Steve Price

Hi People

This Afshar bag recently joined our household. It's about 28" square, coarsely woven and heavy (as most Afshar stuff is), with lustrous wool.





Afshar bags seldom appeal to me, but this one is an exception. Although the colors look a little washed out on my monitor, they are rich and saturated, and set off nicely by the white (cotton) ground of the field. I find the borders extremely attractive and believe that they complement the field design very well.

Regards

Steve Price

Horst Nitz

Hi Steve,

congratulations to that pretty one. Afshar would be one of the obvious attributions for me as well. However, I could imagine several weavers' groups who could have had a hand in the pie, i.e. Shasavan, Hashtrud, Oghuz, Bachtiari. Also, ethnic Afshari as we know are settled over rather large an area from central Turkey to the south of Iran. Can you specify your attribution? I am sure you have given all this some thought.

Horst

Steve Price

Hi Horst

As you probably know, detailled attribution isn't very high on the list of things that I think are important.

The appearance (field design and borders, especially) isn't what I usually think of as Afshar. But mainstream Afshar bags rarely appeal to me, and the fact that I find this one so attractive might be a peculiar piece of evidence that it isn't Afshar.

The designs on the solid strips between the closure slits, the very coarse weave, and the heavy weight seem unambiguously southwest Persian. It could be from some group other than Afshar, although it doesn't look a bit Bakhtiari or Lori to me. Perhaps from one of the areas where there's been lots of Afshar intermarriage with others; the lustrous wool brings Afshar/Kurd to mind. Distinctions between groups become ambiguous in villages with many generations of intermarriages.

Regards

Steve Price

Horst Nitz

Hi Steve,

(quote) "...the fact that I find this one so attractive might be a peculiar piece of evidence that it isn't Afshar."

Here you once coined the phrase of 'eyeball analysis' which I still think is a pretty cool term. Have you now progressed to relying on resonance, frequency and amplitude? And what could we call it - the blind bat approach?

Kindly, Horst

Steve Price

Hi Horst

I was being facetious. Here's the (demented) train of thought I had:

1. There's a subgroup of collectors who make age attributions by a process something like this:
a. I like very old rugs.
b. I like this rug.
c. Therefore, this rug must be very old.

2. I morphed it into,
a. I usually don't like Afshar bags.
b. I like this bag.
c. Therefore, this bag probably isn't Afshar.

Remember, I did say that it might be a peculiar piece of evidence ...

Oh, in case anyone was about to ask: No matter how hard I stare at it, neither the bag nor any part of it appear to wave around.

Regards

Steve Price

James Blanchard

Hi Steve,

I really like that bag, and agree with you about its excellent aesthetic qualities. It is both dynamic and balanced. It strikes one as the work of an experienced weaver with an artistic sensibility.

I have a more general question about collecting bags, which is not a particular focus of mine. How important is it to have an essentially complete piece (i.e. with back and closures), since some of the appeal is that these are utilitarian pieces? Or should we focus on the aesthetics? I have tended to be in the latter group, but note that some folks are quite particular about having at least the back of the bag extant?

James

P.S. Steve, did you ingest any mind-altering substance to summon the field-waving properties of your bag? As I recall, that was part of the formula...

Steve Price

Hi James

I like bags a lot, and own a number of them. Unless the back is especially interesting, it doesn't matter to me whether it's there or not. "Interesting" can include aesthetics, some ethnographic suggestion or a clue to how the piece was used.

Most backs are pretty uninteresting (Turkmen backs, for example, are seldom more interesting than burlap-color plainweaves) and often make display awkward. Having said that, my rug assassin tendencies have never risen to the level of removing the back from a bag. I trim off stray warp and weft threads at ends and edges, but generally try to leave things the way I found them.

I didn't try any mind-altering drugs to see if they'd make the bag wave about. My understanding of such drugs is that you don't even need to look at the weaving to see it waving about if you go that route.

Regards

Steve Price

Patrick Weiler

Steve,
You have acquired a very pretty bag face. One often finds that subtle orange color in Afshar weavings, along with a diagonal stripe border often found in their flat weaves, but the shape is rather square for a typical Afshar bag. They tend to be a bit wider than long. There are no hard and fast rules in this area, though, because I have a Luri khorjin with a more Khamseh-like shape which disproves the rule.
One interesting thing about your new family member is that the field motifs of dark devices on the white ground all face in one direction with the exception of the top row. This adds a bit of dynamism to the piece. Without this change, you would have an Escheresque-tessellation going on.
If you consider the piece to have a dark ground (which could be the case in an actual tessellation where either color can be the ground color) then it is the top row of white devices which is different, looking more like a row of manta-rays swimming instead of the bird-like appearance of the rest of the rows.
Because there is no pile, we can not know if this was the bottom face woven first or if it was the top face woven last. Now you need to find the other face to this khorjin to find out what the other side looks like. Which way do the motifs face and do they change direction the way yours do?
I have managed to find the second half of a khorjin more than 5 years after purchasing the first half. And I know where the second half of another khorjin in my collection resides. You now have to spend the rest of your days searching for that missing half.

Good luck.

Patrick Weiler

Filiberto Boncompagni

Steve, I suggest you drink a bottle of Scotch. It has the following advantages:
It’s a good way to welcome a new family member.
It’s mind-altering but is legal (if you don’t drive after).
It will make the bag weave.
You’ll see also the missing half.

Filiberto

Added note for the post above (not Pat's one) visible only to administrators.
Hi JC!!! long time since your last attempt of posting here
I almost missed you. Sort of.

Patrick Weiler

James,

You asked: "How important is it to have an essentially complete piece (i.e. with back and closures), since some of the appeal is that these are utilitarian pieces? Or should we focus on the aesthetics?"
The majority of bags consist of only one face, without the back, and often with closures missing too.
A subset of these half-bags retains the closures and another subset is found with the backs remaining. The group with the fewest numbers is probably the complete khorjin. A "purist" may want to collect only complete double-bags in perfect condition. A "realist" may want to collect for aesthetics, condition notwithstanding. Most collectors probably fall somewhere in between, adding pieces of interest as they find them; some complete, some fragments.
I have found that most small bags of good age and great colors generally have some condition issues, as do most people of good age. We certainly do not throw them out with the bathwater just because of a little wrinkle here or there!
(Otherwise where would Turkotek get good moderators?)

Patrick Weiler

Steve Pendleton

For collectables, I definatly want good backs and closures. The structrual diversity of the functional parts is at least as interesting as the pattern diversity of the pile. I admire the usual homespun, striped, weft-faced backs for their honest practicality; and the fancy decorated backs for their skill and pride. Thank you, Marla, for giving us all such a good guide to non-pile construction.

For practicals--and I'll go out on a limb and admit that I've made a few bags into pillows--I'm looking for practical goods that I don't feel bad about adapting. Antique, made-for-use pieces that have intact closures, for example, are off limits for this purpose. Pieces that were probably made-for-market handicrafts are good. Not being too shoddy is good. Attractive synthetic dyes are good if they keep the price down and make it plain that you're not putting cultural-heritage museum goods in harm's way.

Yes, I'm trolling for comments on the ethics of pillow conversion. Do you recoil in horror when you see a nice Qashqai cushion? Do you avoid pillows as "adulterated"? Ever pull the stuffing out to recover the "proper" format? (Other Steve: if I'm outside your thread, then split as you see fit.)

--Steve Pendeton
So, a needle pulling thread / Far, a long, long way to run

Derek Dyckman

Hi Steve,

A nice piece palette, condition & field wise .... however the bordering regions are too geometrically noncongruent or directionally opposing to me. A bit hard to explain but basically the chevron closures pointing west, the striped line border running to the northeast- southwest, and the sawtooth bands running north, south, east, & west create an optical uneasiness when trying to enjoy the full picture of the weaving.

Sometimes it's hard to comprehend why a particular weaving hits or misses on first impression - other times it's quite obvious. To each their own - a lovely trait of textile collecting.

Regards,


Derek Dyckman

Steve Price

Hi Derek

I see your point. Oddly, when I look at the bag my brain pays no attention to the chevroned closure system. I'm most likely conditioned to seeing only the "main" part of a carpet or a bag, ignoring the fringe and everything else outside the "important" section. Sort of like the general practice of ignoring all that stuff when recording dimensions.

I can't help wondering if it might be related to the fact that most of us ignore color clashes under certain circumstances. Does anyone consider how a house will look against the green of the lawn when selecting a color to paint it? Probably not, and I suspect that most folks don't even perceive clashes between grass green and the colors of some houses, although they'd notice them immediately in, for example, upholstery or drapery fabrics. It's an interesting perceptual phenomenon.

Regards

Steve Price

Richard Larkin

Hi all,

Steve Price, I find that bag excellent. I don’t share any of Derek’s discomfort over the array of visual vectors it presents. Bags like this one, which seem to have plenty of age judging from the overall quality, always amaze me in regard to condition. It must mean that it was cherished and safeguarded, either in the family of the weaver, or in the hands of one or more collectors. I agree with you that the borders of diagonal stripes make the piece.

Steve Pendleton, when you mention pillows, are you referring to the stuffing of woven bags with something convenient picked up at Walmart, or some such place, which is OK with me? Or are you talking about the slicing and sewing of rugs or rug fragments, to which I say, “Horrors?”

Following is a pretty little Persian Kurdish bag I’ve converted to pillow duty. As Patrick pointed out, we have to take these pieces with whatever remnants of the closure system we can. In this case, the slit woven tabs are mostly there, but the loops are long gone, so I added some buttons. I tried to minimize the sacrilege by insisting on antique buttons from the fifth quarter of the nineteenth century.





I also have an oversized (3’ x 3’) Jaff bag complete with closures and even the long braided trailer that I acquired at auction with a big flattish pillow already installed. It makes a very good floor cushion for visiting Eastern potentates. Pillow and cushion duty isn’t very hard on these things, and even serves to “break them in” a bit without harm to the general fabric. It also provides another useful outlet for the urge to display.

Rich Larkin