugs with documented ages and somebody found a high correlation between age and quality of wool processing or, even better, a narrow range of ages during which processing went from wonderful to lousy, this could be a neat criterion for date attribution. But I see nothing implausible about the notion that two lots of wool could be spun at different levels of quality at more or less the same time or that spinning quality could have varied between high and low many times in history. Without addressing those issues, the argument comes awfully close to, "I like old rugs better than I like new rugs. I like rug A better than I like rug B. Therefore, rug A is older than rug B."

Regards

Steve Price

James, I don't know. There are many, many reliable ways of figuring these things out. I'm just telling of one little thing you can see for yourself if you want to not have to depend on other's for such things. It's almost too easy, frankly.

Steve, I'm not talking about good vs. bad spinning. Just get out your magnifier and look. If you don't want look to you won't be able to know what I'm talking about. Those who do will.

Hi Folks,

Steve is right about this. I remember somewhere in Edwards book, The Persian Carpet, he mentions that some particular rug design got its popularity due to the diligence and energy of a town mayor's spouse. That has nothing to do with the age of Turkoman rugs, of course, but it is a little factual event that echoed down the ages of rug weaving, and we are looking at the results today. But for Edwards mentioning it, I doubt we'd have known about it.

My belief is that hundreds, probably thousands of little events occurred here and there in the history of rug weaving, that changed the face of the craft. Some changes were profound, some slight, most in between. I don't think we know nearly enough of them to build a framework within which we can arrange the rest in order to create reliable models for accurate pronouncements about all of the rugs out there. This is true for age, provenance, and design adoption or migration. Thus, Sue's point about the observable difference in wool qualilty among Tekke rugs may well be true; and her hypothesis that it is diagnostic for age is quite reasonable. But it is only a hypothesis; and when one hypothesis is stacked on top of another in this way in order to answer the questions we ask about the rugs, the answers become less and less authoritative.

There's nothing wrong with pursuing these analyses as well as we can. Where the rub comes in, as Steve aptly points out, is when the resulting opinions about, e. g., age, are asserted as though they were proven facts.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Sue Zimmerman
Steve, I'm not talking about good vs. bad spinning. Just get out your magnifier and look. If you don't want look to you won't be able to know what I'm talking about. Those who do will.

---

Richard, I'm not talking about wool quality. Once again, and I thought what I said was clear the first time, look at the ENDS of the fibers under 10x magnification.

Hi Sue,

You all know that I am relatively new to this whole interest area, but in my limited view I don't see many reliable ways to "figure these things out". If there were, I suppose we wouldn't have so much discussion and debate about the age of weavings.

Frankly, it would be very heartening to have a simple, physical assessment tool that could accurately and reliably determine even the relative age of old weavings. So if your hypothesis about age and wool quality is correct, and the visual test is sensitive and specific, it would offer a nice option for both dating weavings and to examine some of the conventions in dating based on other criteria such as design. Now all we have to do is validate the method, or have some solid documentary evidence that observable changes in wool quality occurred during a specific era.

James

quote:

---

Originally posted by Sue Zimmerman
Richard, I'm not talking about wool quality. Once again, and I thought what I said was clear the first time, look at the ENDS of the fibers under 10x magnification.

---

Steve's insistence on scientific standards being applied to scientific questions is pretty hard to argue with, and I'm sure that if someone really had a method as Sue described, in which aging of wool fibers can somehow be observed in a testable, measurable way, their work would revolutionize the analysis of antique woolen textiles. They could publish fabulous rug books dating great rugs until the end of their days. They would have a job in which acquiring fabulous rugs was a business expense.


What I was trying to say awhile back was that without a scientific method to date carpets (as it seems we don't actually have), specific accurate dating won't happen...agreed...but, when I said that observing and handling is all we have, the sorting I was talking about wasn't to place specific dates but to get a sense of relative ages or different traditions or groups of weavers. What information IS available through the methodologies we have? Well, for someone like me, it is to trust to some degree the knowledge of people who know a lot more than I do.

It seems that people who have "observed and handled" many, many rugs, read lots of literature, and engaged actively in what seems from the outside to be a fairly disorganized community of experts in the "field", do acquire an intuitive command of knowledge, that their evaluation of a given carpet's age in the context of other similar weavings, while not scientific, is not entirely without merit.

Paul

P. S. I am a fan of the T'tek editing capabilities but because Steve (below) responded to something I wrote and then later edited out (because it seemed more confrontational somehow than I really felt), I should say that I indeed ended an earlier version of my post with--Don't you think we know more than "before 1875 but probably after 1700," even without scientific data?

Hi Steve, Paul and All

I understand that all precise dating of these carpets for now (and perhaps forever) is speculative. And dating by design alone is of course also very speculative. But on the other hand you dont have to look very long at them until you get a felling of being able to place them in some kind of succession or by the deterioration of their layout. A felling which of course may be completely wrong, and partly based on lore, but the carpets did develop from at least the 19th to the 20th, and I would find it strange if people were not trying figure out in what order that development went.

In general I suppose its is obvious that the Tekke design roughly is going from something like this:



to this:



And I suppose when the marked or people in this forum date a rug mid 19th, they are trying to place the dating somewhere in between these positions. And these positions certainly represents several generations of development. The daughter of the first carpets weaver could not have weaved the second.

I know of course it would be speculative and a simplification, but I would still think that in time it would not be completely impossible to establish a morphologic and nuanced layout succession of the main carpets. I suppose we are all actually doing that in our personal perception of the carpets. But, Very old, old, old enough, late, very late, and to late - might be the appropriate terms for now
regards Martin

Hi Paul

Don't you think we know more than "before 1875 but probably after 1700," even without scientific data?

Not with a very high level of certainty. All the sorting and handling won't give you or anyone else relative ages, only the impression of relative ages based on what someone told you were characteristics specifically related to age. Unless they or their mentors were clairvoyant, there's no assurance that what they taught you was much more than errors solidified by repetition. Those who "know a lot more than I do" probably do know a lot more than I do, but not all of what they know is right.

Tekke weavings from the late 19th century to now are pretty well documented. It's the earlier one that are troublesome.

Regards

Steve Price

Steve Price

Steve,
There is far more to processing than spinning. I know, first hand, that the earlier higher quality standard is, and was, vastly more expensive, and vastly more time consuming. The later lesser corner cutting processing is compensated for, in the post-mid 19c Tekke weavings I've seen, and can be known for what it is.
For anyone who decides to look for themselves it probably won't take more than fifteen minutes per rug to get it. I'm just passing the info on to collectors who have stated an interest in the matter because I think it's the right thing to do. I have no interest in discussing whether or not it's worth the few minutes it would take to check out. That would be silly. Sue

Hi Folks,

Even if we establish well observed and documented criteria to differentiate Tekke main carpets in terms of wool and dye quality, drawing, fidelity to traditional designs, weaving skill, etc., characteristics often used to assign age to rugs, it is a gratuitous assumption that they necessarily developed in a single continuum of weaving. Turkoman tribes as weaving blocs are frequently, if not exclusively, spoken of as monolithic weaving communities; but I do not know that such a proposition can be sustained by historical evidence. Is it possible that weaving in various sectors of the greater Tekke "nation" proceeded in different qualities that would belie the assignment of age based on "development" (or deterioration) of quality?

__________________
Rich Larkin

Hi Sue

You seem very confident that higher quality, vastly more expensive processing is a reliable indicator of pre-1850 Tekke weavings and that the processing quality is lower in post-1850 Tekke weavings. Unless you have observed this in a fairly large number of Tekke rugs that are documented to come from both age groups, you are just assuming that Better = Older. Since there are few, if any Tekke rugs documented to have been woven before 1875 except for the handful that are C-14 dated to 1700 and earlier, you cannot possibly have made the observations necessary to reach the conclusions that you present.

Steve Price

Hi all,

I only have a few Tekke weavings that might be from the 19th century, so I couldn't do much of a comparative analysis using Sue's method.

However, I will assume that Sue is correct and there are noticable qualitative differences in wool between different Tekke weavings. For this to be an accurate and reliable indicator of age, I would look for the following:

1) The method can be compared against Tekke weavings of known age. Steve has expressed his views about the lack of a reliable database with this sort of information. If the comparison rests on currently accepted criteria (like design, drawing, colours, etc.) then that would suggest that those criteria are sufficient for age attribution, which would make Sue's approach interesting but of limited added value for dating rugs per se.

2) The decline in wool quality would have had to occur over a defined period of time and for defined weaving groups (Tekke, in this context). Sue, do you have any other corroborating information that indicates when and why the wool processing for Tekke rugs changed? Is there evidence to suggest that this occurred uniformly across the Tekke weaving groups?

I would like to reiterate that I am not skeptical about Sue's observations of variability in wool quality. It makes sense to me that there was a time period during which wool processing changed due to ethnocultural and economic changes. We certainly know that this happened in relation to the design and knotting of rugs. What is less clear to me is whether these changes can be accurately and reliably ascribed to a specific time period, and whether the changes occurred uniformly across tribal groups and sub-groups. If so, I think this holds some promise...

James

Tekke Dating

Sue, in my opinion, is basically right about wool quality and age. James B. made a good point when he suggested that Tekke weaving wasn’t uniform across their spectrum. In the time period under discussion there were two sub-tribes (Hotomish & Otomish) living respectively on each side of “the river”. There were 20 clans under each sub-tribe. It seems quite reasonable that there would have been quite a large variation from the worst to the best weavers in the Tekke Nation. The quality of Tekke weavings varied and indeed depended on a milieu of criticism and appreciation. These two main determinants of quality were both in retreat, literally under attack, during the 19th century after about 1820 culminating in their defeat in 1882 at the hands of the Russians.

As Steve has pointed out there is a sort of black hole regarding dating Tekke weavings from 1700 to 1875, when synthetics started appearing in Tekke weavings. Taking his logical assertion at face value I predict that a fair number of Tekke mains are actually from the 18th century and the means for verifying this are probably already being used. Over ten years ago Nobiko was talking to me about surface scanning techniques that could be used to infer ages of dyed wool. People who are responsible for buying and conserving true museum quality material aren’t relying on some huckster with a big idea. They are using dye analysis, C-14 techniques, and things I am sure I have never heard of before but it is foolish to assume that any of us would know about it, unless of course the person had developed such a technique theirself.

In this regard I suggest looking closely into Sue’s assertion. I have been looking at Tekke weavings for years with a ten & twenty power jeweler’s loop and I am certainly going to look at my earliest Tekke weavings in the way that Sue proscribed. I already know that the best / earliest Tekke weavings feel better than anything that looks like late Tekke material…. to me. The tactile differences are so great it seems certain that visual differences must be obvious at some level of observation.

It seems quite possible that the twin drivers of Tekke weaving quality, criticism and appreciation, would have equally impacted the production of the very finest wool and its spinning. Bear in mind that during “normal” times the Tekke’s main economic product was wool, both processed and raw. When times were good for the Tekke they enjoyed the pastures and waters they felt were the absolute best. I recently had the privilege of seeing a Turkotekker’s Turcoman collection. In this collection was a Tekke 6 gull Tekke torba, that I dated to the first half of the 18th century. I could have made that dating just using Sue’s criterion for wool quality and age as this torba is made from wool the likes of which I have never felt before. It felt better than silk.

It is just one more step to draw a linear map describing the locations and relative prestige or power of the Tekke from 1700 to 1875 and tentatively placing the weavings with the very best wool and color into those periods of maximum Tekke self determination and power. Of course aesthetic decisions must be made; as there are nearly half a dozen high points on this map.

That brings us to the question of how are we to make aesthetic decisions about what is good and what is old and do these two categories enjoy a large set union. I think they do. If Sue is right then simple microscopy set up with the appropriate scales for comparisons plus a camera should be enough for a dedicated person to build a solid case based on measurements.

Jim Allen

Jim,
There is no doubt in my mind that the 6 gul torba you speak of was prime quality Angora Mohair. Sight unseen. Just from what you've said. Sue

Hello all,

The refrains about associating age with wool quality in pre-1875 Turkmen rugs are, simply put, folderol. It seems that the proponents advocate something like a linear declination in wool quality, but where are the benchmarks? Who established what 1850 wool looks like compared to 1750 or 1650 wool?

The preposterous suggestion is that all one has to do is look through a microscope. OK, but what does one see? Is the claim that the results are self-evident? Clearly there would be differences but what is the meaning of those differences? Who interprets the differences and on what basis? I submit that the corpus of knowledge on which to base distinctions is non-existent.

There are too many factors that vary century by century, decade by decade, and even year by year to draw any such conclusions. Wool quality can depend, among many other factors, on the breed of the sheep, where they grazed, the water supplies, when and how the sheep were sheared, which part of the animal the wool came from, who processed the wool and which tribe or sub tribe produced the carpet.

Wendel

Hi all,

Jim wrote "It is just one more step to draw a linear map describing the locations and relative prestige or power of the Tekke from 1700 to 1875 and tentatively placing the weavings with the very best wool and color into those periods of maximum Tekke self determination and power. Of course aesthetic decisions must be made; as there are nearly half a dozen high points on this map."

The logic of this step eludes me. Particularly in the light of Wendel's apposite comments, it is unclear how one would "draw a linear map" based upon the assumptions that Jim outlines. Even if "criticism and appreciation" did drive Tekke weaving, and we bracket any aesthetic consensus, it does not lead us directly to a necessary correspondence between Tekke "self-determination and power" and "the very best wool and color." Such a generalization doesn't follow in the aggregate and even less so for any particular weaving.

Joel

Joel and Wendell:

Drawing a linear/temporal map for the Tekke from circa 1700 to circa 1875 is a simple graphic exercise. One draws a straight line from left to right labeled 1700 at the origin and 1875 at the end point. One must mark the graph with an appropriate scale representing the decades of the defined centuries

The period 1600 to 1675 was one of great desiccation and little differentiation of iconographies. All Turcoman weavings from this period seemingly show some relationship to the Salor. The Tekke chuval I had dated, via C-14 analysis at Arizona University, to circa 1650 had Salor iconography. In the first half of the 18th century at Khiva the Salor and the Tekke enjoyed the best position and resources of any Turcoman tribes relative to pasture and water availability. Isn’t it logical to think that during this time they would have used better quality wool in their weavings than during times when they were subjected to a secondary position in the pecking order?

What does one get when one tries to make a good red color with muddy water? One gets a muddy insincere red color that isn’t attractive. How many really old Tekke torbas have I seen with great drawing and crappy colors? A Bunch! I now place all of these second rate but archetypally drawn Tekke torbas into the time line slot; 1760 to 1790.

During the early 19th century the Tekke 6 gull torba gull changed slightly. I feel like these early 19th century Tekke 6 gull torba gulls are the most aesthetically advanced of any group of Tekke torbas. In these torbas the horizontal bird’s heads have two crests that can also be read as the two feet of the sacred Tekke bird. The sacred bird’s head, its heart box, and its relatively large tail are all well represented. These torbas usually show full bows and arrows at the lateral extremes of their chemche minor gulls.


In my mind the Tekke torba was simply a useable version of the Yomud asmaldyk. I think the Yomud asmaldyk’s pentagonal shape was taken from the highest ranking weavings of the Tekke nation, upon their capture by the yomud at Khiva during the middle of the 18th century. The small number of Tekke pentagonal weavings captured from Tekke royalty by the Yomud in the mid 18th century at Khiva later served as inspiration for a whole new genre of Yomud dowry weaving; that of purely decorative five sided wedding trappings.

There are perhaps a dozen or more Tekke 6 gull torbas that modern Tekke connoisseur’s consider being over 250 years old. At least one member of this set has been dated via C-14 analysis to the mid 16th century. Surely a couple of others will ultimately be shown to have existed in just a little more recent time.

The reason I mentioned the set of earliest Tekke torbas is because I am sure a few of you have examples under your beds.


Jim Allen

Hi Jim,

You tell an interesting story, but it doesn't in any way speak to the methodological issues that either Wendel or I raised. The "linear map" you propose correlates wool and color quality with Tekke self determination and power. Substantiating this would entail showing that, in a large selection of examples, "if A, then B." But you haven't established any independent method for dating these examples, except for the few C-14 samples. Thus, the logic is circular: if the wool/color is good, it must be from a Tekke "high point." Without the independent verification of the age of a substantial sample of these pieces, we are thrown back on received wisdom and imaginative reconstruction.

You say, "Isn’t it logical to think that during this time they would have used better quality wool in their weavings than during times when they were subjected to a secondary position in the pecking order?" Well, it's a provocative hypothesis, but you need independent evidence to establish whether or not it's true. And, more pointedly, are you suggesting that we can use this to assess individual weavings? Was this better quality wool all that was being used in the community? Were there other, less propitious eras when some of this better wool was available to some or saved for particular purposes? I think the "linear map" you suggest sneaks in lots of unacknowledged and unsubstantiated assumptions.

Nonetheless, it's a thought-provoking story.

Joel

I had problems with the idea that for 30 years the Tekke didn't have access to good water. What do we know about the availability of good water in Central Asia in the late 18th century? The Little Ice Age was lightening up at that point, and it is my understanding that rainfall would have been better than in, say, the 16th century. Surely, there would have been some folks with problems, and some families with good water, in any case. The other problem we have with any historical information is that it is all from outsiders, like learning about the Lakota from General Custer.

Why are we so sure that marketplace lore is wrong? Aren't there families in Central Asia that have been buying carpets from Turkmen for centuries? More rare than an early Tekke main carpet are the dealers or museums presenting their Turkmen pieces as "before 1875." They say "mid 19th century" or "c. 1800." Are we saying that all of this is bogus? My personal guess is that you more experienced folks look at a piece and have a sense of its age, an intuitive appraisal built out of an appreciation of wool quality, colors, and design. Honestly, when I saw the rug that began this thread it was clear to me this was an old one, even with my limited experience. I saw great colors, spacious design with a lot of subtle variation in the little details, and the way it flopped over a table. It had a yellow. It was five rows of guls, but they sure looked good. I thought, "Hmm, looks mid-19tb century--I wonder what the T'tek folks would say."

I was struck today by a report today on NPR where they were discussing the NOAA predictions for hurricanes this year. A former director said that "the public likes numbers" and so they try to predict a certain number of hurricanes, but that the science doesn't give them certainty on this. The guy said that once a hurricane takes shape, they are extremely good at predicting where it will hit, however. At this point, we don't have certainty on dating either, but neither do I think that our ability to appraise the age of these weavings falls off the edge of the earth at 1875. We may want numbers, but in the absence of numbers, the experts among us seem comfortable assigning approximate age to these things. No one said that my carpet was 18th century, right?

Just to throw a fantasy into the mix, wouldn't it have been slick for the British East India Company to have equipped the Turkmen to fight the Russians? The Great Game should have been in Turkmenistan, not Persia and Afghanistan. Oh well, superpowers seem rarely to make intelligent decisions about such things.

Paul

Hi Paul

Sorry for not asking a bit before in the thread, but do you have a photo of the complete carpet ? I would be very interested in being able to compare the symmetry or variation of the 2 side borders elements.

Regards Martin

Hi Paul

Patrick Weiler posted a message on a thread in his mini-salon last night that speaks almost directly to your thoughts. The URL is

http://www.turkotek.com/VB22/showthread.php?s=&postid=29416#post29416

It contains some quotations from the new book, Timbuktu to Tibet, by Jon Thompson. Thompson needs no introduction to ruggies, and qualifies as an expert on Turkmen weavings by anyone's standards. He's talking about Belouch group tribal attribution rather than Turkmen date attribution, but the problems are formally identical. Here is an especially relevant excerpt:

... in the absence of a set of historically reliable attributions it is only possible to divide carpets into sets according to their observed characteristics, and hope that at some future time it will be possible to say who made what.

For those who didn't know, Thompson is as conservative about age attibution as you might suspect from reading this. For example, he wrote the catalog for the sale of his collection by Sotheby's around 1994, and made no age attribution more specific than "19th century". Siawasch Azadi, also a Turkmen expert by any standards, wrote the catalog for Wie Blumen in der Wuste, the Turkmen exhibition held in conjunction with ICOC in Hamburg. The tribal and age attributions are highly specific, and a significant percentage of the pieces are placed in the 18th and 17th centuries. These cannot possibly be anything more than seat-of-the-pants estimates; I don't think the first 17th century Turkmen piece had yet been shown to be that old by C-14 analysis.

So, if someone is to trust expert opinions, he must decide which expert's opinion to trust. Thompson and Azadi, both luminaries in the world of Turkmen weaving, can attribute the same piece to dates that differ by 200 years or more.

Regards

Steve Price

Steve--

Thanks for that link. If there was any group less figured out than the Turkmen, it must be the "Baluch-group." I feel pretty dense and obstinate to have pressed these issues, but ignorance is not bliss. And the confidence of those who give dates to these things is persuasive. So, then, I guess then the answer really is..."all of this is bogus..."

Martin--

I will endeavor to get high up in the air enough today to capture this whole carpet in an image.

Cheers--

Paul

Hi all,

Paul, please observe appropriate safety procedures in getting "high up" to photograph the rug.

On the question of dating attributions and known age for some Turkoman rugs: I would think there would be some material drawn from inventories of wealthy households, in Europe and elsewhere. Does anyone know of published research along these lines?

__________________
Rich Larkin

Hi Paul

Bogus is a strong word with overtones of ethical judgment. I think "lacking rigor" is more appropriate. The result is the same, but the implications about the person making the attribution aren't.

Regards

Steve Price

Hi All

Personally I would think was very strange if a few of these carpets (which obviously must have represented great value for anybody how owned them- even enemies of the Tekke), shouldn’t have survived from the 18th, or even perhaps the 17th.
I know of course that there are tons exceptions to the rules, and that no certainty may be established. But I wouldn’t call it bogus trying to find out which of these carpets are the old ones, and how they developed through the generations. Darwin didn’t use c-14 or dates to establish his no-bogus order of evolution, and his material sure was more complexed than the Tekke tribe

regards Martin

Hi Martin

I, too, think it would be astonishing if there were no surviving Turkmen rugs from the 1750-1875 period. In fact, I don't have the slightest doubt that there are some. There is C-14 data showing that there are Tekke rugs even older than that, and it's absurd to think that there are none that are older than the late 19th century but younger than 1750. But I don't think anyone has a reliable method for identifying the rugs woven around 1850, 1800 or 1750.

Darwin's Origin of Species has several lines of evidence that evolution happened and that natural selection was the driving force. He didn't have C-14 dating, but did have a fossil record in which the relative ages of specimens could be deduced from the depths at which they were found. He also understood that evolutionary steps weren't leaps, but very small variations that became preserved and because they were adaptive they eventually (not suddenly) led to the disappearance of their forebears.

In Tekke weaving, we know almost nothing about the selective pressures that led to change except for the development of European markets in the second half of the 19th century. Jim Allen posits that weavings made during periods of prosperity were done differently than those made during periods of hardship, for economic reasons. If he's right, it will complicate development of date criteria, since the economic condition of the Tekke went up and down many times and was different in different locations. Organic evolution, at least, is pretty unidirectional.

Regards

Steve Price

Hi Steve

It would be nice to try to establish the design of the rugs around the introduction of the synthetic colours. I do think I have seen rugs with synthetic colours and all the conventional characteristics of older rugs than 1875, but with hard definable mechanical expression in the drawing. I suppose that mechanical expression could be the difference between a workshop rug and a family produced rug ?

And you are probably right that it’s for the time being impossible to make a 100 % scientifically order in the rugs (the Darwin analog was just ). But personally I don’t think all knowledge and truth necessarily has to be based only on science. For example I would say we all could make a qualified guess on the age of a person and hit +/- 5years (of course there would be exceptions). This goes for cars too
Experience, visual attention and analytic thinking compared with passion for the rugs, should not be underestimated. I myself am lacking a lot of practical experience, which I hope to catch up in the next 30 years. Until then I hope to learn a lot here on Turkotek.

Regards Martin

the whole enchilada

So, I climbed my ladder and fortunately with ten foot ceilings I could just get far enough away. Reaching out with the camera over the carpet, anchoring myself against the ceiling...



I still have not done justice to the colors, but after ten tries I at least got the whole thing in the frame. By the way, measuring carefully for the first time, I found out it is really 92" x 78".

Besides Europeans who acquired Turkmen rugs, are their no people in Central Asia who have a sense of these pieces? I am surprised that we have a better understanding of the age of 19th-century Native American artifacts than the Russians or Bokharans or whoever have of Turkmen material.

Paul

Hi Martin

You're 100% right - we can make accurate age estimations of people, cars, music, architecture; lot of other things, too. In every case, this is a result of the fact that we have a database from which we learned and continue to refine our abilities to make the age estimates. For Tekke rugs woven before about 1875, the database doesn't exist except for a few dated by C-14 to 1750 and before.

I don't like "scientific" as the descriptor for using reasonably rigorous thinking in arriving at conclusions. "Scientific" implies using physical, chemical or mathematical methods to reach the conclusions. Purely historical approaches would work if there was information (reference standards) on which to base them.

Incidentally, one of the distinguishing characteristics of scholarly experts is that they know the limits of knowledge in their subject.

Hi Paul

We know a lot about 19th century native American material culture because a lot of it was reported and recorded in situ.

Regards

Steve Price

Hi all,

I think Steve has it right. The scientific or bogus choice is a false dichotomy. What is required is epistemological modesty (i.e. "knowing the limits of your knowledge), analytical rigor and ongoing skepticism. If you add in a fairly broad definition of method (i.e. using these to test hypotheses), you've got my understanding of what constitutes science even if the evidence is not purely physical or mathematical.

Even rather far-flung theories, if they are properly qualified, can open us up to seeing things and making discoveries about the world. What makes this type of speculation bogus is when it is couched in ways that masquerade as testable hypotheses or well-founded historical reconstruction.

Paul- The aerial view even more vividly portrays what a lovely rug you've got there.

Joel

Hi Folks,

Paul, the rug looks even better than in the other images. The proportions of it shift my thinking to "older," unscientific as that is.

There's nothing wrong with attempting to establish models and criteria for the dating of Turkoman and other rugs. Looking at wool quality, judging weaving and drawing skill, attempting to reason from ambient circumstances, etc., are all part of it. We all do it, too, to some extent; or cabbage onto someone else's having done it. But we have to realize that the results are not more than educated guesswork.

__________________
Rich Larkin

Rich, Joel--

Thanks, in that image I got the field color pretty accurately...deep red, with a hint of purple. As you can see I've got to back a few holes in the middle. The previous owner must have run his motorcycle through the center of it a few times. I think that evidence of the motorcycle ritual is only found in eighteenth-century examples.

Steve--

It is interesting to me that in the middle of a couple of centuries of cultural (and physical) genocide, there were enough European-Americans drawn to Native American culture and artifacts so that there is more of a record of those items. In addition, it seems that many Native American groups have preserved oral traditions of their own history so that the events of the nineteenth century are still accessible to us (at the moment I can't recall the title of a stunning history of the Battle of the Little Bighorn reconstructed from the oral history of Native American witnesses).

Where are the equivalent Russian sources? Surely there were literate commentators in Bukhara or Merv or wherever, and I'm sure they got some nice carpets over the centuries. Did the Russians more completely obliterate the Turkmen than we did to Native Americans? That would be hard to believe.

Paul

Hi Paul

The oldest documented Turkmen rugs were collected between 1875 and 1900 by Russian military leaders. The Rickmers collection, the next oldest in terms of documented collection dates, was collected around 1900.

If the Russians created trading posts for the Turkmen and kept records of what was bought and sold, I'm not aware of it. Such records are the foundation of the ability of today's native American rug dealers and collectors to make rather fine age attributions with a high level of reliability. Similar records kept by merchants from about 1875 on are the foundation for our ability to make pretty accurate age attributions of Turkmen weavings from the late 19th century to the present time. The oral history passed down through the generations of native Americans probably doesn't contribute much to present day attribution of the dating of their antique material culture.

Regards

Steve Price

Note added, May 26, 2008:
I received an e-mail from Jim Allen, who knows a lot more about native American rug than I do, which isn't much beyond what I learned at an exhibition in Denver held when ACOR met there. An excerpt of Jim's message is:
"The benchmarks relative to dating Navajo weavings are the introduction dates of different breeds of sheep from the US government to the Navajo. The simple fact of knowing what breeds of sheep were introduced when, in the larger scheme of things, allows for the relative dating of Navajo artifacts via simple microscopic investigations."

Hi Paul and All

It sure is a very beautiful main carpet with a very strong appearance.

The two side borders are very symmetrical. All the octagons, expect a pair in the top, are identical on both sides. And as far as I can see all the small patterns in between the octagons are also identical on the two sides. In my understanding, which sure may be wrong, the very old rugs have very simple drawn border surroundings (which Pauls carpet also have), but they also have a more asymmetrical variation in both the colours of the octagons, and even more a lot of asymmetrical variation in the patterns between the octagons. So I am bit mixed regarding the age of the carpet - but it is of course certainly old enough

regards Martin

Hi Martin--

You are right about the symmetrical elements in the borders, including the little details between the octagons. There is some variation of color in very fine details, as there is in the field, but the impression is symmetrical. Actually there is more design variation in the field--I keep finding things as I stare at this, and once I have gotten it up on the wall I will probably see more. For example, in the first complete row of minor guls on the bottom in that image, the bottom set of ram's horns are missing, and in the bottom row of half-guls, the upper ram's horns are in the blue-green color. There are those mysterious crests in the major guls, and the dotted lines between minor guls, only on the lower right side of the carpet.

In spite of very persuasive argument in this thread calling this into question, I think there is something to your sense (and that of nearly every writer in the field) that there is a design evolution, as you set out earlier in very general terms. There are those same sorts of observations over in your Tekke six-gul torba thread. I am left wondering how these were formulated, and whether we are seeing differences in tribal subgroups, an actual change in design preferences over time, or random variation by wacky Turkmen gals having a party. My guess is that knowledgeable Turkomaniacs that are reading this thread are not in tremendous doubt about their understanding of how design, color, and wool quality express age.

Paul

Hi Paul

I don't think anyone doubts that there has been design evolution in Turkmen weavings. The doubts are about whether dates can be attributed from design (or anything else) on the basis of our current knowledge. Some experts are very confident that it can, but often disagree about age attributions (this seems like a big red flag to me). Others are not very confident, and will only make age attributions of Turkmen weavings in very broad terms.

Ask 100,000 Christians whether Jesus was resurrected, then pose the same question to 100,000 non-Christians. You'll get replies of "yes" from the Christians, "no" from the others. Then ask each respondent whether he has any serious doubt about being correct. Nearly everyone will answer "no". Half the respondents are right, half are wrong. None are in doubt.

Steve Price

I'm struck by Martin's earlier inquiry about the state of Turkmen weaving in 1875. Please squash me like a bug if this is a dumb question, but what are the earliest rugs like that we CAN put a date to (at least as far as acquisition is concerned)? Were they already headed towards the squashed-gul, repetitive border designs he posted earlier? All the Tekke carpets I have seen with synthetic dyes are of that ilk, though Martin implies that he has seen some with synthetics that are otherwise of an apparently earlier design. I should say that I have seen a few late ones with fabulous dyes--no synthetics--and lovely wool (I posted a small Tekke carpet of mine not long ago like this, when Jim Allen was asking about small Tekke carpets with the standard main carpet gul).

Paul

Hi Paul

I think I have found an interesting candidate for a discussion on synthetics and design in a early main carpet. I will try to post some photos later.
And love your teori on wacky Turkmen gals having a party

Regards Martin

Hi Paul

Yesterday, three or four messages prior to this one, I wrote,

The oldest documented Turkmen rugs were collected between 1875 and 1900 by Russian military leaders. The Rickmers collection, the next oldest in terms of documented collection dates, was collected around 1900.
That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

The Victoria and Albert Museum has some Turkmen pieces that they acquired as early as 1875. There are no earlier acquisition dates known for any Turkmen rug. None. Not even one. The earliest recorded acquisition date is 1875. That's 1875. That applies to the V & A, Rickmers, and the Russian generals. No recorded acquisition dates before 1875 for any Turkmen rug that anyone knows about today.

Some of the early acquisitions were already worn, even fragmentary. But nobody knows when the oldest of them were woven, only that it was before 1875.

Elena Tsareva's book has a number of the pieces that the Russians collected, as do Oriental Rugs from Pacific Collections and Oriental Rugs from Atlantic Collections. The Rickmers collection is published, and I'm sure there are photos of the Victoria and Albert pieces around.

Multiple border syndrome seems to have arisen around 1900. Variability in the "tallness" of guls is obvious within the Tekke weavings in the sources I cited.

Oh, did I remember to mention that there is no record of any extant Turkmen rug having been collected before 1875? I don't want to leave that out.

Steve Price

about conservation

Hi everyone,

The questioning of the first post was also:

Any advice on how to approach the condition issues would be very appreciated...(??)

Could anyone explain what is the best conservation approach for such a rug?

Best regards.
Y.

Hi All

Steve is of course right that there is no 100% certainty regarding the carpets being older than the day they were bought by the museums.
But Azadi has a rather good argument that the carpets that were bought by Victoria & Albert museum in 1876 and Museum für Volkerkunde Hamburg in 1905 (I suppose through Rickmer?) were acquired as antiques by experienced people, and that this is confirmed by the condition of the carpets.

Museum für Volkerkunde Hamburg



Does anyone have a photo of the V&A carpet ?

Regards Martin

Apples and oranges?

Hi all,

I am glad that Martin posted the carpet from the Hamburg museum. It illustrates something that I have noticed about Tekke main carpets. We often talk about them as a relatively narrow class of rugs which differ chiefly due to their respective ages. However, any grouping of Tekke mains that have been assessed to be rather old can look very different from each other. In particular, the shape and height of the guls seem to differ in fundamental ways. Consider the two carpets below. Are these two part of a continuous age continuum, or do they come from somewhat different aesthetic pools? To me, they are more like apples to oranges aesthetically, which might suggest more complications in the age attribution process.

James.

another one...

Hi all,

Here is another of the "Hamburg class". This is from Jourdan. He attributes it to the "first half of the 19th century".

James.

Hi All

That’s interesting. This one has very symmetrical side border elements - so there goes one of my previous posted criteria’s for age. What a mess

Martin

Hi Martin

You wrote,

Steve is of course right that there is no 100% certainty regarding the carpets being older than the day they were bought by the museums.

I wrote no such thing. I am 100% certain that those rugs were older than the date at which they were acquired. We don't know how much older, so we don't know the actual ages of the rugs.

Let's assume that Azadi is right, some of them were antiques (whatever that term meant around 1900) at the time they were acquired. It still leaves unanswered the question of how old they were. Twenty-five Years? Fifty? One hundred? Five hundred? The bottom line is that we don't have a single Turkmen rug of known age that can be documented by any method (historical record, physical or chemical properties) to have been woven at a more or less specific time prior to 1875 except for the small number that have been C-14 dated to predate 1750.



Steve Price

Hi Steve

Sorry for misinterpretation you, hope it wasn’t me making you banging your head against the wall.

These carpets which are c-14 dated 1750, do you have photos or a link to them?

regards Martin

Hi Martin

This whole thread is making me bang my head against the wall. I'm having a hard time digesting the difficulty people have in accepting the notion that it's impossible to construct a calibration curve relating date of weaving to rug characteristics without any rugs of known age within the range of interest.

Jim Allen has one of the C-14 dated juvals, maybe one or two other pieces as well. I'm sure he knows about the majority of the C-14 dated Turkmen rugs, and may have photos of some that he can post.

Steve Price

Hi Steve

I have seen photos of Jim Allan’s chuval, I thought that you were referring to c-14 dated main carpets.

I sure think you have made your point very clear that the dating of the carpets is highly questionable.

But I don’t hope you think it of topic for this forum to discus criteria’s for the design development of the carpets? And I suppose development does imply speculation on what came first, and thereby age. A discussion that may be rather speculative, but personally I find it eye opening regarding the carpets. Anyway it is little fun discussing 2+2=4.

Regards Martin

Hi Martin

I don't know if there are C14 dated Turkmen main carpets, but Jim probably does know.

I think discussion of criteria for recognizing and interpreting evolution of design in Turkmen carpets is more than legitimate, I think it's interesting. Using that to assign dates to Turkmen weavings is dicey if the goal is reasonable certainty within a narrow window of time (say, 25 to 150 years).

The resistance to accepting the fact that experts are often basing their opinions, expressed with airs of great certainty, on little more than marketplace lore strengthened by long repetition puzzles me. The argument that "every expert and near-expert does it" as a justification has been repeated here several times. The mere fact that experts often disagree, in extreme instances by more than 200 years, suffices to demonstrate that certainty is unfounded. Of course, there are self-proclaimed experts who take the position that anyone who disagrees with them isn't really an expert. That's convenient, but stupid.

Steve Price

Bang not thine head, my son

Steve--

You seem to have misunderstood my last post. In no way was I trying to place a date before 1875. I'm there, dude...totally. If you thought I was continuing to ask the same question, I can understand your frustration, but I really really was not doing that.

What I was asking about was what the actual rugs collected at that time looked like. And I was also wondering what rugs actually made around 1875 looked like.

...and there was the question about conservation that Yohann mentioned...

What I am leaning towards doing is taking red linen and backing the all of the holes but one with that, and then using blue-green linen for the one hole that is in that part of a major gul. The ends have already been whip-stitched and I will take Rich's advice to leave the overcasting alone. I am going to try the velcro hanging method.

I will also take Rich's earlier advice on leaving the patches. I wonder what state a weird repair has to be in before you should pull it out and put in linen backing instead. There are a handful of places on this rug where someone stitched roughly across a small hole. All of the existing repairs are pretty solid, though, so I suppose they should be left alone.

Paul

Hi Paul

Approaches to conservation are more a matter of taste than anything else. I've seen a number of old Turkmen rugs with red cloth backings holding them together, and always thought that was an attractive treatment.

A number of the Turkmen rugs collected before, say, 1910 are published in sources cited above. One thing to bear in mind when you look at the photos: they not only represent rugs made before about 1875, they also represent the tastes of the small number of people who bought those rugs. The Dudin and Bogolyubov collections reflect the preferences of two Russian generals, the Rickmers collection was entirely purchased by Willy Rickmers, a German businessman. They are unlikely to be a random sample of Turkmen weavings of their periods even if we knew what those periods were.

My apologies if I sound pessimistic about the likelihood of being able to accurately attribute Tekke rugs (main carpets or anything else) to reasonably narrow date windows on the basis of the resources that have come to light so far. The Turkmen would be more lovable if they inscribed dates on their rugs. Then, all we'd need to worry about is whether the dates were the dates of weaving and which calendar was being used.

Regards

Steve Price

Candidate for early synthetic main carpet ?

Hi All

In my understanding, which as usual may be wrong, synthetic colours like fuchsine would earliest be found in Turkmen rugs around 1860, and then only in small quantities. It was abandoned commercially rather quickly around 1890-1900 because of its low quality, and tendency to fading and bleeding.
Much of the red in this carpet to my eye looks like it’s far beyond madder. Some of colours are drastically faded, and there are small spots of bleedings from the hot red. But again I may certainly be wrong











And still the layout fits a lot of criteria’s for an “old” main carpet:

4 by 10 rows of main gulls
Non compressed main gulls and octagons
Spacious layout of the main field
Star and octagon border
Rather simple border surroundings
Great variation in between the octagons (though symmetric)

Against “old” age:

The colours
The piled endings
And last perhaps a rather hard definable mechanical expression. This last mechanical thing is of course a 100% subjective observation which I could only describe going in to small details of the drawing. A lack of precision in the motives and perhaps general lack of variation (and wackiness)

I should perhaps note that the carpet has just been sold (that’s why I could not post the photos before) and the photos are from the dealer which photos normally aren’t with oversaturated reds.
I think it’s a very interesting carpet and if by any chance the happy buyer reads this I would love to hear his thoughts on the colours.

Regards Martin

Martin--

That is an interesting carpet. Could the pinkish red tone be cochineal? Maybe there are several different mixes there, since they seem to have faded to different degrees. That orange sure looks Ponceau-esque, as well. I would think that this might be the result of a late-19th-c. weaver looking at an older carpet.

Hi Paul

Well I wouldn’t think cochineal could be hot like this, but perhaps.





Anyway those wacky Turkmen girls sure had a hot red party with this rug. Actually I must admit I find the carpets colours very beautiful in a sort tasteless way

Regards Martin

And of course if this synthetic candidate is “very late” it totally wrecks my own acquired design criteria’s for old age. So I will probably end up agreeing with Steve that it is almost objectively impossible to date the carpets for know.
But on the other hand, wrong as it may be, I don’t think I will be able not to try to establish some kind of subjective gut feeling regarding the age of the rugs.

Martin

One design difference I notice is that the star-filled octagons are more diamond-shaped, and have more radiata, than the previous examples.

Re: dyes - good natural orange can be deceptively bright - anyway it is impossible to tell from digital images.
Tekke mains of the Salor-gul type often have cerise grounds that looks like cochineal.

Martin--

No, you're right. That would be cochineal on drugs. The scenario may have been like this: let the sheik visit his pipe for awhile until he steps outside the tent, and then let's switch this one for his usual old rug. How the Russians really won Turkestan...

Alex--

I guess it's good policy to be conservative about digital images, but...that has got to be a hot orange.

Paul

"cochineal on drugs"

And Alex, of course you’re right regarding digital photos, and any photos, colours are difficult. But the same photographers other rug photos sure do not display oversaturated reds.

Martin