Ajmal Maiwandi

Hi Everyone,
Having come across several baluch “bird" bag faces over the past few months, none of which resemble the intricately decorated repeating bird motif that were all on the lookout for, I am left with several questions about the various different baluch bag faces with birds on them. Is the repeating bird motif a commercial invention/adaptation of an older, more original, design? Does the bag face depicted in the images below represent a lack of means or an intentional deviation from a more standardized design? If so, could this example be older or intended for the weaver’s own use? Are the “pitchfork” designs, in the square sections at the top and bottom, common in baluch weavings? It would be great if some of you could share images of atypical bird bags to add to the discussion.





Regards,
Ajmal

Steve Price

Hi Ajmal

Your bagface has a number of features that are easily recognizable as related to those that occur on Belouch group weavings, but are arranged and combined in ways that are atypical. Here are some of them:
1. A single, central bird is unusual; I don't recall seeing any with less than four, and more than that number is typical. I don't think I've ever seen one within an octagonal medallion, but such medallions are common in other types of Belouch group bagfaces
2. The details on the bird are greatly simplified. For example, it lacks a crest, has no leg spurs, has an completely atypical interior, and a simplified tail.
3. The trident motifs ("pitchforks") show up on Yomud weavings, usually in elems. Belouch weavings often incorporate Turkmen motifs, but bird bags don't, at least to my knowledge.
4. The palette isn't unheard of in Belouch group weavings, but isn't what's normally seen in their bird bags. The scattered "S" motifs are also common in Belouch group weavings, but not in bird bags.

Here's a couple of shots of a bag with more typical drawing, details and colors, just for reference.





My best guess is that your bag is more recent. The simplifications and unorthodox combinations of design elements suggest that the weaver was familiar with traditional Belouch group motifs, but didn't understand which elements were important and which weren't. My assumption here is that fairly complicated elements that occur in fairly specific configurations in a family of related weavings had significance in the community in which they were used.

Regards

Steve Price

Rich Larkin

Hi Ajmal,

Here are a few more examples of the genre. All of them come from the New England Rug Society site, which is a TurkoTek linked site. The first and third are from the Mark Hopkins collection. The middle one, which happens to be mine, is from the "New England Collections" exhibition. There is another in that group, #38 in the catalog.







Very typical is the figure in the torso of the bird. It is usually found in the format of the NERS examples, in my opinion, with the opposing curlicues being asymmetric. Steve's and the two Hopkins pieces are what I would call a variant of this form, with the curlicues being symmetric on the axis. Both forms are familiar in the type. However, I've never seen the treatment of your piece, showing the degraded eight pointed star. Other common and diagnostic features are the stacked diamonds in the neck, the headdress, and the distinctive treatment of the comb-like tail with the diagonal element in it.

As you probably know, the possible relationship between these birds and some featured on much more ancient Seljuk examples has been mentioned often, prominently in the writing of Tom Cole. This is the link to his article:

http://www.tcoletribalrugs.com/article60IcocBaluch.html

My opinion is there must be a link. Looking at the Cole evidence, and other rugs in other publications, it is hard to resist the conclusion. How the form got from the Seljuks to 19th and 20th century Baluch group weavers is an unanswered question.

My feeling about your piece is that it is probably the work of a weaver whose tribal group was strongly influenced by other weavers in the greater Baluch tradition, such that the weaver was essentially copying and adapting the neighbors' motives. I don't have a shred of proof for this view, however.

I find your piece interesting, especially those featured tuning forks.

Regards,

Rich Larkin

Ajmal Maiwandi

Dear Steve and Rich,
Thank you for your feedback. The dealer from who I bought this piece seemed to think that it has considerable age (as might be expected from a dealer I suppose). Yet, if his hunch proves to be correct, could it be argued that such weavings were used to inspire more refined and standardized pieces? To my novice eye and touch, this piece has the quality and feel of a piece with considerable age. Rich –Thanks for the link to Tom Cole’s article which I will print out and add to my bed-time reading, but meanwhile are there any theories for specific or special usages for “bird” bags?

The image below is another bag face (as Steve mentioned), with a Baluch attribution, that seems to be very similar to my piece in design, without the bird, and with more symmetry in the S shapes. (Notice the central octagonal design and star and simplified trident).



Another striking feature of the pieces that Rich uploaded from the NERS site is the usage of colour. I know that some of the best Baluch pieces have a large variety of deep saturated colours, but it seems that they reserved some of their most striking colours for “bird” bag faces. My piece has 9 different colours that I can count without going cross-eyed.





Steve you mentioned that:

“My assumption here is that fairly complicated elements that occur in fairly specific configurations in a family of related weavings had significance in the community in which they were used.”

Do you think this would apply to weavings that were produced specifically for commercial purposes? For example, would this apply to the typical Jaf Kurd bag face, produced for export purposes? Or were they stylized specially to suit Western tastes? Although I have read that Baluch weavings produced for commercial purposed are a fairly recent phenomena, is there any evidence that Baluch “bird” bags were produced for sale or export?

Regards,
Ajmal

Steve Price

Hi Ajmal

It's my impression that Belouch group bags weren't of much interest to collectors until the second half of the 20th century, and the bagfaces are too small to have been made to sell to the west as floor coverings. That leaves indigenous use as the reason they were woven unless we postulate that there was some motive that hasn't occurred to anyone yet.

Jaff Kurd bags have nothing in them even close to the Belouch bird in terms of being composed of many fairly complicated elements in an obviously specific arrangement. By this, I refer to the following elements in the more usual Belouch birds:
1. The column of devices in the neck.
2. The row of devices in the body.
3. The spurs.
4. The crest.
5. The form of the tail.

I could add that there are always(?) at least 4, usually more, birds arranged in equal numbers of rows and columns and varying in color.

The first one in your last post is remarkably like the one with which you opened the thread except for the substitution of an atypical bird for the device in the center of the medallion. It would be easy to persuade me that both were made by the same folks at about the same time. It would be less easy to persuade me that any of the other bird bags illustrated in this thread were made later by descendents of those folks. That is, I doubt that the more typical bird bag evolved from the less typical form in your piece.

Your bag may, of course, be very old. But it probably isn't part of a direct line of descent with the others.

Regards

Steve Price

Richard Larkin

Hi Ajmal,

Good finds there, particularly the bag with the octagonal center that closely tracks the design scheme of yours. Now we see the rationale for the eight-pointed star in the middle of that bird. I still think the weaver of yours was winging it, and getting a little creative, within a familiar framework.

I don't doubt that your piece has "considerable age." I thought so myself on first look at your images. The question is, what does that mean? Eighty years, for example, is considerable age; and a khorjin that has had a hard life over that span of time could easily look and feel like yours. I'm not opining that yours is eighty years old, I'm simply suggesting that there likely is ample time between the oldest Baluch sourced pieces of this type and the time of your piece for the design to have morphed into your example.

I don't know how you would be able to figure out what the attitude of the weavers would have been, whether commercial or otherwise. That stuff is mostly guesswork, I think.

As to spectacular saturated color, that's just one more testament to the ability of Mark Hopkins to assemble marvelous collections of pieces with magnificent color.

Rich Larkin

Ajmal Maiwandi

Hi Steve and Rich,
Thanks again for your comments. Steve, thanks for the clarification, what you said about the difference between Jaf bags and bird bags makes sense. Below are two further examples of atypical Baluch bird bags.

I am beginning to think that I am the only one to have come across these atypical bags???
Ajmal

Rich Larkin

Hi Ajmal,

Ah yes! How soon we forget our old friends. That's an especially friendly looking bird in your top khorjin, whom we've met before. Looking at your three bird bags here, and seeing what looks like a similar palette, I'm prompted to ask whether you are acquiring these pieces in one particular region, or from one dealer.

The bird in the lower khorjin looks to be of a different species from the others, possibly wintering among the South Persian tribes.

Rich Larkin

Dinie Gootjes

Hi Ajmal,

Just yesterday we came back from Holland with a bird Baluch and a plan to ask some questions about them on Turkotek, and there I find your thread... You are asking for more unusual birds. I think I have a few. There recently was a bag face on ebay (now sold) with only one bird, of the traditional type, with some checkerboard motifs and others:



The seller put it in the 1940-1969 time bracket. It was only a bit more than a foot square, the front of a small single bag?

The rug we brought back is on the whole more traditional looking, but it has somewhat strange birds: they had to give up much of the glory of their tails to make room for a companion dog, or whatever the little beasts are. The figures in the torso have also lost the curlicues. The quality of the wool is nice, but not so the colours: the red of the outer meander border and one or two of the birds has bled into the white warp and surrounding white knots, and the orange has faded from a strong to a medium colour. This is the only example I have been able to find that must have been part of a pair of khorjin with piled shoulders.






This brings me to the most unusual bird Baluch I have seen:



It was offered on the internet (not ebay) some time ago. These birds also have dogs with them, but the Yomud-like rolled leaf border and the pair of human figures in the side of the field sets it apart from anything I have ever seen in bird Baluch. Could this have been a dowry piece?
I always look at this picture with mixed feelings. We bid on it, and for a week we were the highest bidders. Then we got an email that the piece had already been sold before we put in our bid. They had just not gotten around to taking down the ad .

One question I have: are these birds associated with a certain area, or do more Baluch or Baluch related groups weave them? Some of the examples look like having the colourfulness of Seistan pieces or the reds of the Khorassan. Then again others look more like Afghanistan to me. But who am I?

Dinie

Martin Andersen

Hi All

When looking at all these birds (or whatever they are) it is fascinating how archaic they look. And Ajmals bird in the octagon, even though it may not be an extremely early sample, sure is a part in a long and interesting history.

These drawings are from http://www.tcoletribalrugs.com/article35Moshkova.html


a) Line drawing of the painting by Lippos Memmi, 1330-40, b) Line drawing of a painting by Nicolo di Buonacorso, 1370-80


Lippos Memmi


Nicolo di Buonacorso

regards
Martin

Martin Andersen

Hi Rich

I know it’s a bit farfetched but these trees may make the pitchfork designs on Ajmals bag to broken branches of the ancient Persian Tree of Life

And the Marby rug sure is interesting (I think especially in connection to the Turkmen Guls, but that’s of course a bit of topic)

Martin

Ajmal Maiwandi

Hello Everyone,

Rich – Although I got these bag from different dealers, I have been told separately that they all originate from Khorassan or Seistan. At least one of the dealers, the one who sold me the first bag I posted. is well informed and in the business for many years so I have no reason to doubt him. He also claimed that the bag was between 120-150 years old. When I asked him how he ascertained this, he simply said that he had taken a educated guess based on having handled thousands of pieces, many of them Baluch.

Some additional information on the first bird bag I posted. There is extensive use of silk. All the brighter red S shapes are in Silk. Also the red square dots surrounding the tridents are silk. The red central star, I believe, is also silk although it was not as obvious to me under my table lamp as the other sections. I will check on this tomorrow in the daylight and post additional images in the coming days.

Regards,
Ajmal

Steve Price

Hi Ajmal

... claimed that the bag was between 120-150 years old. When I asked ... he simply said that he had ... handled thousands of pieces, many of them Baluch.

This rationale is ridiculous, but widespread in Rugdom. Unless he handled thousands of Belouch pieces of documented ages spanning several hundred years, he cannot possibly attribute any Belouch rug to the 120-150 year window with reasonable certainty. It's like him saying that he can read Chinese and telling you that he's handled thousands of untranslated Chinese books when you ask him how he learned to do so.

The geographic attribution may be reliable. Experienced dealers know the sources of rugs that they've bought over the years, and if similar rugs have been woven in a certain area for several decades, it's likely they were being woven there for longer than that.

Regards

Steve Price

Ajmal Maiwandi

Hi Steve,
Point well taken.
The thing is that it is not so simple. He was being coy and making a understatement. Once I was with this particular dealer and he pulled out old issues of Hali and pointed to six or seven pieces that he said he had sold to international dealers. He then pulled out an old photo book in which pictures of those exact pieces were taken in his shop. None of this means that the piece I have is as old as he says it is, but is there such a thing as intuition in this business. If a piece he sold was then displayed in Hali with a attribution and date, can it mean that the next time he sees a piece of that quality, feel, and design that he may suspect that it has the same age as the one before it? He doesn’t know it exactly…he hasn’t carbon dated the rug, if that is possible, but he relies on his experience. I would also like to prefer science over intuition, but if there is anything I have learned in the short time that I have been collecting is that there is no exact science to collecting rugs.
Regards,
Ajmal

Steve Price

Hi Ajmal

It doesn't matter how many dealers say that a certain piece is a 120-150 year old Belouch, how experienced those dealers are, or how many wonderful pieces they've sold to famous collectors and museums. The only Belouch rugs that can be documented to have existed in 1875 (133 years ago) are the small number in the Victoria and Albert Museum. This isn't an adequate database from which to generate criteria. Their intuition? The best scientific minds routinely use their intuition to frame hypotheses, which they then test rigorously. My best estimate is that at least 90% of the most beautiful hypotheses crumble when confronted with facts. Intuition makes a great foundation from which to generate hypotheses, but hypotheses aren't even theories until they've been tested pretty extensively.

Regards

Steve Price

Ajmal Maiwandi

Hi Steve,

All very valid points. It’s also useful to know that the earliest documented examples of Baluch weavings date from around 1875. The pieces from the Victoria and Albert are all very “refined” and wonderful pieces, so it may be accurate to assume that there is a tradition of at least a few dozen years of Baluch weaving before this in order for them to arrive at the point of making those rugs. This would hypothetically place the “window” for very early Baluch weavings in the beginning of the 19th century/late 18th Century???

As for intuition, in addition to reading and researching, not to mention asking the opinions of expert Turkotekers, at times it seems intuition is all that we novice collectors have to help us sort though the piles of rugs. When you go to a dealer and see a piece you like the feel of, there is sometimes very little time to make up your mind. Some dealers may let you take away pieces that you can then show to those that know more, but usually from what I know decisions are made very fast. Pacing yourself and taking your time to make an educated guess is preferable no matter what one does, but I like to think that there is still room for trust, between dealer and buyer, and intuition in this hobby until such time that we novices are in better positions to make more educated guesses.

Rich- Thanks for your comments. Although I know well that dealers have more than enough reasons to say what they think will sell their product, I would like to think that, besides the interpersonal aspect of sitting with a dealer and discussing a shared interest, they are not all out to rip one off. I have come to respect and admire Steve’s scientific attitude on testing and verifying hypothesis when attributing rugs, but that is not an option for all of us all the time.

Anyway, I did not want this to turn into a tread on the age of my bird bag or about the pitfalls of collecting in general so let’s get back to looking at and discussing more “atypical” bird bags.

Regards,
Ajmal

James Blanchard

Hi Ajmal,

Here is another Baluch bird example, though not taken from a NE Persian Baluch rug, not a bag-face. With an "eye of faith", one could draw a parallel with the drawing of the bird shown in Cole's article. It has been suggested elsewhere that some early Yomut trappings have bird forms in geometric enclosures that might be descendents from these earlier forms. I think that is all speculation, but fun nonetheless.

With regards to speculations about relative age, I think that when there is some uncertainty or diversity of opinion about the precise age among relatively experienced ruggies, then I guess the relative age starts to become a moot point. I like your bags and they look "old enough" to me to be of interest.

Cheers,

James

Steve Price

Hi Anyone

If I've been harsh, I apologize. That wasn't my intention. I recognize that there are no databases of 19th century rugs with documented ages on which to base criteria for age. My protest is against behaving as though there are.

Not having a sound basis on which to generate criteria for age attribution leaves us some options about making and/or accepting them:
1. We can pretend that someone who's learned the marketplace lore on the subject has, somehow, acquired the ability to know the unknowable. I reject this. Can I support my position with evidence? It doesn't require any, actually, but I'd cite the vast differences between the intuitions of different experts. Jon Thompson wrote the catalog for Sotheby's sale of part of his Turkmen collection. He made no attribution more specific than the century in which each piece was probably made (nearly all, 19th century), and included a statement acknowledging that these were uncertain. Siawasch Azadi wrote most of the catalog for Wie Blumen in der Wuste, a Turkmen exhibition held in Hamburg in conjunction with ICOC. His attributions include a very large number of 17th and 18th century dates, without a hint that some might not be correct. Azadi and Thompson are both experts and know far more than most dealers, even those with lots of experience. They've each handled thousands of rugs and done field work among the Turkmen. They've not only read the best books, they wrote some of them. But they can't both be right.
2. We can take the approach that I've seen used by Michael Wendorf (among others). Using criteria derived more or less according to Rich's description, he simply says things like, "this rug is older (or younger) than most of the others". If pressed, he might provide a window of about 50 years in which he suspects that it was made, but without implying that great confidence should be given to it. I think most collectors can assign relative ages to many pieces with modest accuracy, and that this is a reasonable way to deal with the question.
3. We can accept the fact that age attribution is full of uncertainty and that the narrower the range given, the less likely it is to be correct.
4. We can ignore age as a factor. This isn't likely to happen, for many reasons. Antique collectors either have to pay attention to age attributions or stop collecting antiques. There is also the matter of monetary value, which greatly depends on the age of a rug.

I agree with Ajmal's conclusion drawn from the Victoria and Albert's Belouch holdings: clearly, if the Belouch were weaving bags as refined as those by the third quarter of the 19th century, their weaving tradition must go back quite a way. On the other hand, we also need to remember that either the ones in the V & A aren't typical or the folks who selected them for inclusion in the V & A holdings lacked the ability to discriminate excellence from mediocrity.

Finally, Ajmal, you wrote: ... taking your time to make an educated guess is preferable ... there is still room for trust, between dealer and buyer, and intuition in this hobby until such time that we novices are in better positions to make more educated guesses.
1. Dealers who have earned trust, and there are many who have earned mine, should be trusted.
2. If intuition differs from wishful thinking, I don't see how to tell one from the other. It seems like a poor basis for making purchasing decisions unless the amount of money involved is small.
3. Any dealer who attributes a weaving to a narrow window of time and tells me that handling thousands of rugs gave him the ability to do this reliably, then shows me photos of published rugs that passed through his hands as further evidence, has lost my trust. Maybe he knows that he's speaking nonsense in an effort to deceive, in which case he's dishonest. Maybe he genuinely believes the nonsense he speaks, but that doesn't make it true. Either way, his words don't earn my confidence.

Regards

Steve Price

Ajmal Maiwandi

Hi Steve,
Thanks for your useful comments and references, which I will no doubt search out and add to my reading list.

So as to try to put an end to this matter I quote below from my original posting.

“ He also claimed that the bag was between 120-150 years old. When I asked him how he ascertained this, he simply said that he had taken a educated guess based on having handled thousands of pieces, many of them Baluch.”

Although I like the discussion my comments above has provoked and it has been useful, I would like to make it clear that nowhere in the post did I say that I actually believed this dealer when he made this claim or that in fact it was a valid way to accurately date carpets. I also did not say that I did not believe his conjecturing, simply because can anyone say with certainty that this bag is NOT as old as he claims? Probably not with any serious degree of certainty. So in light of a lack of hard evidence, either way, I say we defer this matter until such time that attributing age to this and other pieces becomes a common and accurate practice.

I think there is a big difference between intuition and “wishful thinking”…..intuitio n works both ways (it can also prevent one from buying something) while wishful thinking is a one-way stroll that ends at a chest full of gold (or antique rugs) under the rainbow. Lastly, as we cannot with any degree of certainty judge the age of my bird bag, I think the credibility of this particular dealer, no matter how wild or implausible his claims, is still an open issue. The proof is in the pudding?

Steve – You said,

“Any dealer who attributes a weaving to a narrow window of time and tells me that handling thousands of rugs gave him the ability to do this reliably, then shows me photos of published rugs that passed through his hands as further evidence, has lost my trust.

If you re-read my post, I think you will see that this was NOT the sequence of events that I described. The dealer did not associate his ability to date this piece with his having sold published rugs. I wrote about the published rugs he sold, which he told me about on a completely different occasion, to simply make the point that this dealer has had high quality pieces pass through his hands. By raising this I meant to convey that he has a good eye, has picked out items of high interest in the past, and (in light of published attributes of some of the items he has sold) may be able to make an accurate guess on the age of similar items. By the way, does a dealer earn trust simply by not making conjectures in a profession that, by your own account of criterion for age, is largely guesswork ?

James – Thanks for posting examples of additional Baluch birds. Although I agree with your conclusion that age is a moot point in this case, making the detour into the issue has been educational.

Regards,
Ajmal

Rich Larkin

Hi Folks,

I have a little handbook called "Persian Art" dated 1876, authored by "Maj. R. Murdoch Smith, R. E." He was "Director of the Persian Telegraph Department" (in England, I suspect) and the buyer of a large portion of the Persian Art material for the East Kensington Museum in London (later to be named the "Victoria & Albert") in the 1870's. The handbook was intended to be a guide for persons touring the museum collections. It has detailed lists of items acquired, along with short descriptive sections for various kinds of items. In the "Textile Fabric" chapter, there is a section on carpet making in Persia. No illustrations of pile rugs, though there are a couple of drawings of embroidered textiles he called "carpets."

Interestingly, he says, "The finest are unquestionably those of Kurdistan, of which good specimens exist in the museum." I wonder what rugs he is speaking of. Of Turkoman, he says, The booklet is dated in July, 1876. I believe those two V & A Baluch bagfaces were acquired later in the year, and are not mentioned or alluded to in the text. Nevertheless, the Major is indicating a mindset towards nomadic styles of weaving that suggests that he would also have looked at those Baluch pieces as crude.

Rich Larkin

Steve Price

Hi James

... there must have been Baluch rugs much earlier than the mid-19th century, did they all disappear or do some of them still exist and we just don't know it. Maybe Boucher's dating wasn't as aggressive as some might think.

I don't doubt that the Belouch wove rugs before the mid-19th century, although I do doubt that many of those still exist and I'm sure that nobody has reliable criteria for identifying them.

Boucher's date attributions were very aggressive. If he had good bases for them, nobody knows what they were.

Regards

Steve Price

James Blanchard

Hi Steve,

Do you think there are fewer extant Baluch rugs from the first half of the 19th century than Turkmen or other groups? I agree that we don't have any accurate ways to date Baluch rugs, except perhaps the presence of synthetic dyes. But for those rugs without synthetic dyes, I suppose one could argue that estimates for later attribution might be on as shaky ground as older estimates, since we really have almost no documented reference points. One argument against shifting the dating back to any substantial degree is the likely presence of a "survival curve", which would make the oldest rugs the rarest. But I guess the point is that the older and rarer ones that we do see now might be older than we think.

James

Steve Price

Hi James

There might be older Belouch rugs around. The usual argument against it is that they weren't interesting to many collectors until the mid-20th century, so the usual routes of preservation didn't exist for them.

As for Turkmen, there were nearly no documented pre-1875 examples until C-14 dating showed a handful to be much earlier than that. But that still leaves a window between about 1650 and 1875 without documented specimens.

Regards

Steve Price

Marla Mallett

Just a couple of divergent thoughts on the matter of establishing a textile’s age:

Occasionally I’ve been lucky when visiting semi-nomadic weavers in Turkey to encounter a family which has kept “heirloom” pieces, and the ladies could show me weavings their grandmother, or in some cases great-grandmother made. Or an elderly aunt. Then through much discussion of dates, ages, etc., we could arrive at pretty accurate estimates of the textile’s age. In such cases, however, those ladies can’t normally say whether the great-grandmother, for example, made the piece as a teenager or as a middle-aged woman. But to see the direct line of descent from one generation of weavings to the next is truly illuminating—to see the evolution in both design and weave within a single family tradition. I only know of one author who has published this kind of field data, firmly establishing both date and provenance for specific pieces, and that is Robert Nooter, in his book, The Woven Rugs and Textiles from the Caucasus. I have one Turkish picker friend who has bought directly from families in Iran for many years, and he can sometimes relate reliable family information. Although this can accurately establish an origin, it doesn’t help with dating pieces much over 100 or 125 years of age. Unfortunately most pickers will not divulge ANY information concerning the pieces they are selling.

Over the past 30 years I’ve handled lots and lots of kilims, bags, etc. But the people I’ve gotten them from in Turkey have handled many, many more. To take advantage of their knowledge and intuitive sense of relative age I’ve gotten into the habit of discussing age ONLY AFTER I’ve made my buying decisions. Then there is no incentive on anybody’s part to exaggerate ages.

It’s a shame, but it seems that we normally base relative age estimates on quality differences—both craftsmanship and aesthetics. Is that always reliable? We quickly assume that the better pieces are older. But is this assumption justified? I’m not sure that it is, as there have always been young, inexperienced weavers along with older, much more skillful individuals. In any group of weavers there have always been differences in aesthetic sensitivities and creative abilities. If this is so, shouldn’t artistic merit trump age in terms of what we consider the most “desirable” or most “collectible”?

Marla

James Blanchard

Marla,

I couldn't agree more with your last sentiment. Often when we think about age, we think of the age of the weaving, not the age of the weaver. I expect that it takes many years and the production of a substantial number of rugs before a weaver really masters her craft, both technically and aesthetically. As you note, we often designate the finer and more artistically accomplished weavings as being older chronologically, but not necessarily from an older or more experienced weaver. I expect that this confounds our relative age estimation of rugs within the same general era. In the end, for me a rug or textile worth buying is one that has aesthetic characteristics that elevates it above others. This is largely a matter of personal taste, which is subject to social conditioning. Often, but not always, these turn out to be the older ones. But I expect that we would find that most of the best were woven by older and more experienced weavers.

James

Ajmal Maiwandi

Hi All.
I got around to doing some digging and found some interesting pieces that should add to the discussion. Rich – you’ll notice in the first image, below, that the birds are the same design as my third bird bag…the “mushwani” bird. I was glad to find that this “species” makes another appearance in Baluch weaving…is it also not the same as on the cover of the Boucher book?



The second image below is another bag face that may have been a template for the overall design. Notice the tridents in the square frame with the 2 flanking dots.



The third “species”, although much rarer, to visit the Baluch is below.



The fourth below, surrounded by four legged creatures, is also pretty rare I suspect.



I though the below bag face was interesting in that it mixed two well know bag face motifs into one design, which I suspect happened in the case of my first bag.



The variation on the square bodied, long tailed, long necked standard “bird” is the one below which has truncated tails and shorted necks, with a beveled/shaped body.



Lastly, this item may settle the heated debate on whether these two legged animals are chickens or peacocks. The ones here seem to be clearly chickens, which would make all the others peacocks???



Regards,
Ajmal

Steve Price

Hi Marla

You wrote, ... shouldn’t artistic merit trump age in terms of what we consider the most “desirable” or most “collectible”?

Maybe, but collecting is a neurotic activity, not a rational one. While I place a lot of weight on aesthetics and artistic merit in the things I collect, I'd be thrilled to own a few scraps of the carbonized remnants of Bronze Age textile recovered at Catal Huyuk. They are no more aesthetically wonderful than the contents of a bag of charcoal, but textiles don't get more collectible than those are.


Hi Rich

Regarding the Belouch bagfaces in the V & A, you wrote of one of the major donors, ... a mindset towards nomadic styles of weaving that suggests that he would also have looked at those Baluch pieces as crude.

That's almost certainly true, and is true today of a subset of ruggies. These are the folks whose passion is urban workshop carpets, the near perfection of their extraordinarily intricate designs is the magnet that draws them in. I don't share their passion, but would be hard pressed if asked to prove that mine is intellectually or ethically superior.

Regards

Steve Price

Rich Larkin

Hi Steve,

You're right. I used to have a rug business relationship with some Persians who could not understand what it was about Baluch rugs that pleased me. They were very respectful, but just couldn't get the Baluch. They liked big Sarouks.

Marla,

You are saying a lot of true things on these threads, and the last comment is one of them. The notion that quality in handwoven goods is a straight line downwards trend from old to new is erroneous, though it seems to be a popular method for relative dating. Nevertheless, I think your comments in James's kilim thread about the care taken in earlier times regarding weaving practices and materials choices ("weave balance"...an excellent phrase!) are very well taken. The absence of evidence of such care is good reason to suspect late production, though we can seldom be sure.

Rich Larkin

Marla Mallett

Over the LONG run, the general notion that “older pieces are usually better” tends to be true, at least in most collectors' views. Gradual degeneration, is almost a given within at least the past two or three hundred years in some parts of Turkey. (I have to talk about the area I’m most familiar with.) But this downward progression is terribly uneven, and goes by fits and starts within a community. We must of course realize that superb works can appear at any time.

In the SHORT run, the notion that “earlier is better” just doesn’t hold up. Let’s try to imagine and compare two pieces woven by Aysha, out on the hillsides of Central Anatolia. First, a kilim woven by her at age 15. By that time she has developed some degree of competency, and she’s been working under the tutelage of her mother or older sister, copying the work of others around her. Her motifs are not always perfectly articulated, and she may have simplified some elements; they may even be a bit clumsy…Then second, let’s try to envision a kilim that Aysha produced at age 45—at the height of her weaving “career,” when she was truly skilled in all aspects of the craft. By this time, if she was an intelligent and talented artisan, she was very likely bored with repetitive work and confident enough in her abilities to be creative and try new ideas. The “better” kilim, in all respects, was almost guaranteed to be the one 30 years LATER than the first. What does THAT do to our “earlier is better” notion?

Marla

Ajmal Maiwandi

Hi Marla,
Although I also do not agree with the “earlier is better” notion, I am not sure that I understand it in the same sense that you have eloquently explained using the example of Aisha. This may apply to the notion that “later weavings of individual weavers are better than their earlier weavings”. If Aisha were not part of a tradition, but the first weaver in History then this theory may also apply, but as she is part of a wider practice, by the time she is 15, there is another lady in the next village, Leila, who is 45 and weaving wonderful rugs. In the chronology, Leila’s rug is 30 years earlier than Aisha’s rug (that she would weave as a 45 year old) and may be “better” due to the availability of materials / colours / etc. Does this make sense?

Another question would be - In the West we understand that the most creative part of the lives of most adults is when they were children. If the question is not only about technique and skill gathered through practice, but also about creativity/openness and willingness to explore, then would the same not apply to young Turkish weavers?
Ajmal

James Blanchard

Hi Ajmal,

Your point is a good one, but I have found that people in rugdom tend to focus only on individual pieces, and where they fit in some chronological sequence. That is where I think Marla's caution is important. If there were a more organized database around rug collections then we would start to discuss the statistical principles around classifying rugs, but as long as we stick with individual level approaches, we have no firm basis on which to proceed.

James

Rich Larkin

Hi all,

I agree with both Marla and Ajmal in these two most recent posts. The fact that both are true points to the other fact that is seldom acknowledged: The whole issue of the change in quality and character of weaving production over the last century and a half has been much more complex than most published material in rugdom would suggest.

Ajmal,

That's a nice string of Baluch bird images you've managed to find. I guess we have to agree that image #2 represents a confident mastery of that design. As for No.1, I think the one row of birds looking over their shoulders saves the thing from boredom. Don't you think so?

I keep holding out for a bird in the design of the second image of post no. 12 in this thread, and I haven't given up. But I must admit, the weavers are fully capable of producing a clear cut, real bird when they want to. If mine is (or was) a bird, it raises the familiar issue about the extent to which weavers producing a degraded motif understand what it represents.

We'll never know.

Rich Larkin

Rich Larkin

Hi Marla,

I have always felt that the decline in quality of color in handwoven pile rugs, kilims and related textiles in Turkey after the introduction of synthetic dyes was severe and nearly complete until recently. By contrast, it seemed to me, other weaving areas maintained pockets of steadfast adherence to natural dyes, at least in part. Still others mastered the effective use of synthetic dyes. Would you agree? My impressions were had from a distance, as I've never visited Turkey.

Rich Larkin

Igina Barchi

Hi All
a little contibution to this thread: Baluch "birds" from my virtual collection of bags













regards
Igina Barchi

Marla Mallett

There are many different aspects of “creativity” one might consider, and differences in opinion as to when one reaches a peak in that regard. In my early days as an artist/craftsman, we were often told that the 20’s were one’s prime creative years. That’s a scary thought! The rest is all down hill??? I don’t think that history bears this out, as it is the mature work of most major artists that is the most important. Breakthroughs may occur early on, but a synthesis usually occurs in an individual’s mature work. The synthesis demands just as much creativity, and indeed more thoughtfulness, than a young person’s rebellious “splash.” The success of young artists in 20th/21st century Western society, I think is largely due to rapidly changing fashions, in which a premium is put on the “new.” We also can’t discount the energy and stamina that go with youth!

The nature of kilim or brocade weaving, complex as they are technically, present far longer learning curves than many other media. Pile carpet knotting is a far easier PROCESS, and thus one can master the technical essentials much faster; the knotted-pile artisan is thus free to experiment and “create” much sooner--theoretically. The same is true of applying paint to canvas. But whatever the media, one must internalize the processes, and thoroughly understand the inherent restrictions and opportunities before one can make a significant and coherent visual statement.

As for young people having a greater “openness and a willingness to explore,” I think that is a very individual thing. We all know teenagers who are far more concerned about “fitting in” than with being “different” or “individual.” Conversely, I know 80-year-old persons who are still demonstrating a curiosity about everything in the world around them, and who never stop trying new things. Since weaving is such a repetitive activity, and much of it is just plain boring, the process itself tends to either kill off the desire to ever do any more of it, or make one truly eager to try something new. (Just guess why after 20 years of weaving full time, I gradually turned to studying and selling antique and ethnographic textiles!)

When I started visiting nomad and village weavers in Turkey many years ago, I was eager to discuss with them their attitudes—not just how, but also why they did what they did. We’ve been so inundated by rug book fantasies, that I wanted to learn for myself if my intuitions about probable attitudes toward their work were accurate. In nearly every case, I found that these women’s approaches to their work paralleled mine almost exactly! They were delighted and sometimes thrilled with their successes, just as I was with mine. They were bored with the repetitive aspects, just as I was with mine. Though many were passionate about their craft, as I was about mine, they sometimes fell into funks and experienced just as much difficulty finding “inspiration” as did I. They struggled to resolve design problems, just as I did with my work. They were proud of their small innovations, and enjoyed showing them off to neighbors. But having a proprietary attitude toward those ideas, they were dismayed to soon find them copied throughout the village. These women never had any difficulty or reluctance to tell me exactly who in their village was the best weaver, the best craftswoman, the most sensitive colorist, the “best” artist. I assure you, these were NEVER the teenager or the young woman in her 20s, but rather the master.

I also found that my attitudes toward “commercial” products versus work done for ones’ self exactly paralleled my own experience. The pressures of working for the marketplace not only generate boredom but also a less interesting product. One does NOT experiment when one’s income is on the line. One can’t afford to waste either materials or time. In such a circumstance it’s only practical to stick with what is comfortable and to do copywork; one is foolish to risk innovation. For these reasons, ethnographic weavings are, for me, the primary pieces of interest among Middle Eastern rugs/kilims/bags etc.…they are the arena in which the “creative” individual flourishes.

Marla

Ajmal Maiwandi

Hi Marla,
The wisdom and experience evident in your reply makes me think that my question was rather silly in the first place. As an architect I know that the designs I made in college were far more interesting that some of the ones I made later, mainly because of what you said about the economics. It does not pay to risk other peoples’ money on unorthodox design, not unless you do it long enough that the explorative nature of the work is what brings in a new breed of clients. Based on your comments, could it be right to assume that designs in weavings in general that stray from the orthodox or repetitive known “commercial” designs, were made mainly for personal use?

Would anyone disagree with the conjecture that the Baluch, notwithstanding the Kurds, may be the most “unorthodox” when it comes to design, of the Central/South Asian weavers OR that the Baluch, taking it for granted that there are very many Baluch tribes spread across an area the size of Texas, mix up their designs and juxtapose a greater number of motifs? If true, could this be because they did not produce their weavings for commercial purposes and thus, while staying within a recognizable language, were free enough to experiment?
Regards,
Ajmal

Marla Mallett

Rich,

Sorry…I neglected to address your comments about the turn to synthetic dyes in the Middle East. (I’m getting much too long winded!) In general, I can agree that their introduction was a disaster for rug/textile production…primarily because they were improperly used in so many places. One can produce “art” with any materials, and I’ve never been able to reject an occasional fabulous weaving simply because it included synthetic dyes. (That would include nearly all extant Moroccan weavings.) One can of course produce marvelous color subtleties with synthetics, if one takes the time to mix colors properly. In fact, for a few years I dyed a lot of my own weaving materials using acid dyes, because I liked the variations I could get, and also the “abrash” that was possible when I crowded the dyepots to produce uneven saturation. I frequently used these yarns along with commercially dyed yarns. You are right—that there was considerable variation in the success that weavers from the 1870s on through the 20th century had as they adapted and used the dyes available to them…sometimes clinging to the old natural dyes because they didn’t like what they saw as others changed over. But the MAJOR impetus behind the switch-over had to do with TIME. Gathering and processing natural dye materials was a time-consuming job; if one was concerned with producing rugs for the marketplace, it made good sense to buy those convenient little packets of dyes. Thus in places where the weaving was primarily for home use—primarily ethnographic—natural dyes persisted for longer. They persisted longer in connection with flat-weave production than with market-driven pile-rug production.

In my opinion, most of the recent efforts at revivals of traditional weaving in the Middle East that focus on using natural dyes are much less successful than they might be because the dye masters too often produce only a small range of fully saturated primary, and secondary hues. They’ve succumbed to the unrelenting propaganda surrounding the desirability of only “fully saturated colors” and rarely think about producing the tertiary hues, shades, tints and grayed colors that most sensitive colorists use as foils for their most brilliant hues.

A great many rug collectors have such an “educated” abhorrence of synthetic dyes that they are unwilling to even consider with an open mind the quite different color sensibilities developed in a few other cultures. For example, the best of 20th century Afghani/Pakistani tribal embroideries are wild mixes of brilliant magentas, oranges, and other strong hues. The difference is that those embroiderers learned to use these in unique ways that the traditional 20th century rug makers never quite accomplished. These artisans instead used the newly available dyes in ways appropriate for them; refusing to be restrained by an old aesthetic.

Marla

Paul Smith

Hello everyone--

I am following the discussion of age with fascination, having been in the thick of one of the last threads around this topic, focused on Turkmen that time. I was surprised to learn then that, outside of the C-14 work on a handful of Turkmen rugs, age attribution problems are no different for Baluch and Turkmen, in spite of the common assumption that the Baluch are the relative newcomers to the field. We have no verifiable date information before the mid-1870s for either of these groups. I appreciate Steve's patience with presenting his elegant argument again on this topic, since it is the indisputable foundation on which these discussions of age must build.

I wanted to tread carefully into Marla's discussion of the progression of skills within a weaver's lifetime...My impression of kilim and carpet weaving was that there was an awful lot of work before the loom ever gets involved, with spinning, dyeing, and so on. I would assume that girls would first be instructed in these tasks and that by the time they get to do actual weaving that they are very experienced with the materials they will use. The texture and actual quality of the weaving materials would then be to some degree independent of the age of the individual weaver working on the loom. This would explain why evaluating the quality and texture of a given group's weavings could be correlated with age, since that would likely change gradually over several generations, unless there is a sudden catastrophe like forced settlement. And I would think that, because of the effort involved in producing the materials, they would be too valuable to be given to an apprentice to waste in playful weaving attempts, and that older women would supervise the process until the apprentice has mastered the skills and designs. It would seem to me that in an individual group, that getting a chance to weave a carpet on the loom would be somewhat of a big deal for a young woman, maybe even a rite of passage of sorts. I don't know how this figures in an individual weaver's artistic development, but I would think it would serve to perpetuate traditional designs and limit experimentation in the early years of a weaver's work. In that model, a more playful reading of a traditional design would more likely be the work of a more experienced weaver than a novice, who would produce more conservative interpretations of a group's design pool. Maybe mathematicians produce their most innovative work in their twenties, but artists, especially those working in a traditional medium, tend to improve with age. I am often reminded of a venerable Japanese aikido (a martial art) sensei telling a group of students that the answers to all of their questions was: "train more."

I could imagine, then, that a family of rug sellers, in, say, Kabul, over generations could develop an accurate sense of the relative age (if not of a scientific absolute chronological measure) of a given group's weavings, had they encountered them over generations, both through analysis of the texture of the weaving, the quality of the wool, and of course design and colors. This knowledge would be passed through oral tradition and could be fairly accurate (oral tradition being surprisingly accurate on many historical points, though, again, not in absolute terms of dating--which perhaps is more of a Western agenda), but would also possibly be a professional secret to some degree, not willingly divulged to outsiders. It is not Steve's scientific certainty, but an entirely different epistemological tradition. Still, not by definition without value. Because we are unlikely to acquire more hard data, it is through this sort of analysis that we will add to our understanding of the history of these weavings. Is the answer to all our questions: "handle more"??

Ultimately it is for me. There is something attractive in antiquity and rarity, but it is a symptom of a more complex neurosis, as discussed by Dr. Price earlier.

Paul

James Blanchard

Hi all,

As I have mentioned earlier in this thread, I find the argument about the considerable time it takes to master weaving art a compelling one. But it does beg a question... why do we so often hear that a particularly fine and beautiful weaving was a "dowry piece", made for a teenagers wedding?

James

Marla Mallett

Two possibilities:

First, because mama and the aunties contributed pieces to the dowry. Second, because the label “dowry piece” has a very nice ring to it as a sales pitch. In actuality, what, exactly, distinguishes such an item???

Marla

James Blanchard

Hi Marla,

I like both of your points.

James

Steve Price

Hi Paul

You wrote,
... rug sellers, in, say, Kabul, over generations could develop an accurate sense of the relative age (if not of a scientific absolute chronological measure) of a given group's weavings, had they encountered them over generations, both through analysis of the texture of the weaving, the quality of the wool, and of course design and colors. This knowledge would be passed through oral tradition and could be fairly accurate (oral tradition being surprisingly accurate on many historical points, though, again, not in absolute terms of dating--which perhaps is more of a Western agenda), but would also possibly be a professional secret to some degree, not willingly divulged to outsiders. It is not Steve's scientific certainty, but an entirely different epistemological tradition. Still, not by definition without value. Because we are unlikely to acquire more hard data, it is through this sort of analysis that we will add to our understanding of the history of these weavings. Is the answer to all our questions: "handle more"??

A couple of points:
1. "Scientific certainty", by convention, usually means that there is a 95% probability that it's correct. The power of science isn't that it gets at ultimate truth - that's actually pretty rare - it's that it includes a mechanism for discarding possible alternative explanations and (the important part) that it has practical consequences. It's the approach that gave us computer monitors, ball point pens, and weapons of mass destruction.
2. I doubt that the hypothetical rug dealer family would function much differently than any contemporary rug dealer who's been around for a long time. He got to know who was producing what at various times because his suppliers were getting them for him at those times. He didn't get his expertise by handling lots of rugs, he got it by handling lots of rugs of known origin. If we "handle more", we'll surely learn more. But what we learn won't include expertise in age attribution unless the things we handle are of known age.

You're a musician, so maybe we can look at the issues in terms of your own experience. I'm willing to wager that I could send you 15 second recordings of music written by western composers within the past 500 years and you could attribute each to a 25 to 50 year window pretty reliably, most likely could name the composers or narrow them down to small groups. But if I sent you 15 second clips from some tradition with which you're unfamiliar (Chinese? Japanese? Persian?) you'd probably be stumped. Listening to lots more of it probably wouldn't help much unless it came with age attributions attached.

Regards

Steve Price

Paul Smith

Steve--

I'm not sure that something as ephemeral as music is easily compared to an artifact.

The most interesting component of your analogy to music for me is that outside the European tradition, the relative age of any particular piece of music would not be very important. The function of the music, and quality of the performance happening right then is what would be most important, and in various traditions the artistic lineage of the performer might figure into the appraisal. Certain important pieces would be recognized for their great antiquity but not valued by age alone, but by the veneration owed them though repetition of them for so many people over such a long period. Probably no living tradition of ancient music has been so carefully cultivated and preserved as that of Imperial Japanese court music, gagaku, yet no one knows the name of a single composer or the date (even the century) of composition of any of the traditional repertoire, though it is possible to find references to performances of particular pieces in historical documents.

It is a European convention to be so concerned with precision of age and time, and other cultures have absorbed this agenda to varying degrees as European culture was imposed on the world through imperialism. But traditionally, most cultures don't care that much about how old something is. Old stuff wears out, they get new stuff. I remember visiting the Jim Thompson House in Bangkok, Thailand...He was an American entrepreneur who stocked his house (now a museum) with fabulous Thai antiques. Apparently many of the Buddhist monasteries who allowed him to acquire their ancient artifacts were intrigued that he thought they were important, since they were the same as the new items being made by the monks at that time. Sure, you can have this old Buddha, we have just made a nice new one.

It is a collision of traditions to have us concerned over dating rugs. Really the issue is over something even more nebulous and complex--quality. Whatever that is. Age plays a role, as do numerous other factors. In this, maybe music is a good analogy. The age of a given piece of music has very little bearing on whether or not we enjoy it.

Paul

Steve Price

Hi Paul

I doubt that the village and tribal weavers much cared about the ages of their weavings, either. That's a piece of the neurosis that manifests as collecting antiques and ethnographic artifacts.

Why music attribution should be subject to different rules than attribution of visual or tactile arts isn't obvious to me. How about automobiles? I'm not an auto afficionado, but have been around long enough to be able to give pretty good date and manufacturer attributions to American made autos made since about 1950. I remember more or less who was making what at various times since then. Show me photos of autos that were neither made here nor imported in significant numbers, and my guesses will be much less reliable. Looking at (or handling) many more of them won't make me much better unless they come with attribution information attached. With that, I'd probably learn it pretty easily. If, on the other hand, I was given lots of photos that had erroneous information attached, I'd probably learn a lot of wrong things. The problem in attribution of antique rugs is that we have no way to know whether what we've learned is right or wrong.

Regards

Steve Price

Rich Larkin

Hi Igina,

Nice birds there. The critter in your first image is more bird-like than most of those, although he could be a refugee from Dr. Seuss. He is drawn much like the one in the famous V & A pair of bags. In that second piece, the horizontal elements in the diagonal across the tail give it an interesting, wavy look. I wonder whether the weaver knew what she was doing there.

Rich Larkin

Derek Dyckman

Hi All,

Date attribution for these weavings is never going to be as certain as we need it, unless some aspiring, unbiased historian can go back and put all the needed pieces of the puzzle in a concise format with good examples & convincing justification. With proper research & placement in chronological order of important residual clues that remain lying fragmented about in various journals, textile monographs & reports - the closure we all crave in knowing the most exact age possible of that 'old woolly broad' may still be attainable if we hurry.

As an aside, I collect another form of Islamic ceramic art that is little coveted & valued - but whose detailed evolution was very well(if not obscurely) documented in the heydey of it's limited production in the late 19th century. It is absolutely fascinating whenever a piece comes to market to be in the know & see what region of origin & age are attributed to it - often these claims are off by a 100+ years & 1000's of miles - yet the clues are all there for those who care to look.

I'm sure this also holds true, somehow, with the unkowns in the rug world today ......


Derek Dyckman

Paul Smith

Steve--

The reason music doesn't work so well for your analogy is that there are no documents before the invention of sound recording (oddly, this is simultaneous with our magical mid-1870s dates for Turkmen and Baluchi weavings, as Edison's invention was in 1876) for all music except Western music, since no one wrote it down. Even with something as ancient as the Japanese court music I mentioned previously, each performance is new. Music is ephemeral. The equivalent is to say that there are no rugs, only the perception of rugs, which is always in the moment.

The automobile comparison worked better. If we had no date information for automobiles built before 1960, I think that rough ideas of the chronological progression could be assembled by careful observation of design features matched to disintegration of the materials (rust never sleeps...). If more worn-out cars had fenders outside the main body (not unlike hand panels outside the main border in Baluch prayer rugs), we would eventually conclude that the fenders-outside-the-body designs were earlier. Radios would be another marker. We might not be able to pin down the date within ten years, but we would eventually be able to say "pre-WWII," I'd bet. Even if someone had erroneously claimed that that fenders-outside-the-body designs were post-1950, eventually others would be able to point out that most of those cars didn't have radios, so therefore the design would have to be earlier than radios. Too bad we don't have something as reliable as rust for wool, but I don't believe that we have nothing. We just don't have very much.

Paul

Steve Price

Hi Paul

I understand the music problem now; didn't realize that it wasn't written except in the west until fairly recently.

Let's look a little more at the automobile analogy. We could go back to about 1940 for American cars on the basis of the memories of old guys like me, and for most of the specimens we could identify the make and model and come within a year or two of the date. We could, as you note, create moderately accurate lines of descent before that time simply on the basis of various physical attributes of wrecks that we come upon here and there. But we wouldn't be able to make anything like the specific attributions we could with the later ones. I think that's a lot like the situation with trying to date rugs made between, say, 1600 and 1900.

If the Pazyryk carpet had been found in an antique shop instead of in an ice cave, would anyone guess that it was woven before 1800? Just asking, that's all.

Regards

Steve Price