Martin Andersen

Hi All

It has taken some time, but finally I have the results of the Carbon14 AMS analyze of the 6 Gul Tekke Torba we discussed here: http://www.turkotek.com/misc_00098/border_1.htm





On Jim Allen’s recommendation the test have been made by NSF-Arizona AMS Laboratory, The University of Arizona.
The calibration of the test looks like this:



And according to the university it should be read like this:

The 95.4% confidence interval is:

24.6% : 1644AD - 1695AD
50.9% : 1726AD - 1814AD
1.4% : 1852AD - 1867AD
18.5% : 1917AD - 1955AD

And I quote the university’s comments:
“If you can document the piece's provenance into the 19th Century or earlier, then the later peaks in the plot can be eliminated”

Provenance of the rug is of course out of hand, but I think that everyone with any knowledge on the rugs after seeing it would agree that the design and weave structure would make it highly unlikely that this rug was made after 1917.
This might not be purely scientific, but for me that eliminates the later peaks, and translates the numbers to ca:

32% : 1644AD - 1695AD
65% : 1725AD - 1814AD
1,8% : 1852AD – 1867AD

This of course gives a high probability to the Torba being of an honourable age. And gives good credence to Jim Allen’s judgement of age

The Torba has a number of uncommon elements. The strangest is the Chemche Gull. Since I found the rug I have looked at Tekke Chemche Guls everywhere I could, and I still haven’t seen any Tekke Chemche Gul without the bows/horns like it is here:



Best Martin

Steve Price

Hi Martin

I agree that the Soviet era can be ignored as a possibility for your torba. With that in mind, the results suggest that it was woven in the 18th century, perhaps even earlier.

Congratulations on this excellent find.

Regards

Steve Price

Jim Allen

The first half of the 18th century represented good times for the Tekke and Salor. The 17th century had been a nightmare for the Tekke and the Turkmen in general living on the Mangyshak peninsula. The main river flowing through this area had dried up and the entire century was marked by protracted droughts. The Turkmen were finally forced from the Mangyshak peninsula and were lucky to find the Uzbek controlled city of Khiva welcoming of their presence and “protection”. The hinterlands, around Khiva, had good water and vast grazing lands. I have come to the conclusion that Turkmen weaving reflected the physical conditions of their environment and the political realities under which they lived. In other words good water and pastures resulted in better dyes and wool. The connection may not have been direct but there are other things to consider like relative wealth and enough free time to weave. This paradigm lasted until the Tekke were firmly defeated by the Russians in 1882.
Tekke and Salor work from the first half of the 18th century generally has deeply saturated colors, a knot count over 300 KPSI, and usually a fine forest green. Martin’s torba and my mid 17th century Tekke chuval have the same look, with a rich but sun blasted red and several shades of blue. My chuval has three very distinct blues. The extremely floppy handle of Martin’s torba is a characteristic also shared by my old chuval. Both Martin’s torba and my old chuval were woven at approximately 325 KPSI. My old chuval had Salor iconography but a clearly Tekke interpretation of the design. I wrote an article for Hali 55 concerning these details. The range of probabilities given by Jull is very close to the limit of C-14 testing and I suspect that is why his ranges are so skewed. The C-14 data for my chuval was published in Oriental Rug and Textile Studies 5 and its probability peaks are less skewed. Now that the C-14 data for Martin’s torba is in, I feel it should be dated to circa 1650-1700. If it were any later it would have much better color. The chemche gulls of his torba are very primitive and in this regard very important for Turkmen studies. Hoffmeister's earlier torba (fig. 25 in “Turkoman Carpets”) has much better color and an Arabatchi derived minor gull. Peter told me his torba was C-14 dated to the 15th century and that makes perfect sense, as this was purportedly the golden age of Tekke power. Remember the Tekke main carpet gull was apparently taken from the Arabartchi, who kept on using their classic main carpet gull on their chuvals. No other tribe ever did this.
I think that Martin’s Tekke torba is one of the oldest known examples. Martin’s torba is similar to Hoffmeister’s torba in that the two horizontal rows of gulls are different in size and color saturation. In Martin’s torba the upper row is larger and “darker” making the gulls seem to pop out and seemingly fly off into space. Peter’s torba has the reverse appearance. In Peter’s torba the lower row of gulls is larger and more pronounced, versus the upper row, giving the impression that the lower row is closer to the observer while the upper row seems to be receding into space.
Both Martin’s and Peter’s torba’s share the same border and it is a very rare border indeed. Martin’s Tekke torba could be the focus of a nice article on Tekke torbas and perhaps the members of Turkotek will participate in creating or at least defining the outline for such an article. I would be especially interested in seeing any other Tekke torbas with the same border. I know of only a handful in various collections. Does anybody here on Turkotek know of other Tekke torbas with the same border as Peter and Martin’s? Is this the least common of all Tekke torba borders? There are only about a dozen Tekke torbas known with the so-called “Large S” border, see Vanishing Jewels, figure # 50, so the answer to this question isn’t obvious.

Martin Andersen

Hi Jim and Steve

Thanks for your comments, as always interesting. And I am of course all for an interpretation going towards the 17th

I have looked a lot around the web for the border, and for now have found only 4 Torbas with this border published on the web. But of course there must be more out in the real world.


Hofmeister


Yonathan Bard fragment


9 gull doppelhackenbordure


And a few months ago this was at Kaminski Auctions :


Kaminski





The border on the Kaminski differs from the others in a couple of ways. I suppose one could say that it design vise could be seen as a simplification.

The Kaminski Torba share some other uncommon designs with mine:
1.The prolonged blue fields around the centres of the Guls.
2.The Stars in the field.

From what I would guess from the photos the Kaminski has a lower knot count then mine, and it certainly has better/more saturated colours.

And Jim, your comments on the horizontal asymmetries are very interesting, not sure were it will lead, but I will comment on the asymmetries of my Torba later.

Best
Martin

Pierre Galafassi

[quote=Jim Allen] The 17th century had been a nightmare for the Tekke and the Turkmen in general living on the Mangyshak peninsula. The main river flowing through this area had dried up and the entire century was marked by protracted droughts.

Hi Jim,
Could you please mention the sources of this very interesting information, which is new to me, unless you are making reference to the hypothesis of a change of direction of the Amu darya, which some early XX century scientists erroneously believed to have once run west, into the Caspian.

It is indeed confirmed by early XIX century visitors that the peninsula was settled only by Chodor/Igdyr Turkomans and by Kazakhs, all other Turkoman tribes had already left the peninsula and moved either East (closer to Khiva), South (Atterek and Gurgien rivers, northern Kopet dagh) or Southeast (Sarakhs, Tejen marshes, Merv oasis, Yolatan, Pendj-deh or middle Amu darya).
However, the reasons for this general move still seem disputed, even though the death of the last strong Persian ruler, Nadir Shah and the thorough destruction of Merv by the Emir of Bokhara must have contributed to induce the Turkomans to move to deserted or poorly defended, but fertile areas.
Best regards
Pierre

Jim Allen

It seems that I got that information from the footnotes to Dr. Wood's article in Vanishing Jewels. You seem to be much better informed on the geography than me. Bregel may have something on this as well.

Martin Andersen

Hi All

The tribal history of nomadic geography, must almost by definition be extremely complicated. And perhaps match the difficulties in categorizing the rugs.

I would sure love to se an illustrated Turkotek Salon on the topic of Turkmen historic geography.



Regarding the horizontal asymmetries that Jim points out, I ones again have to say that Jim has a very sharp eye for the visual details, even in these not optimal photos.

I must admit that I first saw the asymmetries as part of a strange sloppiness from the weaver (a sloppiness that in some details of this fine weave surprises me, almost wanting me to knock the weaver on the head and say “hey wake up, or don’t weave sleeping”). But after looking a bit more systematic I agree totally with Jim that the asymmetry between upper and lower part of the Torba is intentional.

First, Jim is right the Guls in the upper row are larger, and the blue fields in the Guls differs from upper to lower row. It is a bit difficult to se on the photos because of the reflections of the wool, but actually only the lower row has a quartering in light blue and dark blue. The upper row is only dark blue.




I think it is interesting that the larger size of the upper row Guls are generated from two sources:

1.Vertical: a loser weave, I suppose an effect of the knots being less compressed by the comb as weaving progresses. An effect I suppose is frequent in alot of the rugs.
2.Horizontal. By adding extra knots. I suppose an intentional attempt on keeping the proportions in the larger Gull. This done equally on all 3 Gulls in upper row. It is easiest to see and count this where the Guls meets the outer border:


Upper and lower Gul, back left side (please disregard the colours, bad lightning)



In the general layout of the tertiary elements, and in the cutting of the diagonals of the Chemsche Guls in the top, there is a strong emphasis on creating space around the larger Guls in the upper row.


All in all I would say a very refined, subtile - and very intentional work with horizontal asymmetry.

best
Martin

Paul Smith

Hello, everyone--

Well, first things first, which is to congratulate you, Martin, on backing up your acquisition of such a fabulously cool Tekke torba with the C-14 data to support the age speculation that accompanied its earlier posting here.

In addition, I would want to thank Pierre for continuing to contribute his thoughtful and well-informed insights to our generally-meandering discussions.

But the main inspiration for my posting here is that in a couple of previous threads recently I have posted three examples of this phenomenon of intentional asymmetry in later Turkmen weaving: a Tekke main carpet in which the minor gul progressively stretches from one end to the other, a small Tekke mat which creates the illusion (I saw it as a 3-D illusion through manipulation of the proportions) by simply making one elem longer than the other, and a sort-of Middle Amu Darya Chodor mat of some sort that subtly expanded the field elements while keeping the border consistent. The differing proportions of the quartered fields in most Yomud ensis would be another common example. I would post images but I am away from my home computer. The first thread in which I posted the main carpet is archived though (www.turkotek.com/misc_00092/tekke.htm). In my last attempt I promised not to bring it up again, since it didn't seem to inspire much discussion, but since you guys brought it up it is fair game, it seems to me. Anyway, this clearly intentional design illusion intrigues me to no end, as I lack depth perception, but I sure experience it looking into Turkmen weavings that do this. I look forward to more insights on this phenomenon.

Cheers!

Paul

Martin Andersen

Hi Paul

I suppose the question of spatiality is whether these effects are created randomly by the technical aspects of the weave and pattern structure, or if it is an intentional formal aesthetical language (or perhaps reminiscences of it). That is to say is it only something we se, or is it something the weaver also saw – and worked with.

I think that there has been a rather heated discussion around this topic here on Turkotek some 10 years ago, that might explain the silence. Have you tried searching on the topic in the Turkotek search function?

I would say that reading depth into a flat plane is not something purely natural, it is also in a high degree a cultural phenomenon. In our culture it has become almost naturalised because of the wide spread of photography which we meet constantly as children even before we manage spoken language.
If ones looks at the birth of perspective spatial representations in the European renaissance one sees how difficult it has been to establish this illusory space. Paulo Uccello’s famous formal mistakes in the foreshortening’s of his monumental painting “The Rout of San Romano” is good example:


Paolo Uccello 1456

This is of course a bit farfetched in relation to the Turkmen, but we do know that the Ardabil Carpet’s weavers around 1540 worked a perspective foreshortening into this carpet:


The Ardabil Carpet

Of course only speculative, but the Turkmen must from time to time have met pictorial representations of space, fx in Indian, Persian or Chinese miniatures. This must have been a rather large perceptional challenge for a culture which has no tradition in this field. Perhaps there has been some attempts on transforming or translating this challenge into the Turkmens own pictorial language – their carpets.

Best
Martin

Martin Andersen

The difference in size between lower and upper Guls in my Torba could be seen as an attempt of keeping the general proportion of the individual Gul. A compensation for the compression and distortion derived from the weaving process. And therefore not necessarily as an intentional size relation (spatial, or even a foreshortening) between upper and lower row.

This is not the case with the Chemche Guls. The two central Chemsche Guls are actually also widening towards the top:



This is surely intentional as the widening primarily is achieved by adding knots. The Widening is certainly not made as an attempt of keeping proportions, on the contrary it is an intentional distortion of these proportions.

For me the distortions of the Chemsche Guls is rather good indication that the weaver worked very conscious with the assymetric design of the Torba as a totality.

Martin

John_Bryan

Mr. Galafassi,
You asked about Mr. Allen’s mention of the desiccation of the Mangyshlak peninsula. The river Mr. Allen mentioned was the Uzboy. Not hard to find in an internet search. You can see it on the satellite images and old Joe Stalin even tried to redig it and get the water to flow again. It never worked but it is no secret.
JB

Pierre Galafassi

Thanks John for this information.
You are right, the dried bed of the Uzboy is clearly visible on satellite pics. Most XVIII-XX visitors and scientists thought that this was the old bed of the Amu darya, and that the change occurred only a few centuries ago. Not only good old Joseph, but also the Tzar Peter the Great did believe it.
By definition, experts are people who disagree with each others, but it seems that now most believe that the Uzboy was not an old bed of the Amu darya.
This doe not exclude however the possibility that a severe drought in the Manghislakh peninsula caused mass emigration of the Turkomans, as Jim mentioned.
Best regards
Pierre

Kurt Munkacsi

For some time now Jim Allen has been referencing a Tekke Chuval that used to be in his collection. He has been stating a C-14 test had been done by Dr. Jull and the results indicated the age was C1650. This is simply not correct. Below are the actual results from the Jull test and the results from a second test done by Dr. Bonani in Zurich. From a scientific point of view the piece should be referred to as 18th or 19th Century. Certainly not 17th Century as Mr. Allen has repeatedly claimed.

Dr. Anthony Jull, Tucson, AZ
1/20/1996
AA-17821
Fraction of Modern: 0.9703±0.0055
14C Age (yr BP): 242±46
Calibrated Age:
1693-1797 AD and/or 1943-1955 AD (1 sigma)
1508-1809 AD and 1928-1955 AD (2 sigma)
The range 1928-1955 represents about 10% of total probably.

Dr. Georges Bonani, Zürich, Switzerland
6/12/2006
Lab. No. ETH-32417; Sample No. Ra 709 / 1460; AMS-C age [y BP] 25 ± 35; ∂13C[‰] -15.2 ± 1.1
calib. age [BC/AD]:
AD 1694 - 1726 (15.1%)
AD 1813 - 1850 (13.3%)
AD 1863 - 1918 (45.1%)
AD 1948 - 1958 (26.5%)

Steve Price

Hi Kurt

The numbers are interesting. I'd offer one modification to your conclusion, though. You wrote, Certainly not 17th Century ... I think it would be more correct to say, Probably not 17th century .... Certainty is a scarce commodity in statistical analyses.

Regards

Steve Price

John Bryan

I am not sure how we got on to the Amu Darya. I did not bring it up and I don’t remember Jim bringing it up. I think the pertinent points are that the Salor Confederation lived on the Mangyshlak peninsula. At some point between 1630 (Kader’s date) and 1670 the Kalmyk displaced the Salor and most of the Turkmen even if a few stayed. Then there are a few points generally agreed on but not nailed down to a specific date or order: The Uzboy river dried up. The desiccation of the Mangyshlak peninsula and serious salinization. The Saryk first and then the Tekke broke with the Salor.

My hunch is that problems with the land put stress on the tribal confederation. Then in a weakened state the Salor lost out to the Kalmyk. Whatever the case the Amu Darya is not a part of this and even if the Uzboy dried up 1000 years ago the salinization of the Mangyshlak is indisputable. By the way are you the low salt dye guy?
JB

Jim Allen

The threads for the C-14 test run by AJT Jull in 1996 were acquired by Nobuko Kajitani, then at the MET. At that time no Turkoman weaving had ever been tested, via C-14 analysis, to the pre 1700 AD period. Jull ran the test twice before reporting his results and only sent the information after he was convinced of their accuracy. Nobuko absolutely accepted the conclusion that my chuval was circa 1650. Kurt had chosen two of his own pieces to be tested and one of them, a chuval he bought from Jack Cassin, tested to the early 18th century, according to Jull, with some reservations. His reservations were in consideration of the vast global pollution of carbon put into the atmosphere by coal fired power plants, like locomotives and other types of steam engines, around circa 1700 AD.
Jull expressed no such doubts about my Tekke chuval because it only had two clear spikes with the highest probability being that it was mid 17th century. Kurt acquired my old Tekke chuval from an Atlanta collector many years later. After Jull's results came back positive for a pre 1700 AD date I washed the rug according to a technique I read about in an early Hali magazine, written by a German author. This technique called for the introduction of a carbon containing substance to nourish the wool. While washing the chuval according to the published formula had fantastic aesthetic results, it nevertheless introduced modern carbon atoms into the fibers of the piece, skewing the perceived C-14 date upwards, toward the present. It isn't any wonder that Kurt's C-14 dating, done in Zurich after washing, is at odds with Jull's dating. It also seems Kurt has transposed Dr. Jull's data, from the first C-14 spike to the second C-14 spike. I will have to dig for the technical information that I recieved from Dr. Jull... and if I can't find it... I know Dr. Jull has it saved. I am sorry Kurt didn't consult with me before publishing this miss-information.

It seems that one of the biggest hurdles I must face in trying to write my new article is the reticence I am facing from collectors who want to keep buying Turkman masterpieces in a vacuum of accurate information concerning them.

In a way I can't blame people like Kurt who are totally sold out to the aesthetic supremacy of classical Turkmen weaving. Kurt is certainly not alone in wanting to keep a tight lid on the information I want to spread. Perhaps if I were a rich man; I would be more careful about who I educated.

I am not rich and I have a son in college at Sophia University in Tokyo. My personal purposes aren't well served by educating collectors about what identifies a classical Turkoman weaving. In this regard I guess I'm more like an evangelist or shaman preaching the good news about how sophisticated the dimensionality of design elements is achieved by classical period Turkmen weavers. According to Dr. Carriere's three dimensional analysis; classical Tekke and Salor weaving's are on par or even more three dimensional than similar period paintings and architectural drawings.

My analysis of Classical Turkmen design elevates Turkoman appreciation, regarding aesthetic considerations, above even those Renaissance paintings supposedly done in conjunction with a camera obscura. Such results cannot be the product of any kind of accident. I think it is obvious that such sophistication in the production of dimensionality in woven Turkmen designs could have only resulted from generation after generation of gross reproduction in a milieu of intense and critical review.

The groundwork I am presently describing surely can be extrapolated to any tradition of weaving where the objects or people portrayed are approximated generation after generation in an environment of critical review. What I am trying to say is that given any subject or set of relevant designs to be portrayed in a woven context, done generation after generation in an environment of critical review, one should expect to see some kind of design evolution ultimately resulting in an iconographic complex optimally representing said subject.

If we can agree that Turkmen weaving portraying multiple gulls against a red field are all aiming at representing said gulls as if they were moving or flying in space then my thoughts are obviously correct.

Perhaps I should mention the fact that prior to my writing about dimensionality in Turkmen weaving the accepted world view, concerning the appearance of Turkmen gulls in various types of weaving, was that the very best examples exhibited a completely regular layout of identical looking gulls. Before I began writing about this subject the measure of Turkmen aesthetic perfection was best exemplified in their most symmetrical and regular weaving's. This aesthetic ideology led to some very anti-intuitive conclusions. Simply put the aesthetic consideration of Turkmen weaving was completely upside down. Before my writing about this subject: the most completely regular drawing of Turkmen gulls, on any kind of Turkoman weaving, was considered to represent the best and most aesthetically superior Turkman weaving.

I have caught so much grief for "changing this perception" that I have almost retreated into a cave. I take some comfort in the fact that essentially every museum curator in the world concerned with Turkoman textiles knows about my writing on this subject. I have been pleasantly surprised more than once, upon visiting some relevant museum, that the curator knew who I was and very much wanted me to look at their collection.

I am really appreciative of the fact that Jon Thompson said to me, at the 75th New York Hajji Baba exhibition, that he acknowledged my primary role in establishing the three
dimensional appearance of gulls in very old Turkman weaving. Jon is a true scholar and I am glad to be recognized by him for my contributions to the field of Turkman aesthetic appreciation.

Kurt has certainly put me on notice that any further writing on my part will be met with continued skepticism and jealousy but for posterity's sake I will keep on writing. Perhaps my continued writings will make classical pieces even harder to acquire but in my heart I only hope to elevate the aesthetic appreciation of Turkemn weaving to new and even greater levels of appreciation.

Steve Price

Hi People

There is obvious inconsistency between what Kurt and what Jim reported as being the results of C-14 analysis of a well known Tekke juval by two independent laboratories. Jim and Kurt can't both be reporting the same data accurately. It would be interesting and probably important for Jim and Kurt to each document their sources. Otherwise, all that can result is escalating namecalling, and we won't allow that to proceed any further than it has.

As a point of information, just about anything used to wash a rug will contain carbon in its structure, and the way it's eliminated is by exhaustive rinsing. What is observed when this is done in a controlled way is that each rinse increases the apparent age of the sample; the apparent age is unchanged by additional rinsing once the contamination is removed. Experienced laboratories (and both of the labs involved are very experienced) already know how much rinsing is needed, so they don't have to go through consecutive analyses after each rinse to reach a reliable range of dates.

I hope Jim and Kurt will check the documentation they have and help us understand the discrepencies.

Thanks

Steve Price

Martin Andersen

Hi All

I sure hope that Jim will continue his contributions here on Turkotek. Those of you who have followed the treads which I have partitioned in know how much I owe him and his open willingness to discus the Turkmen rugs.

Jim´s passionate and visionary relation to these rugs sure has made him a radical observant of details which otherwise would be overlooked. I am an amateur in the rugdepartment, but I am not an amateur in visuals, and I sure know and acknowledge when I meet people with radical specialised insights and personal experience in the visuals. Passionate subjective judgment coupled with vast firsthand experience may of course be proved wrong - but certainly from time to time so do scientific measurements. I would say understanding the rugs there is no other way around than to navigate in the inbetweens.

As there are no other sites like Turkotek, I sure hope that it will continue to be a fair, civilised and open minded place for exchange of information and insights, be it subjective or objective. Jim stopping here would be a great loss.

Martin

Steve Price

Hi Martin

You wrote, I sure hope that it will continue to be a fair, civilised and open minded place for exchange of information and insights, be it subjective or objective. I couldn't have said it better, and it reflects the central goals of everyone in Turkotek's management group.

That being said, I respectfully ask that there be no further remarks bearing on anyone's character, positive or negative. There are obvious discrepencies in the accounts two of our participants presented of lab reports on C-14 analysis of a well known Tekke juval. Knowing what conclusions are justified about that juval is important, knowing the details of the discrepencies is probably important to arriving at that point. Whatever the details turn out to be, this isn't a venue for probing beyond that, and isn't going to become one.

Thanks.

Steve Price

PS: Except for a few who have been banned for persistent disruptions and/or refusal to abide by our rules (they know who they are), we try not to run anyone off. Differences of opinion are what makes discussion possible, discovering the bases of those differences is what makes it useful.

John Bryan

Hello Pierre ,
On dyes I am just an observer but I try to keep up with advances particularly in wool dyes.

As for good sources on the Mangyshlak or the Uzboy I have not found one. I use Google Books and find they have some sources with the spelling “Mangyshlak”. One tantalizing reference was in “A history of inner Asia” By Svatopluk Soucek where he has the Uzboy changing course from the Caspian to the Aral in 1576. Having a year makes it seem more believable but I am looking for more information.

I may break down and buy Karpychev, Yu. A. Variations in the sedimentation in Kara Bogaz Gol Bay related to sea level fluctuations during the Novocaspian time Journal Oceanology. Publisher: MAIK Nauka/Interperiodica distributed exclusively by Springer Science+Business Media LLC.
The salt layers in Kara Bogaz Gol Bay appear to indicate a great deal of variation in the salinity and quantity of runoff into the bay from the west. From that we may be able to extrapolate data on the habitat of the Turkmen.

Pierre Galafassi

Hi John,
Thanks a lot for the tip, I shall look for the book you mentioned.

In the past three years I have browsed through all those available under "Internet archive search, Asia, central " and found half a dozen ones (free download) really worth reading for any Turkmenomaniac (The best authors, in decreasing order, being O'Donovan, Burnes, Marvin, Boulangier, Mouraviev and Moser. I did not like Vambery very much, de gustibus...).
Together they cover quite well the story, numbers and locations of all the main Turkoman tribes during the XIX century and describe in detail their way of life. These guys even agree on many things, which must seem incredible, nearly obscene, for any ruggie.
However, there is hardly any valid information on the XVIII century and, most unfortunately none of these fellows was a ruggie.
The diaries of Colonel Alikhanoff would be at least as interesting as O'Donovan's report, since this guy spent several years with the Merv Tekes and the Murgab Saryks (as spy first, then as a lobbyist, finally as a governor of Merv) and was the only one speaking fluently their dialect. In addition, as a Daghestani, Alikhanov might have been the connoisseur of rugs we are all dreaming of! I could not yet trace any copy. It seems that R. Kipling helped translate the diaries in English.
By the way, several of the listed authors made credible mentions of a Salor clan living, as nomad, in the middle Amu darya, including on the right bank. (If you are interested I can mail the references).
Best regards
Pierre

Martin Andersen

Even though it doesn’t seem to generate much discussion I take the liberty to point out a few more asymmetries.

The main Guls are also horizontal asymmetric. Most pronounced in the upper row. The octagons in the blue centre field are kind of lifted up.
The easiest way to se how asymmetric they actually are is turning them upside down:


Centre Gul upper row. Right way + wrong way (turned 180 degrees)

The octagons themselves are also asymmetric, slightly trapezoid:



I probably know what Jim Allen thinks about these asymmetries, but I wonder how the rest of you look on this. Could it also be seen as weaver without real control of the layout and weaving process? Have any of you seen other perhaps younger Tekke pieces with a multitude of asymmetries like this? I don’t think I have.

Best
Martin

Rich Larkin

Hi all,

This is a little belated, regarding the border on Martin’s torba. Pinner and Franses refer to it as the peikam border, in Turkoman Studies I in Chapter 11, illustration 143. They suggest that it is related to early kufic borders; but also that it is very ancient, referring to a version of it on a carpet illustrated on a scroll attributed to the early 13th century. Another article in the same volume by G. Lownds, on furniture upholstered in Turkoman carpets (groan!) , mentions the same border by name. Both he and Pinner and Franses state that it is most commonly found on kejebe design pieces, and used by several Turkoman tribes; but that it occasionally appears on Tekke torbas.

Following is a detail of the piece Paul Smith mentioned.



It utilizes a version of the peikam border closely related to Martin’s. The latter is at the same time simpler but more articulated than the rendition in the image above.

Rich Larkin

Martin Andersen

Hi Rich

Thank you very much for the info – so actually the border has a name (and I have now finally ordered Turkoman Studies 1)

And funny enough I would also have posted Paul’s rug going into the variations of the border. Perhaps together with this one:


Baluch

Certainly there are a lot of variations, and of course I would be interested in how wide the definition of the peikam layout Lownds, Pinner and Franses is.

I suppose what I have called the Hoffmeister border at is something close to this:



And it sure also exist well defined on late pieces like these:


Saryk




(this last one is perhaps hard to call well defined )


Looking at the border on the Torba in this tread, it is obvious that it is rather difficult to articulate the layout in the vertical direction. That might explain why the layout perhaps is more frequent in Khorjins were the layout is only horizontal.
And why some of the layout has been modified/simplified in weaves with lesser knot count. It takes a lot of details and knots to atempt to articulate what I have called the hoffmeister border in the vertical direction:



Best Martin

Rich Larkin

Hi Martin,

Very interesting. For the record, I was mistaken in suggesting the close relationship between the border in Paul's rug and the one in yours. I was looking at the border of the torba you posted in panel #4 (this thread), last image, the Tekke torba from the Kaminski auction. That one and Paul's share a similar version of the design.

Incidentally, your question about the limits of the peikam border design is well taken. The rug shown on the 12th to 13th century scroll, mentioned in Turkoman Studies I, employs only the outer bracket elements. I find the connection of it to the peikam border to be something of a stretch. The scroll is illustrated in Peasant and Nomad Rugs of Asia (Maurice Dimand, 1961).

Rich Larkin

Steve Price

Hi All

Kurt Munkacsi presented the results of C14 dating of several Turkmen pieces in post #13 in this thread, including Jim Allen's well known Tekke juval. He kindly sent copies of the original reports to me, and I've put them into our server. They are PDF files, so you will need something like Adobe Acrobat Reader (a free download from Adobe.com) to open them. There are two reports: one (in 1996) from Jull and the other (in 2007) from Bonani.

I'd like to offer my own opinions on the reports of the analyses of Jim's juval. First, I note that there are two ways to calculate probable dates from the results of C14 analytical data. In one, probabilities are assigned to specific ranges of dates. In the other, the most probable date is presented as the number of years before 1950, with a statistical estimate of the possible range around that date. Jull and Bonani each reported the results both ways.

1. The Bonani report puts the piece into the 20th century by both methods of calculation. That's almost certainly wrong. How did this happen? Contamination is the first thing to come to mind, but I would expect that to have eliminated with extensive washing and rinsing. Other possibilities include getting the sample mixed up (maybe a lab tech lost it and was afraid to tell the boss, so he just analyzed a piece of thread from his socks), a misstep in running the procedure, an instrumental error. Who knows? Not me. In any case, I think there are only two alternatives: either the piece was woven in the twentieth century or the data is flawed. I'd take the latter - the likelihood that this is a Soviet era weaving is small enough to ignore. For these reasons, I'd pay no attention to the Bonani results.

2. The Jull report includes the suggestion that the 20th century dates, which make up a small portion of the total probabilities, should be ignored for cause. I think that's sensible. If that's done, the remaining data breaks down like this:
a. First method;
67% probability range = 1693-1797
95% probability range = 1508-1809
b. Second method:
Mean probable date = 1950 - 242 = 1708. This is estimated to be in the center of a window extending 46 years on either side of it, 1662-1754.

This puts the most likely date of weaving at the mid- or early 18th century, with small (but significant) probabilities that it was early 19th century or as early as the 17th or even the 16th century.

If Jim (or anyone else) has additional data or a different interpretation, it would be most welcome. This discussion thread has gone off in several directions, and I'll probably split it to make each line of discussion easier to follow.

Regards

Steve Price

Rich Larkin

Hi Martin,

Following is the early scroll depicting the rug that Pinner and Franses thought might include a border related to the peikam border.



Of course, they are pointing to the inner border surrounding the central part of the rug. Frankly, I find your suggestion about the connection between the Pazyryk saddle covers and the Yomud models (I know you were half joking) to be more compelling than this supposed link between the scroll carpet's border and the much-loved peikam. All the same, quite an intriguing picture.

Rich Larkin

Jim Allen

All I am going to say about this subject is that Jull and Nobuko both put the most likely age of the Tekke chuval in the mid-17th century. They are the real experts. Why anybody would want to rewrite history now, 14 years later, is beyond me. I am having an inquiry sent to Nobuko, written in Japanese, as she won't reply to English inquiries anymore. She lives in Kyoto. Jull's findings made museum news all over the world. The Swiss lab doesn't have the same institutional support that Jull's lab does. Essentially all of the highest profile work is done by Jull. C-14 dating is perhaps over rated for fairly recent textiles, including the Tekke chuval in question. I have shown in several ways, including some very interesting dimensional analysis done by Dr. Carriere, that the Tekke Chuval is an incredibly old and important piece of Turkoman ethnohistory. There are those who can see 'it' and understand the nuances I have tried to explain and there are those who can't and probably never will understand my point of view. It is my point of view after-all and that is all it is. If you don't agree; don't agree. We all must collect at our own risk. BTW Martin, of course your torba's weaver was trying to make her stars spin better than her neighbors did. This is simple minded to anybody with a true artist's eye. Don't get yourself worked up over it, trust your eye and nothing else.

Steve Price

Hi Jim

Jull's 1996 report is linked from my post above (#28). It gives two ranges, one in the 20th century with a rather small probability and the other including the period from early 16th to early 19th century as the 95% probability range, with a mean probable (therefore, most likely) date in the early 18th century. His cover letter says that he intends to analyze it again in an attempt to remove or reduce the ambiguity. Did he do so? If so, if you quote his results or forward a copy of his report to me, we can update what's on this thread. But the data shown in my post is the only data I've seen or of which I'm aware. It isn't a rewrite or attempted rewrite of history, it's a summary of the documentation on which any account of the history should properly rest unless it's been superceded by later documentation.

We're talking about the report from a professional analytical laboratory. What it says isn't a matter of opinion, it's a matter of fact. You or I or anyone else may have the opinion that it's invalid, but unless there's some other report that says the piece is 17th century, we're stuck with this one. It's the best we have for now.

Regards

Steve Price

PS: As I understand the argument from Carriere's dimensional analysis, the great age of this piece is the basis for believing that dimensionality is a property of very old Turkmen weavings. If my understanding is correct, his dimensional analysis result isn't evidence bearing on the age of the piece.

PPS: I heard the Carriere dimensionality report presented at an ICOC session (Hamburg?). Is there a later one to which you are referring, or is that the one you mean?

Jim Allen

Jull did run a second test but I haven't been able to find my copy. I have moved three times since that report. Dr. Carriere's dimensionality studies were written up and published in Oriental Rug and Textile Studies V. That was published subsequent to the Philadelphia ICOC meeting. I believe I sent the C-14 data to Murry Eiland for that publication. I can probably find the data but I still can't get a handle on why this whole question has arisen, especially since Kurt now owns the piece. I mean why would he rag on something he owns? I am sincerely baffled. I have been a good friend of Kurt's for many years, and still am for my part, but I am still reeling from his sudden and unexpected statements. I have no horse in this race and no need to revisit a study done long ago. I would rather look forward to the study of Martin's torba, that I evaluated with reference to my old chuval and my opinion concerning its high three dimensionality score. It's dimensionality hasn't been scientifically established by Dr. Carriere, and it would be nice to get him to do the study, but I can see dimensionality in weaving better today than I could nearly 20 years ago. It was way back then when I first discovered the intentional alterations of outline shapes, line densities, and line color and how these differences where marshaled by the weavers of the oldest Turkmen weaving to establish the three dimensionality of gulls in space. My article in Hali #55 was the first time this thought had ever been published. If Kurt wants to believe Peter Saunders, who has always maintained his chuval was a chemically washed 19th century Tekke chuval, who am I to disagree? I can tell you what Jon Thompson said the first time he ever saw it. All he said was, "How much is it?" I feel this whole "process" has taken attention away from Martin's new Tekke torba find that has been fully worked up by Dr. Jull and shows just about exactly what I predicted his study would show.... last year. I have a good track record in these matters and as far as I know I am the only one who even has a track record in this particular area of predicting which pieces are classical in age, eg. pre 1700 AD. You can pick this to death with all kinds of technical arguments but I want to move along with the original intent of this thread. Martin's torba shows a good probability of being pre 1700 AD and that is exciting news.

Steve Price

Hi Jim

There are, as I noted earlier, two major lines of discussion in this thread. One is the properties (aesthetic and otherwise) of Martin's recently-dated piece. There was a fairly long discussion about it less than two years ago, before he had the C-14 analysis done. Here is a link to that. A good bit of what's in this thread is already in that one. On the other hand, I think it's a movie worth seeing twice.

A second major issue arose when Kurt presented a different view of Jull's analysis than the one you quote. He provided documentation - Jull's report from 1996 - that the C-14 analysis makes that piece probably 18th century and not the definitely 17th century date you quote. I can think of a number of ways such a discrepency might arise, the most obvious being a subsequent report from Jull. If you can provide a copy of that (Jull can most likely scan it and send it as an email attachment if your copy is lost), the issue would be settled.

By introducing the Carriere dimensionality analysis, you introduced yet another issue. I haven't got a copy of Oriental Rug and Textile Studies. V., but unless there's more in it than what was presented at ICOC in Philadelphia, it simply doesn't prove anything. I was at that session, and remember the basics of what was presented. He analyzed two Turkmen pieces that had been dated by C-14. My recollection is that their C-14 ages differed by less than 100 years, which means that either of them could be older than the other: their relative ages were, in fact undeterminable. The one with the earlier mean C-14 age was somewhat more dimensional than the other, from which the authors (you were one of them, Carriere was the other) concluded that dimensionality was greater in older than in younger Turkmen weavings. That conclusion is unjustified. First, because the specimens weren't of significantly different ages. Second, because the number of specimens is much too small to permit conclusions. If the procedure was repeated with a larger sample of weavings, of course, the assertion that dimensionality and age are correlated might be supported. Then again, it might not.

Regards

Steve Price

Joel Greifinger

Hi Jim,

The C-14 results that Martin posted showed that the significantly strongest probability was that his torba was produced in the 18th century.

Given the results posted in regards to both pieces (Kurt's and Martin's), I'm confused by your conclusion.

Joel Greifinger

Jim Allen

Well I found my original report faxed to James Allen and K. Kajitani from Dr. Jull. It came as a fax from phone number 520 621 9619. The date was 1-22-1996. I would have copied and pasted the report but my old fax used thermal paper and it isn’t in very good condition today.

I quote Jull’s letter exactly:


Re: data report

“Attached are preliminary results on samples of wool submitted by the Metropolitan Museum at your request. We should repeat these measurements to improve the errors. I had quoted the results as a fraction of modern carbon, the uncalibrated radiocarbon age (given in yr. BP) and a calibrated age.

Samples, which give a uncalibrated age, with a range of less than about 200 years before present, give calibrated age ranges of 1700 – 1950. Before 1700AD, more accurate dating is not a problem. In order to minimize this effect, which is most obvious in sample #2, we will repeat the measurements to decrease the measurement errors. This may or may not remove the sample from the ambiguous overlap with 1700-1950. For sample #2, only 10% of the total probability distribution is 1943-1955 and this can probably be eliminated. Sample #2 is most likely 1506 – 1809. In the data presented only two other samples (#5 and #6) are convincingly pre 1700 AD.”


Sample #2 was my Tekke chuval though it was called a Salor at that time. Either #5 or #6 was a sample of the Ardebil carpet now at the Getty Museum. I don’t remember off hand what the other rug was but it is in the MET. There were 8 samples in the run, two of which were Kurt Munkacsi's and two were mine. Kurt funded the study.

The report from Jull was not equivocal and the stated results were pre 1700 AD. This report made news in museums around the globe. Let’s put this to rest now. My chuval was most likely mid 17th century and Martin’s torba, IMHO, is most likely late 17th century. Dates after 1800 are not very reliable and the fact that it has a quite significant pre 1700 AD spike is most important. The fact that it has the same patina and overall look as my chuval is of great importance to me as well. Believe it or not!

Joel Greifinger

Hi Jim.

I'm really not trying to be difficult or perverse, but I can't reconcile these two statements:

and

In my closest dictionary, 'equivocal' is defined as " of uncertain nature or classification." Unless I am misunderstanding the findings you are presenting (a probable range of 16th through 18th centuries), isn't 'equivocal' a precise characterization of the C-14 results?

Joel Greifinger

Jim Allen

This is the basis for my statement. Quoting Dr. Jull: "Sample #2 is most likely 1506 – 1809. In the data presented only two other samples (#5 and #6) are convincingly pre 1700 AD.”

Jull says clearly that my chuval is one of three samples in the run that is convincingly pre 1700 AD. The other two convincingly pre 1700 AD samples were from the Ardebil carpet and another classical period Persian rug at the MET. My chuval was in the set with them.

Please remember that I am not a nuclear scientist. Jull is a world famous nuclear scientist and if you want to disagree with him, write him a letter. If you are determined not to believe what you have just read, be my guest, don't believe it! It won't hurt my feelings.

I will say that essentially every textile curator at every museum in the world believed exactly what Jull stated. After my study a now famous Swiss researcher used a shotgun approach to the field and discovered quite a number of other examples of pre 1700 AD Turkoman weaving. I hear he has a book coming out soon. Should be an interesting read.

Steve Price

Hi People

All the information appears to be in place, and the difference of opinion about the correct interpretation of the C14 analysis of Jim's juval looks like a difference of opinion, not alternative versions of the facts in the report.

I'm puzzled by Jull's wording (Sample #2 is most likely 1506 – 1809. In the data presented only two other samples (#5 and #6) are convincingly pre 1700 AD) because the other two rugs have C14 date ranges that don't include any more recent than the 17th century. Perhaps the word "other" doesn't belong there, but perhaps the radiocarbon dating people use a convention with which I'm unfamiliar. The only person who can address that is Jull, and he's not here.

My conclusion is that Jim and I disagree on how to interpret Jull's report. Radiocarbon dating isn't my specialty, and my opinion might change if I knew more about that field's conventions. Then again, it might not.

Thanks

Steve Price

Martin Andersen

Hi All

In an earlier tread on Turkish Kelim Marla Mallett made a very clear and well founded argumentation concerning the need for stylistic and aesthetic studies as parameters to be taken serious in relation to the carbon14 tests. She argumentated for all the complexed aspects of these studies, and made it clear that it certainly is not a simplistic road to take. For me the conclusion on Marla Malletts arguments was that experts in the stylistic studies actually are able to establish valid experience based views on stylistic and technical development - and thereby some kind of chronology. Of course estimates and chronology with reservations, likewise with the probability aspects of c14 tests.

Please remember when I first showed my Torba here on Turkotek, Jim Allen was the only one who tried to make a precise estimate to its age. I would say it is interesting and fair to underline that the c14 made Jim right in his purely stylistic estimate that the Torba is very old - and that the test with ca 35% probability (and thats not a small number) made him right in his first 17th accession. That certainly is stylistic expertise enough for me, I am listening.

I have in this tread tried to describe what I se as rare and perhaps almost unique stylistic elements in my Torba. I would of course be very interested if someone would post detailed comparative material.

If these elements are more common than I think then I am wrong, but personally I think that the large number of rare elements in them self and in connection with the c14 test is an argument towards an early date, as it must be simple logic that there today exist fewer older pieces than later pieces. And in a Turkmen context of general aesthetically conservatism and a development towards conventionalization the stylistic jumps probably will be larger in-between the fewer older pieces because we are missing a lot of the stylistic connectional samples. Not rocket science, just personal speculations

best Martin

Steve Price

Hi All

Martin refers to a previous thread in which Marla did much to clarify the issues involved in various approaches to date attribution. That thread is in our Archive; here is a link to it.

Regards

Steve Price

Kurt Munkacsi

Steve - Its been interesting following the thread on the C-14 dating of the Allen Chuval. BUT there is one glaring fact that you are ignoring. That is the results from Dr. Bonani in Zurich. Zurich is every bit as a "world class" facility as Arizona is. In fact they have run C-14 tests on well over 100 Turkmen pieces. Far more than any other lab in the world. YOU CAN'T DISCOUNT THEIR FINDINGS just because its inconvenient or you don't like the results. That's not how real science is done. Their findings must be considered in this discussion. And that brings us to the point regarding C-14 dating of pieces less then 300 years old - ITS NOT ACCURATE OR RELIABLE. I have seen far more C-14 test results of Turkmen rugs then anyone except Jurg Rageth. And the one constant is that the results are always inconclusive when dating objects less then 300 years old. They CANNOT relied on as the sole evidence of age until your cross that 300 year point.

As to Jim's assertion the DR. Jull did verify the age of the chuval was C1650. I was there and saw all the results and to the best of my knowledge the result presented here is the only written report from Dr. Jull. I know Jim had several phones calls with Dr. Jull regarding the results and age of the piece. But as I said this was the only written report by Dr. Jull. (I think Jim always hoped Dr. Jull would amend his findings but to the best of my knowledge he never did.)

As for the "the report made news in museums around the world" I have no recollection of that at all.

Frank Martin Diehr

Hi all,

lively thread!
I recall mentioning Jürg and his extensive experience with C14 testing of kelims and Turkoman pieces in a previous thread on the dating game some years back - no one really took much notice then. (I always find those threads amusing, up to the point when the dyed-in-the-wool Turkomaniacs reach for their daggers.)
Has anyone thought of contacting Jürg about the issue of Martin's new find?

Frank

btw Last summer Jürg showed me pre-prints of his latest Turkoman books (a text and a plates volume each), and I am sure they will provide good fuel for this debate when they are finally out in print. Well worth the wait, even for a Baluchophile.
Can't wait for his Baluch Liestal symposium book any longer (tapping fingers ...) but deep down I'm glad I only collect Baluchis, much friendlier bunch it seems.

__________________
This is just an uneducated guess!

Steve Price

Hi Kurt

In my post #38 in this thread I summarized what I think is the basis for why the interpretations of the analytical data by Jim (and Jull) differ from mine. I am puzzled by Jull's lumping Jim's juval with "the only other two samples ... convincingly pre-1700AD." (emphasis added) The other two come out with date ranges entirely prior to 1700AD, Jim's doesn't. But radiocarbon dating isn't my specialty and it is Jull's, so I tentatively assume that those guys have some conventions that I don't understand.

Why do I ignore the Bonani report? The results are presented in three forms, just as they are in Jull's report: One Sigma Range of Dates, Two Sigma Range of Dates, Age as Number of Years Prior to 1950AD. All are derived by different mathematical treatments of the same raw data, so they are either all valid or all not valid, assuming that there were no mathematical errors in the calculations. The first two forms are what I would expect for results from a piece that's too recent for C14 analysis: several rather wide ranges, with none overwhelmingly probable. The third one, though, is a big red flag. It gives a date that most of us would consider absurd (that juval just doesn't fit any notion of a Soviet Turkmen juval), and a very narrow range that's not what is expected for something too young for C14 analysis (1925AD with a 35 year window on each side of that). It appears to be an example of something all too familiar to any lab slob: the inexplicable random errors that occur from time to time. They are usually not reproducible, and when the procedure that led to one is repeated, perhaps 5 or 10 times, the replicates give results that are consistent with each other but very different than the first. In such cases, it is considered proper (even necessary) to disregard the first one, although it's more comforting if the cause for it can be found. Since the One Sigma Range and the Two Sigma Range are just different ways of calculating the same data that gave the 1925AD date, if that resulted from an inexplicable random error, anything calculated from the same data can be justifiably ignored.

Beyond that, I have nothing to offer. Not being in the world's museum folk loop, I don't know how any of them reacted to the news or how it reached them.

Regards

Steve Price

Martin Andersen

As relaxation from the carbon one could take a look at the small tertiary filling designs on my Torba



They are only placed in the lower half of the rug. Very simple designs, and yet again they seem intentional distorted by adding knotlines to the ones closer to the horizontal centreline of the Torba, “growing upwards” like the Chemsche Gul and the Main Guls:



Don’t think I have seen fillings like this in a Tekke Torba before.

Best Martin

(looking very much forward to Jürg Rageths book, and would of course love to se some photos of Kurt Munkacsí's rugs, sure they must be wonderfull)

Kurt Munkacsi

Sorry don't mean to flog the C-14 discussion to much but I just remembered one more piece of relevant information. Since Dr. Jull did his original analysis in 1995 a new set of calibration curves is now in use by C-14 testing facilities around the world. The latest curves are based on new analysis of tree-ring growth. (It has to do with better understanding the ratios of Carbon isotopes in the atmosphere in different years.)
This is what the Arizona results look like with the latest curves applied to the data (I would like to thank Jurg Rageth for the new calculations)

"As promised, here is the new calibration of the dating result from Arizona
Lab no. AA-17821
Radiocarbon age: 242 +/- 46
Calibrated age ranges (95% confidence limit):
1493-1600 (22.0%)
1614-1688 (39.8%)
1729-1810 (31.8%)
1923-1948 (6.4%)
Instead of only two ranges, we have four now, but the overall period is nearly the same....... Best Regards, Jurg"

Kurt Munkacsi

Hello Martin - thought you might like to see this one. Its similar to yours.

Martin Andersen

Thanks Kurt - and wow, that sure is a beauty

any chanche of some close up photos?

best Martin

Jim Allen

IMHO! Kurt's torba has less dimensionality than Martin's and it's weaver was less familiar with the border, compare the vertical major border elements. Kurt's torba has variations in gull size but no real object to the changes unless it was to present a flock of birds scattering in flight. Perhaps a chaos of "entering the air". That being said I would date Kurt's torba to the first half of the 18th century, perhaps early 18th century. Martin's torba is more comprehensible as a three dimensional ensemble and that is exactly why I immediately dated it to the 17th century, the minute I saw it. If my memory serves me Kurt's torba came from Ronnie. Believe me Kurt has an absolutely mind bending collection of Turkoman weavings and I should know. I have known Kurt for at least 20 years and we remain good friends. We may disagree and even disagree vehemently but we will always be buddies. Remember this is only my way of reading these textiles and their designs and agreement with me is only an option and not a religious dogma.

Martin Andersen

Hi All

Regardless of age speculations I sure find Kurt’s Torba extremely beautiful, personally I would say that it is made with an exceptional aesthetical sensibility.

The weave seems highly controlled both aesthetically and technically, not much sloppiness here. And I would think that the weaver deliberately for aesthetically reasons has chosen a simpler variation of border for the vertical direction.

As I have tried to describe earlier in the tread the vertical articulation of the border is almost impossible (especially the diagonal Z/S shapes doesn’t look much like the horizontal), I suppose caused by the nature of the single knots 1:2 dimension.
Instead of a messy layout the weaver has chosen a complete reformulation in the vertical direction.

And one could say that the vertical border on Kurt’s Torba designwise could be seen as the link to the Kaminski version of the border:


Kaminski border

Best Martin

Paul Smith

Everyone--

Martin had asked about later examples of the illusions being discussed in this thread, and I thought I would post these three images of my Tekke main carpet, which I think is 19th-century (but, sure, convince me it's 18th-c.!), illustrating the most dramatic part of the dimensionality illusion in this piece--the expanding length of the minor gul. The consistency of the effect is what makes it seem intentional to me, but who knows. So, from top to bottom, here they are--






Now that I look at it, the main gul may get a little taller at the top too; looking at the side arms of the main gul, it seems that the distance between the bird heads (or whatever they are) gets a little taller from the bottom to the top. I sure don't know what to make of it all, but it hypnotizes me into a 3-D perception of this thing hanging on my wall!

Cheers!

Paul

Jim Allen

The age of Tekke mains is best assessed by studying their borders. If these carpets were used as audience carpets; the guy standing at the end with the larger main gulls would seem magnified versus the man standing on the smaller gulls. Of course I don't know what the true purpose was but the arrangement is very common. I may have the end for the Khan backwards. I can't know their motivations, I can only guess at them.This is my theory for the very standard layout of larger gulls at one end shading into smaller ones at the other end. My theory may help explain the common change of minor gulls at the end of so many Tekke main rugs. (see Turkmen by Thompson and Mackie, fig. #28) Perhaps the Khan is designating his ancestry by standing on the area with the different minor gulls? I have seen quite a few Tekke mains with one terminal row of octagonal minor gulls and the rest of the minor gulls something else. There are all kinds of variations but I tend to associate the octagonal gulls with the Salor. One thing is for sure old Tekke mains, hung vertically, are extremely visually active. I don't think there is much doubt that they exhibit an orchestration of geometric distortions to effect their three dimensionality. If you have the wall space, a good old Tekke main is very hard to beat!

Marla Mallett

These discussions focusing on issues of asymmetry and three-dimensionality in Turkmen weavings often seem to have a lot in common with the old "Emperor's New Clothes" fable. Some folks seem to be trying very hard to see what they are told they should see--especially when the prescribed characteristics are then tied in with possible assessments of greater age.

I find the best of these Turkmen weavings to be fabulous objects that don't need the enhancement of imaginary attributes. From my perspective, just about all of the claims of weavers' purposeful attempts at three-dimensionality seem far-fetched. Some of these claims that have appeared in published form, such as the cited HALI 55 article of many years back, can be shown to be patently false. When examined closely, they rely on notions of perspective that simply are inaccurate.

I can cite one example from Jim Allen's HALI article: He points out that the top edges of minor guls in a Salor chuval have been widened to make those guls seems to tilt forward. Then he proceeds to point out that the lower parts of these same guls have been elongated vertically to reinforce this 3-D illusion. In fact, this is exactly the opposite of how foreshortening works. The two features he has cited are actually contradictory.

Virtually every primitive knotted-pile weaving that has been made without a cartoon has irregularities. When a multitude of small weaving errors appear--in several parts of each motif, as well as in the spacing and proportions of the layout--it is difficult to put much credence in claims that a certain few selected discrepancies were purposeful. The age of the piece, a high knot count, or glossy wool are irrelevant to an assessment of the designing. It makes little sense to assume either that because a piece seems especially old the discrepancies signal some special intent-- OR the reverse: that because there are discrepancies the piece must be older.

There are a multitude of factors that account for weaving irregularities. Changes in warp tension are almost guaranteed to produce uneven densities in a weaving, and variations in the sizes of motifs are the natural result. Both knots and wefts pack more closely when a warp is tight and smooth. Perfect warp tension on a handspun and hand-plied wool warp is rare indeed. It is affected by changes in humidity. It is affected by loom adjustments made by the weavers as they go along.

As different people weave on the same piece, not only do changes result in the ways that motifs are articulated and spaced, but different weave densities can also be expected.

Horizontal (side to side) symmetry is easy to produce since one can see the entire width of a weaving at once. Vertical (bottom to top) symmetry is a very different matter. Working row by row, it is often difficult to determine the proper starting points for downward projecting parts of motifs, and when errors in this placement occur, alternations or corrections in the drawing of the motifs are often necessary. If the already finished parts of the weaving are out of sight--either pulled around a front/bottom beam or hidden because it's covered with a cloth and the weavers are sitting on it--errors or inconsistencies easily occur. If the already finished portion of a weaving was done several days before, it can be difficult to remember exactly how many knots were used in any particular pattern part.

Several common Turkmen conventions in the drawing of individual motifs seem to contradict the idea that three-dimensionality was a goal. We've occasionally heard speculations that either a top or bottom gul outline was thickened to create a 3-D effect. But to encircle a motif with a triple outline is then a sure-fire way to flatten it visually. Especially when one of those outlines is the same red as used in the background. Since whites tend to advance visually and darker areas tend to recede, these weavers have often quartered their guls to neutralize a tendency for the motif to either advance or recede. To use the same background red also for parts within a gul, does NOT help to move it visually off the flat plane. If the illusion of forward movement of individual design parts was the goal, Turkmen artisans have avoided the most obvious ways of producing three-dimensional effects.

Actually, for me it is a bit strange to encounter ruggies' speculations on weavers' possible attempts at achieving minor three-dimensional effects in their work. Both Western and Asian carpet and rug designers over the past few centuries have consciously worked at making sure their designs remained flat and two-dimensional. They have often consciously tried to mitigate the tendencies of some colors to visually recede or advance; they have consciously fought the tendencies of certain forms to appear three dimensional. This is all for good reason: It can be disconcerting for an individual walking across a carpet to feel that he must either step UP over a form that seems to be protruding, and OVER or AROUND an area that seems to recede. MAINTAINING THE INTEGRITY OF THE TWO-DIMENSIONAL PLANE IS A BASIC TENANT OF RUG DESIGN. The same aesthetic extends to the designing of clothing and furnishing textiles; it is generally considered undesirable to visually alter the shape of the underlying form. Illusion and perspective in painting is an entirely different matter. Beginning textile and rug designers may not understand this, but more experienced artisans do. That occasional weavers or designers have sometimes not been completely successful in avoiding an undesirable three-dimensionality seems hardly a fact to celebrate.

Best,
The Grinch

PS. It seems a bit strange to try to assess Turkmen weavers' intentions by looking at a main carpet hanging vertically on one of our walls--or for that matter by looking at it head-on in a photograph. I can't imagine many Turkmen viewing them in this fashion. To make any sense at all, shouldn't we only view such a carpet obliquely--from either a standing or seated position with the rug placed horizontally either in front of or under us? And possibly from one side also? Not every viewer would see such a rug from the exact center of one end.

In fact, for a person sitting at one end of a main carpet, the guls nearest him would automatically seem larger than those at the other end--automatically rounder and more plump than those farther away that he sees more obliquely. It seems a bit silly to think that any weaver should purposely adjust the size of her guls toward one end by a few centimeters.

Steve Price

Hi Folks

The issue of perspective as an indicator of age in Turkmen weaving has come up on Turkotek several times. One archived discussion from about 4 years ago is linked here. It includes the following post by James Blanchard:

Hi all,

The "3-D" effect is kind of neat. I was able to "unfocus" my eyes enough to see it in a few of the weavings that Mike referred to. However, I was also able to achieve the same visual effect with Pakistani Bokharas that have distinct (i.e. high contrast) repeating "tekke gul" designs. So I am not sure how useful a diagnostic tool this will turn out to be...

I think speculating about the illusion of perspective being a property of very old Turkmen rugs is kind of fun and generally harmless. But the evidence that it's an unsupportable conclusion seems pretty strong to me. Incidentally, the Mike to whom James referred (Mike McCullough) believed that it was diagnostic of Turkmen weaving produced before World War I.

Regards

Steve Price

Martin Andersen

Hi Marla

You may of course be right that a lot, or all of the asymmetries, we se in the Turkmen rugs are derived from technical aspects of the weaving process.

But I cant agree on that all carpet ornamentation has flatness as ultimate ideal. I posted the Ardabil carpet earlier in this tread, the asymmetries between the lamps and the medallions is perhaps a strange singularly experiment in foreshortening. But I cant se the general floating space in the floral ornamentation where leaves and starks are moving up and down, some parts laying across and around each others as a flat space. Of course it is not a linear western representation of space, but that doesn’t make it flat or spaceless. As I se it it makes the ornamentation vibrant and alive in a precise negotiation between space and flatness in the plane.


The Ardabil carpet, detail

Not that this necessarily is age related but I sure don’t find it impossible that some kind of negotiation between plane and dept has been a part of the Turkmen aesthetics, of course in their own interpretation.

Best
Martin

Jim Allen

If you study illusions in visual processing, two parallel lines one atop the other and exactly the same length but with one line thicker, will cause you to "see" the thicker line as closer to you. You didn't bring up the fact that the Jenkin's chuval had extra knots added atop the octagonal gulls specifically to thicken the line and bring it forward thus tilting the gull forward. I was asked about this by a Swiss researcher at a lecture I was giving, who went right down to Washington to inspect the Jenkin's chuval. He later called me up and said that indeed the tops of the octagonal gulls do have these extra knots and there could be no reason for them other than my stated hypothesis. So Marla you have your opinion and I have mine. Your theories all seem to stem from your pet theories concerning structure driven designs. You have absolutely no more idea about classical Turkoman designs than I do. In fact; why don't you point out to us all some thus far unidentified pre 1700 AD Turkoman artifact with nothing but a picture to go on. I'd really like to see that. As for your assertion about my statements concerning my old Tekke chuval's outline distortions being opposite of what I detailed, I have to believe that you simply can't see them. In fact a lot of people can't see them and this is precisely why we can never reach a consensus here. Your statements about three dimensionality not being a desirable design goal is equally puzzling. In a society weaving within the aesthetic constraints of overall conformity of design, secondary goals would necessarily have developed in order to achieve more or less virtuous results. In other words, since the designs were regular I can only imagine that generation after generation of "lucky" accidents, which rendered the gulls or "birds" seem more like they were flying, would have become a virtuous goal. No naive weaver, on her own, could have ever developed these 3-D effects but generations of them could and did. It would have taken a lot of generations for high level three dimensionality to develop and the only time the Turkomen ever had that kind of undisturbed generation after generation of aesthetic development was the classical period. One must consider that without a cartoon the instructions concerning these distortions were most likely remembered as music with lower tones representing bigger or looser knotting and higher tones tighter knotting. Nobuko was amazed at the technical wizardry she saw in the Tekke chuval. She spent a great deal of time peering into its structure under high magnification. She discovered things like differential weft tension, asymmetric weft packing, a nearly 1:1 knotting ratio, etc.. She believed these advanced techniques might well indicate a classical weaving and this is precisely why she backed Kurt and my C-14 dating project. Her faith in me was rewarded! In time, as more and more classical pieces are unearthed, I feel confident that future connoisseur's of Turkoman weaving will vindicate my groundbreaking work.

Marla Mallett

JIm,

I'm sorry, but you simply can't make up your own rules of perspective. In discussing the Salor cuval belonging to the Textile Museum in the HALI article you attempt to tell us that the minor guls in this piece visually tilt toward us, with their tops forward, and that this tilting somehow makes the major guls seem to float. You say, "Quite simply, she made the top horizontal side of each minor gul longer than its base. To reinforce this effect she also made the lower part of each minor gul in the upper two rows slightly longer, vertically, than the top part. Drawn this way, the guls appear to tilt toward the observer." The problem here is that to create three-dimensional space, perspective demands that the RECEDING part of a motif must become SHORTER vertically, not longer. That's the way foreshortening works. Thus the two distorted aspects of these motifs actually produce contradictory effects. You say that this trick may be a "stroke of genius" on the part of the weaver. I guess so...since perspective simply doesn't work in such a manner to produce three-dimensional images. No wonder that "a lot of people can't see" these effects!

Anyone who doesn't understand this can try a simple experiment. First draw a perfectly regular octagon on a small piece of paper and cut it out. Then hold it upright in front of you... then tilt the top toward you. Squint at it and you can see that the horizontal top edge does indeed seem to become a little wider. But the bottom part of the octagon gets SHORTER (vertically), not longer....as seen in the minor Salor guls Jim was discussing.

Thus, Jim, you have used two features of normal perspective, but mixed them up so that the two distortions that you have pointed out in these minor guls work in contradictory ways...They DO NOT create a three-dimensional form. I've taught college drawing classes, and this kind of simple perspective is typically covered in the first week or two of any freshman course.

Marla

Steve Price

Hi Jim

It's best to keep facts and their interpretation separate. The reason is that the facts will presumably always be true, interpretations generally have a fairly short life expectancy. This is why the nearly universal format for research publications has separate sections called "Results", "Discussion" and "Conclusions."

For example, you wrote, ... the Jenkin's chuval had extra knots added atop the octagonal gulls specifically to thicken the line and bring it forward thus tilting the gull forward. The first part of the sentence is a statement of fact. Anyone interested can look at the Jenkins piece and confirm that it is so. The second part of the sentence is a hypothesis about those facts. It might ultimately be proven to be correct, but if it turns out to be wrong, the first part would still be useful in suggesting other hypotheses.

I think one of the reasons you draw as much flak as you do is that your (very imaginative) ideas often have facts and interpretations interlocked so tightly that it's difficult to tease them apart.

Regards

Steve Price

Jim Allen

I think you are mixing up my description of the Tekke and the Salor octagonal gulls. I would like to talk about your octagon experiment. You say cut it out and tilt it forward and you will see basically what I describe for the salor octagonal gull. Well the Salor couldn't cut them out and tilt them forward to make them stand out in space, they had to distort their outlines and emphasize the top horizontal to make them SEEM to be tilting in space. Now the casual observer would not consciously notice this but unconsciously they would sense the distortion as I have described. If you sense this tilting in space this renders the main gulls in space and the designs seem to be seen in depth and not set against a flat plane. Just look at the pieces....the gulls float. This is what makes them so beguiling.





Steve: you are quite right about your criticism. I believe so much in what I see and have had so much success in applying said information that I am totally sold out to my hypothesis. I am getting a lot of emails full of encouragement for my thoughts. Certainly I am also catching a lot of flack as well. As I already pointed out, seeing these kinds of things consciously isn't easy for most people. I spent 20 years learning to make sense, down to the level of millimeters, from images that look like pure chaos to most people. My opinions in this exercise sent people straight to surgery and in some instances life saving surgery as I was an early master of diagnostic medical ultrasonic imaging. I have often thought this work had uniquely prepared me for what I am doing now. I don't need approval; just a fair chance to help those who can see what I describe actually see it.. Martin can see it and we have had a very nice string of communications. I was part of an an evangelism group in High School and perhaps I am still infected with that "enthusiasm". Maybe I should apologize for that. I can certainly be over-the-top.

Paul Smith

Marla, et al--

The rug hangs on my wall because it's too fragile for the floor, it looks stunning, and takes the harsh acoustic reflections out of the hard surface of the wall--which is a good thing in a recording studio. I am certain that Turkmen weavers were very careful to create a fabric that did not dampen the upper harmonics that create "space" in recorded sound, but softened unpleasant frequencies in the upper midrange, around 3 kHz. Just kidding, but nevertheless, acoustic guitar sounds exquisite in that room. I'm not making that up, and I'm not making up what is clearly perceptible in the design of my carpet. You can count the knots. But like the acoustic properties, I recognize that my perception is likely to have little to do with what was going on at the loom 150 years ago, or whenever. Still, I can appreciate efforts by Jim and others to perceive patterns in these "distortions" and try to characterize what sorts of things could have been intended. If we only had as much information as Native American scholars have about Plains Indian cultures in the nineteenth century, we could probably ascertain much more, but we do not.

The effect I described is not a product of changes in the weaving density, as that quality is remarkably consistent throughout the carpet, but was created through the addition of more knots in certain elements as the weaver(s) moved from one end to the other, as Martin has demonstrated several times in this thread. Though I am intrigued with what those more knowledgeable than I see in this phenomenon, I did not myself ascribe a particular intention to it, as I think that to either proclaim that a particular effect was intended, or to dismiss any intent, as you did, requires knowledge of Turkmen ideas about perception that we simply do not have access to, as with many aspects of Turkmen culture. To paraphrase Lev Vygotsky, in the absence of information, it is natural to invent, to play with that ambiguity based on obviously limited information. You adamantly refuse to accept anything other than a two-dimensional reading, but to do so you must project your own ideas on this weaving as much as Jim does. That a particular operation was consistently applied from one end to the other of the weaving, or that an alteration to the repetition was done in plain sight, as would be the case with the smaller torba format--both invite speculation that the weaver absolutely intended to do what she did. I mean, why not? Which is not to say that random shifts don't occur as a result of weaving without a cartoon, but that doesn't logically imply that all such changes are random, if a pattern can be perceived. To refer to a common repetition trick in music improvisation--if you do something weird once, it's a mistake, but if you play it again--that makes it intentional.

Many centuries ago, Chinese philosophers looking at music discovered that the pentatonic scale, the basis of a lot of human music cross-culturally, was a set of pitches related to each other by simple whole number ratios (1:2 and 2:3 is all you need to create the entire chromatic scale, actually). The perception of this pattern had apparently nothing to do with intention on the part of singers from the thousands of previous generations all over the world (or afterwards, for that matter), nevertheless they created music that demonstrated these mathematical relationships. It is a genuine human mystery. Pythagoras saw in these relationships the evidence that there was a divine presence in the universe, but ultimately it's really anyone's guess.

Paul

Chuck Wagner

Hi Paul, et al,

It's late and my brain hurts from reading all this. I see a much simpler explanation for much of what is under discussion, which I will compare to the way cars distribute upon pulling away from a red light: they get closer together, then further apart, then closer together again as the speed of the vehicles equilibrates. The system resonates.

When I look at your minor guls, what I see is shorter (7 diamonds on the vertical) going to longer (8 diamonds) which did not work, causing the rams horns to contact the major gul. So, adjust length again on the next pass, and evolve to 9 diamonds..

Notice that the same thing happens with the spacing grid connecting the major guls. Initially, 2 blue knots, then expanding to 3 as the layout evolves.

I see this as a dynamic adjustment of the overall layout which sometimes works and sometimes does not. The minor guls are floaters and not so easy to position. The cross-elements don't always tag up at dead-center either, which puts the minor guls out of balance at some points.
I guess that puts me on Marla's side of the room in the pie fight... (I guess we need a pie fight smilie)

Cheers,
Chuck Wagner

Marla Mallett

It's very difficult to talk vaguely about "Dimensionality. " It's only meaningful if we can be far more specific. Do we mean that (in these cases) the weaver attempted:
1. To make individual motifs appear to have some thickness or depth?
OR
2. To make individual motifs appear to tilt--either forward or backward?
OR
3. To make flat motifs appear to either project or recede from the flat plane?

These effects are all achieved in different ways. But none of these illusions can be achieved solely by the thickening or lengthening of one edge of an octagon--either top or bottom. Additional alterations of the form are essential. We hardly need to guess at the intent of the weaver. The result is present for everyone to see and judge. She either achieved a three-dimensional illusion or she did not.

We've heard a fourth suggestion: That an entire plane of repeating motifs can be made to appear to recede into the distance by decreasing the size and/or the coloration of individual motifs. But without altering the panel's rectangular border and without changing the parallel vertical columns of motifs into converging columns, an effective illusion of depth is not achieved.

JIm, The remarks in my last post concerned only your HALI 55 discussion of the Salor weaving in the Textile Museum collection, and the quotes referenced that chuval only.

Marla

Steve Price

Hi All

There are so many issues in here that my brain hurts trying to keep them sorted.

My comments to Jim were meant constructively, and I was glad to see that they were taken in that spirit.

Marla points out that the meaning attached to the term "dimensionality" in Turkmen rugs is a moving target. This is a recurring problem whenever the subject is raised here. Several years ago we had someone telling us that nice old Turkmen weavings had guls drawn in such a way that the weaving or the guls (we never were able to get him to tell us whether he meant the whole thing or just the guls) seemed to wave around as he looked at them. It worked best when he was intoxicated.

Unless someone is willing and able to deal with these manifestations individually, we can't get anywhere. If, for example, someone wants to pursue the question of whether old Tekke juvals have guls that are drawn in such a way as to appear to tilt toward the observer, there are ways to do it. I'd start by assembling a bunch of juvals (good photos would do) selected by some process that randomizes. Then I'd divide them into "obviously young" and "obviously old", no fewer than six in each group. Then I'd measure the widths of the upper and lower end of each rank of guls and see what I could make of the results. Global conclusions from individual specimens are a statistical no-no, and there's no reason to use them: there are lots of specimens out there. In any case, until the hypothesis (or hypotheses) is defined fairly crisply, I don't see how it can get beyond being individual statements of faith. The problem with that is that my conviction that something is true isn't a compelling reason for you to believe it.

Regards

Steve Price

Martin Andersen

Hi All

Well I suppose this tread is getting a bit long, but just one more from me on this:

I understand the controversity in relating it to age - but I don’t se the controversity in suggesting that the Turkmen rugs are articulating space. Not a space of western linear perspective – but of course an ornamental space which is a cultural expression in it self. A complexed expression which is built up by a lot of contradictions in patternmaking, colours, contours, superimposing line drawing, symmetries – and perhaps asymmetries. Some of it relaying on perceptional illusions, and some of it breaking these illusions and emphasizing the plane. (and probably a lot more, all contradictions seen from a western perspective )

Just for the general argument I take the liberty of posting a few more details of the Ardabil: the tilting back and forward of the floral ornamentation in the Ardabil carpet sure would have kicked the weavers out of any perspective class, but that certainly does not make the ornamentation flat:








Ardabil, details

I think it is interesting that some people here describe their perception of the dimensionality as “wavings”, people do not describe it as "looking out the window". I would say that this is what ornamental space formally is - a waving back and forth between flatness and space.

Best Martin

Steve Price

Hi Martin

I think the aesthetics of formal workshop and court carpets are so different than those of Turkmen weavings that comparing them in the context of how they depict reality is more likely to mislead than to illuminate. The Ardabil carpet's design and motifs are realistic and naturalistic. They are easily recognizable as floral, animal, and man-made items in the real world. There's almost none of that in the Turkmen tradition. Nobody knows what the most widely occurring motifs depict or whether they depict anything.

A few points in passing:
1. I only know of one person who sees Turkmen weavings waving, and it isn't clear whether he's talking about the guls waving on a stationary background or the whole thing waving like an unfurled flag in a breeze. He explains the fact that it's seen most easily when he's stoned by positing that the Turkmen were often stoned, so believes that he's actually seeing what they saw and that this is what the weavers intended to be seen.
2. The most common notion of the layout of Turkmen fields of guls surrounded by borders is that they are intended to be seen as a window on an infinitely repeating pattern. The partial guls at the ends and edges, according to this notion, are simply guls that are partially underneath the border. It might be right.

Regards

Steve Price

Martin Andersen

Hi Steve and All

Of course the Ardabil examples were just a general argument against Marla’s generalization that maintaining the integrity of two-dimensional plane is the basic tenant in all rug design.

Seeing a window frame in the border is of course also seeing space (though I suppose seeing a doorframe in the window-less yurts would be more correct )

Thanks for an interesting discussion, for my own part I don’t have to find any absolute conclusions in all this, the rugs themselves and all the open questions they generate is the fun of it.

If nothing totally new turns up, over and out
Martin

Kurt Munkacsi

I feel I have to interject a bit of reality into these discussions regarding Three Dimensionality - Turkmen Weavings & Jim Allen. I have known Jim since the late eighties where we first met at Mark Shilen's Soho gallery over a Yomut Engsi. We have continued our friendship over the past 25 some odd years.
I have spent many a long evening with Jim discussing Turkmen rugs. And actually witnessed his ideas regarding "Dimensionality" develop and evolve.
I can tell you from first hand experience that the three dimensionality Jim saw in a rug increased as the evening wore on and was directly proportional to the amount of consciousness altering substances (both legal and illegal) that were ingested. By 3am the guls were lifting right off the rugs turning into UFO's and heading right for hyperspace.
Also what you have to understand about Jim besides being a Turkmen enthusiast, scholar and dealer he is first and foremost a great poet and storyteller. Jim has the talent to be abel to take a little bit of fact and spin it into a really fantastic yarn.
Just a Steve mentioned in an earlier post, Jim can take a little bit of fact such as the Jerkins' Chuval having an extra row of knots and turn it into a very credible sounding theory about "Dimensionality" and the age of Turkmen weavings. I have to admit his theory sounds completely believable even with the absence of any real scientific facts to back it up. But this is Jim's really great talent.
So please remember while its a lot of fun discussing Jim's various theories and ideas they are very far from being actual provable fact and have to be taken with a "grain of salt"

Steve Price

Hi Kurt

Those are the reasons why I encourage Jim to frame his ideas in testable forms and test them. If he turns out to be right (that is, if his notions pass the tests and/or are refined into notions that do), he will be a revolutionary. Most people don't understand that discovering new things or ways of thinking aren't what makes revolutions; convincing other people that those discoveries or new ways of thinking are correct is the key ingredient. History is full of examples demonstrating this point.

Regards

Steve Price

Jim Allen

If and when Mr. Rageth's book comes out perhaps there will be enough material for me to have Craig test representative examples, thus arriving at three dimensionality scores and not just my opinions, so we can see if classical period Turkoman chuvals and torbas do consistently show very high dimensionality scores. The bad thing is even if I do get this work done those who can't see these effects will poo poo the work. I am beginning to believe Turkoman lovers can be divided into two camps, the flat landers and the space cadets.

I will have to add that since I last visited Kurt he has had serious trouble with his eyes and this has potentially affected his perceptual abilities. If he believes all of our conversations were just hallucinatory, then he has really changed since we last visited. One other adherent of the dimensional nature of Turkomen weaving mentioned marijuana as an influence on Turkoman values. This drug has demonstrable effects on perception. The Turkoman didn't smoke marijuana, they built small tepees and burned whole plants in the structure and sat in there inhaling the smoke. The word pot head should derive from them. For those of you who have highly developed visual sensibilities I have discovered that many yellow chirpis are festooned with marijuana flowers. I have collected five of these and one particular examples has an arched doorway atop many of the flowers with a small bird perched atop the doorway. For me this is clear evidence that the flowers are being referred to as doorways to perception. The women of sufficient age and rank who were allowed to own these chirpis were allowed to indulge at will I suppose.Embroidering these flowers onto their yellow chirpis must have indicated something like this. A similar ethnographic corollary can be found among mesoamerican civilizations where those who managed to live long enough were given an allowance of two pots of alcoholic brew per day to enjoy.

One last note, I do absolutely no drugs of any kind today, except blood pressure medicine. I don't need any mind altering substances to see the dimensional effects so plain before my eyes. I can virtually glance at any good picture of a Turkoman piece and instantly see its dimensionality of lack of it. I think I have proven this with Martin's torba but perhaps not proven it sufficiently for a bunch of Washington and New York lawyers.

The simple fact is; if you can't look at the Jenkin's juval in Mackie and Thompson and see the depth behind those juval gulls no argument or description will ever convince you of its existence. Flat landers can't see it. Space cadets can. If you are a flat lander I suggest you collect something other than Turkoman weaving. There is one exception among the Turkotek elite who has his own unique collecting criteria and who has done an admirable job collecting Turkoman weaving. I don't feel free to tell you what he looks for in his pieces but the man's name is Yon Bard. I visited him recently and was very impressed by his collection. So my differentiating collectors onto just two camps is too narrow but for ordinary purposes I think I am dead on.

Steve Price

Hi Jim

If you want your ideas to be accepted, the issue for you to tackle isn't whether the Jenkins piece looks to you as though it has perspective. Start with the objective properties: the relative dimensions of each rank of guls. If the hypothesis is that the pattern for this data is different in older and younger pieces, there's no shortage of good photos of easily recognizable turn of the century pieces and of plenty of older stuff in the Rickmers collection and in the Russian collections. That's all you need to test any hypothesis about differences between dimensions in guls of different rank in Turkmen pieces of widely differing ages.

If you demonstrate that there are statistically significant time-related characteristics, nobody can deny that something is going on. At that point, you can proceed with what you think are the best explanations, and others will likely do the same. But opening the subject with your explanation of the meaning of phenomena whose time-related nature is unproven guarantees that many people won't take it seriously. There's not much interest in the meaning of things that may not exist

Regards

Steve Price

Richard Larkin

Hi Marla,

Sorry to be weighing in late, but you said the following a few posts back.

What is your basis for that rather sweeping statement?

Rich Larkin

Marla Mallett

Martin,

I find "ornamental space" and "cultural expressions" to be vague, slippery, and quite meaningless terms. In this discussion, and others on this Turkmen topic, people have referred specifically to "illusions of depth," "three-dimensional space," and "perspective." You have talked about "reading depth onto a flat plane." These are concrete, substantive notions. We should be able to determine in any specific case whether or not such effects were achieved by the artisan.

Three-dimensional effects above all require consistency. If one feature in a work of art suggests the illusion of depth, while other features negate or fail to reinforce that, the attempt to create a three-dimensional space has failed. So we need to be clear whether we are talking about ATTEMPTS or RESULTS. It may be impossible to discern what was in an artisan's mind. When you pointed out certain selected idiosyncrasies in your torba, you seemed to ask if others thought that these irregularities signaled the weaver's INTENT to create a three-dimensional space. You have pointed out asymmetries in your piece, but have not told us what overall three-dimensional effect you think was actually achieved by this weaver.

There are so many devices that can be used by artisans to create illusions of depth, the discussion could get extremely lengthy and complex. LINEAR PERSPECTIVE is one such device--the reorienting of elements within a composition so that normally parallel design parts appear to converge at some distant point. FORSHORTENING of figures is related to this--a three-dimensional affect achieved by altering the shapes of objects, shortening or condensing those parts that one wishes to have visually recede. Altering the RELATIVE SIZES of objects (especially familiar objects) can sometimes create illusory depth. (A large human figure and smaller human figure side by side can suggest that the small figure is farther away.) PLACEMENT ON A PAGE OR PANEL can suggest relative distance, as objects placed lower on a plane can seem closer. ATMOSPHERIC EFFECTS can create the illusion of depth. (Soft or hazy outlines tend to look distant, while bold ones seem closer). OVERLAPPING forms can achieve a sense of "dimensionality" . Use of ADVANCING or RECEDING COLORS are an important way to achieve illusions of depth. (Light tints can tend to advance while dark tones tend to recede; warm colors, like strong reds, yellows and oranges, tend to advance, while cool hues, like blues and greens, tend to recede. But these effects depend upon on the strength of each hue.) Thus any one of these devices MAY help to convey an illusion of three-dimensional form or space. Used together, they can be convincing.

A designer may intentionally (or unintentionally) NEGATE the illusion of three-dimensional space by countering one tendency with a device that produces the opposite effect. For example, a designer who overlaps forms may use precisely the same color tonality on the "underneath" and "top" forms. She may even minimize the three-dimensional effect by putting a receding color on the "top" form to help flatten the motif. She may use a strong, normally advancing color or tint as a "background" so that forms seemingly on "top" of it do not visually appear to jump off that plane. She may use dark outlines throughout a pattern to help keep a variety of colors in check. Or she may use variously colored outlines to mitigate the tendency of some hues to advance while nearby colors recede. This is a device very frequently used by Asian rug designers. We just must remember that the effect of any one standard device may be nullified when it is accompanied by conflicting devices, as occurs in some of the Turkmen examples cited. In manipulating all of these features (and more!), some designers succeed in producing a satisfactory result and others don't. The most fascinating artistic productions sometimes occur when a skillful designer has produced completely unpredictable results.


Rich,

There have been intensive discussions of two-dimensionality in rug design in the design and museum curatorial communities for many years. I wish I could cite published material right now, but I can't. I recall especially vigorous discussions that involved strongly opinionated folks at the Victoria and Albert Museum a few years back (strict flat-plane adherents), along with designers and curators from around the US and Europe. The subject was treated as an important aesthetic consideration along with others in making curatorial decisions. As for carpets from Western and Central Asia, one need only examine a wide range of pieces to become aware of the extensive efforts made by MOST designers to retain the integrity of the flat two-dimensional surface. I've mentioned a couple of examples of how this can be accomplished in the remarks above. Of course we can find exceptions--particularly when designs or motifs were copied from other media by carpet designers. Examples that I think of off-hand include some Chinese pictorial carpets, some European floor coverings that incorporate architectural details, and some Persian/Turkish court carpets that use floral or interlace designs that appeared first in manuscripts or on manuscript covers.

Marla

Filiberto Boncompagni

Hi folks,
Two points. First at Jim:

“The Turkoman didn't smoke marijuana, they built small tepees and burned whole plants in the structure and sat in there inhaling the smoke.” I trust you on this.

The women of sufficient age and rank who were allowed to own these chirpis were allowed to indulge at will I suppose. Here I have my doubts, confirmed by the fact that you say “I suppose”.

I’m not an anthropologist but, as far as I know, ritual use of drugs was generally reserved to the male part of tribal societies. Men didn’t weave.

Speculating that the use of drugs influenced the design of rugs implies that women took drugs.

I doubt it - even if you suggest that drug use was reserved for “women of sufficient age and rank” which incidentally would imply that only those few could weave “3D” rugs…. You are on rather thin ground here but I’m open to contrary evidence.

Second point. I received the following by Jack Williams:

Ladies and Gentlemen:

The perception of depth can indeed be imparted to a two dimension object.

That does not mean that the Turkmen attempted to do it.

One way to impart three-dimension is the stereoscopic effect. This can be accomplished with any regularly repeating pattern. I leave it to you all to be able to un-focus your eyes so that the lines of vision of the two eyes do not converge… When one is able to do this, the field will recede and the border will stand out clearly in three dimension.

Another method is commonly used in making maps or kiddy drawings. That effect is created by shadowing the object so that it appears that the sun is in the northwest. Here is an example:



That is apparently what happens with this chuval, which presents a fairly obvious (to me) 3-D effect…caused (I think) by the black outlining in the “SE” of the guls.



But, actual movement and depth can be created on a 2-D surface by some tricks of perception. Here are some drawings that illustrate optical illusion depth and movement. The first reminds me of the general form of Turkmen work… but I do NOT imply that the Turkmen weavers intended to use the method to create depth.



next, lines move…













Regards, Jack Williams

Thanks Jack.
Regards,

Filiberto

Jim Allen

Yellow chirpis were for women of age and rank. In Lega society a woman of high rank was given a katimbikatimbi or small penis which she could use to reserve a stool or use to pleasure herself. There is ground to imagine that high ranking Tekke women would or could achieve high rank and be given "privileges". The Lega are nomads in the great Ituri forest, especially the Pygmie portion of the Lega. They made dwellings on the spot as they moved about. While the continent is darkest Africa the similarities are pretty obvious to me. The white chirpis are for the highest ranking women and they are extremely rare. The Tekke men Did weave. You see accounts of this in O'donovan.

Steve: Serious three dimensionality is only found on pre 1700 AD Tekke and Salor work, IMHO. Three dimensionality is still found in other genres of Tekke and Salor work as in Tekke mains but I haven't seriously studied them. I would like to see really old Tekke mains analyzed with Craig's program but Craig is hard to get in contact with. There are only a handful of chuvals and torbas that are pre 1700 AD, so there is no simple way to prove my ideas......yet. I have never tried to evaluate the large format Salor gull chuvals. Frankly I don't see them in three dimensions like I do chuval gull examples.I believe I can identify two major groups of 18th century Tekke torbas, pre 1755 ish and post 1755 ish. The second date corresponds to the loss of Tekke power at the time of Yomud ascendancy at Khiva. IMHO Tekke work from both 18th century periods aims at dimensionality but never quite makes it in the way pre 1700 AD peces do. The reason is the disruption in Grandmother to mother to daughter transmission of the proper "poems" or "weaving songs" necessary for the creation of these effects. Until the later 17th century the Tekke had had some three centuries of uninterrupted cultural existence. After 1800 or thereabouts the Tekke were in a new place after having been diminished by the travails of the 17th century. One merely needs to study the modern Tekke to see what the Russian conquest did to them. When I was there I discovered the Tekke had no idea who or what they had once been. They were "new" people without a past. These are basically non-writing people and cultural stability and vocal transmission of history was necessary to maintain tribal identity. This goes double for weaving continuity. Pre 1700 AD Tekke and Salor bags turn up every 3 to 5 years IMO. I don't get to study them all. My claims about extreme 3-dimensionality are confined to only a tiny hand-full of examples. The value of the observation is in demonstrating the heights of Tekke and Salor aesthetic achievement. I would like to see their work elevated to the very top of the weaving paradigm. There is NO easy way to "prove" my hypothesis. I would like to draw your attention to human anatomy. I took gross human anatomy and helped dissect a human being. I discovered that reading the tortuous highly specific discussions of three dimensional internal relationships to be mind-bendingly difficult to follow. I was on a team with two future surgeons. I went out the door right behind our instructor, at the beginning of class. I did virtually no dissection. I went and bought Pernkoffs and Figges illustrated anatomy books. These show the sequential dissection of a cadaver. I made the third highest grade in my class in anatomy. I discovered right then and there that a picture is worth an "A" in gross anatomy plus a thousand words. What i mean by this is that by deeply studying a Tekke chuval's picture makes it vastly easier to understand what I am talking about. It seems I may have not adequately described what I see in words but that in no way invalidates what I see. Dr. Carriere validated the effects that I see with mathematics and a high quality research computer. You say my results are meaningless because of the small sample size. Well maybe that is logical but it doesn't mean that I am wrong. Time will tell..... if I live long enough.

Marvin Amstey

Didn't we have this same discussion (argument) a few years ago or am I having a de jevu (sp?)experience?

Steve Price

Hi Jim

Your closing words say it all:
You say my results are meaningless because of the small sample size. Well maybe that is logical but it doesn't mean that I am wrong.

Actually, the fact that the sample size is too small to be meaningful does mean that it is wrong, at least by the conventions science uses for testing truth. An untestable hypothesis (which you say yours is) is always wrong if the test of truth is the scientific method. Scientific truth has a number of peculiarities that flow from this convention. One is that something can be wrong today and become true if a way to test it is invented and it passes the test. It can become wrong again if another way of testing it is invented and it fails that test. Unsettling, but that's how things are.

The method is fallible, and it's not unusual for a fact to become a quaint notion in a fairly short time. But it has practical results often enough to make it useful, and no other method that I know about even comes close to it in that respect. It also has the advantage that if many people apply it to the same observations, they'll all come to the same conclusion most of the time. That's why the textbooks can tell you where and how to find things in the body.

Regards

Steve Price

Bob Phillips

I have never heard the scientific method made to sound so much like mumbo jumbo. I suppose at its extremes it must be but it gives a glimpse of the difference between “fact” and truth.
It does not seem fair to match Jim Allen against the folks in this discussion. Isn’t it possible to get some experts who could give Jim a run for his money?

Filiberto Boncompagni

Hi again, Barry (Bob Phillips),

Look, if you really are so keen to post on Turkotek, why don’t you try asking nicely? Perhaps – if the others agree – you could be able to post under Barry O’Connel.

In the mean time you are barred from posting further, is that clear?

Filiberto

Bob Phillips

Not everyone is Barry O'connell. You sound a little paranoid.

Steve Price

Hi Bob

I'm not sure I know what kind of an expert you'd want to bring in or what you mean by giving Jim a run for his money. Jim's an intelligent, well educated person. What's unfair about examining the ideas and approaches that someone introduces? This is a discussion forum, after all.

Are you bothered by the notion that there is an accepted method of deciding what's true? Lots of folks are, but that's really all the scientific method is, and recognizing its limitations isn't mumbo-jumbo. Until the Renaissance, truth was whatever an authority said it was. Galileo (among many others) got into hot water by opposing that method, but most folks nowadays think his way was better.

Regards,

Steve Price

Pierre Galafassi

Hi Jim,
I loved pie fights when I was a kid and did not enjoy any in more than 55 years, pleeeease let me participate too.
You wrote that O ‘Donovan confirms that Turkoman machos did weave rugs. I am pretty sure he didn’t.
He and the other XIX century visitors, like Burnes, de Blocqueville etc..actually stated the exact contrary: carpet weaving and felt making was exclusively a women’s work.
Men started weaving sometimes during the XX century and of course, today, a bearded Ersari weaver is a common sight in Afghanistan.
I would be more than happy to verify in my book, if you only would mention the chapter where ol’ O’Donovan wrote it (my guess is that he took marijuana with a Teke matron on that same day) and would throw the pie in my own face if you are right.
Best regards
Pierre

Paul Smith

While the jury is still out in my little mind on what to make of what sure looks to me like deliberate manipulation of designs that create 3-D effects, whether or not that was the original intention, I had to raise an eyebrow at Marla's explanation of why rug weaving was unquestionably a 2-D design enterprise: that a handful of Europeans who work at museums think so. I see little difference between contemplating cannabis-crazed Turkmen ladies and accepting the pronouncements of a handful of British academics (though the former is definitely more entertaining); both involve the projections of Westerners based on the tiniest shreds of evidence. I shared an office for several years with a Umatilla (Native American) shaman and scholar, and my experience hearing his responses to what Europeans thought of Native American art turned me into a skeptic whenever I hear Europeans making confident pronouncements about another culture's art. I wish a bunch of Turkmen women had been standing around when those Victoria and Albert "experts" told them what they saw in their work. It really is a tragedy that the Soviets didn't do more to collect narratives and evidence of the cultures they eliminated.

As a postscript, not only the noble Ardebil carpet (I very much appreciated those close-ups, Martin) but even this funky Luri carpet put octagons in front of other octagons in a way that indicates that at least this weaver was not trying to suppress 3-D imagery.

Paul

Kurt Munkacsi

Jim - when you did the dimensional studies with Dr. Carriere which rugs did you use for your control group? That is - rugs you knew that were NOT woven using a "three dimensional" technic to see if Dr. Carriere's equipment would give you the same result. This would helped to establish that this whole method was even valid when applied to pile weavings.

Rich Larkin

Hi Paul,

The response of the true representative of the culture producing the art isn't always scornful, however. I remember an event at the Textile Museum perhaps thirty years ago, or so, focused on Caucasian rugs, perhaps prayer rugs. A very elderly lady of the country was one of the speakers, among the Charles Grant Ellises, et al. When it came her turn, she told the assembly in a tone of utmost respect and admiration, something along these lines: "When we were children weaving with our grandmothers, we never realized all these things were were putting into our rugs." Suppressed laughter ran through the crowd. But I do get your point.

Rich Larkin

Jim Allen

I have made this statement many times and I am too lazy to look through two volumes of the Merv Oasis to find it...but Barry O'connel has been pouring through the book and he did find the statement I am looking for. When he gets home from work tonight I will see if he bookmarked that quote. It is in there...believe me. The context was, a group of women were working at a Tekke main carpet and a Khan jumped down and started working on it himself. I would LOVE to know if he was putting in a talisman!!!!!

Jim Allen

That was an excellent suggestion! If and when I get him on the phone, he won't give out his email as he says he is working for the government now, I will definitely pass that comment along! I am getting interested in the subject again and I have good enough pictures of Martin's torba to get a study done on it.

Kurt Munkacsi

Jim - been trying find out more info about Dr. Craig Carriere and his dimensional work. I've been combing the internet and the only references I can come up with are a Dr. Craig Carriere that seems to be involved in biology. Working with with corn starch, biodegradable composites and stuff like that.
By any chance do have a copy of a paper he might have done outlining the methodology used in his dimensional research?

Kurt Munkacsi

Perhaps he was just passing a joint and not weaving anything at all?

Pierre Galafassi

Hi Jim,
Last time I enjoyed reading O'Donovan, I copied systematically everything related to carpets (and there is not a lot of it unfortunately). Since these notes did not contain any mention of a man weaving a carpet, I decided to read the book all again today. Just finished Vol II and I am sorry to say I could not find the story there, although the Khan of the Otamish Aman Niaz, who (over-) used sometimes opium for non-medical purposes, might have had such an strange idea or he could even have smoked a whole khali for that matter.
It must have been another visitor of the Turkomans or in another edition of the book, I guess.
In order not to leave you with a bad feeling, I can mention that both de Blocqueville (who spent 14 months in Merv in 1860) and O' Donovan (5 months in 1881) confirm that (rich) Tekes would sometimes make use of marijuana. Only men though and they chewed it. There was no mention of ladies enjoying it too, nor any other intoxicating substance by the way. Blasted machos these Turkomans!
Best regards
Pierre

Paul Smith

Rich--

Actually, Ron (my Native American office mate) rarely responded with scorn about what "experts" said, although that came up. Usually his response was that the questions Europeans asked rarely seemed to address anything of importance.

Once he remarked to me that it was sad that so many of the songs sung by elders were being lost, so I asked why he didn't record the songs to learn later. He gave me a perplexed look and said that's because he could only learn a song that had been given to him by the singer. The song wasn't just the music--it was my mistake to think of a song as something that was only sound. I wonder if rugs are only the visible and tactile evidence of something we can barely grasp.

Paul

Jim Allen

The reference should be when Edmond was well in favor with the Tekke, rather late in vol. 2. Do you recall him visiting the Salor yurts and commenting on the silk hangings inside? I am thinking it was around there. It was only maybe two lines. I have an original 1882 edition.

Here is a link to The Merv Oasis on Google.

http://tinyurl.com/yb9mlm7

http://books.google.com/books?id=U_caAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA417&dq=Vol+2+Edmond+O%27Donovan+Merv+Oasis&client=firefox-a&cd=1#v=onepage&q=&f=false

Jim Allen

I have conferred with an ophthalmologist about the plasticity of the visual mechanism and everything I described the human eye and brain can accommodate. As for my statement that the desert adapted nomads saw in this strange reverse polarity one only has to study 13th and 14th century black and white art done by desert adapted nomads. I have several good examples I can scan in to show you. What you notice looking at these ink and paper drawings is that you DO NOT SEE the objects until you really study the picture. One notable picture is of a partridge in a mountainous landscape. The first thing a literate westerner sees is a cacophony of strange forms. The very reverse of the serdars looking at the colonel in the newspaper. The drawing is done in reverse polarity! It is amazing to look at! This effect is only obvious in the earliest drawings because after the novelty wore off the art works changed to suit the clients taste. The clients were the Timurid's.

Yes Kurt I have the fax and I will show it to David when next I see him. I will copy it and give him a copy. You COULD ask Jull's secretary for a copy as I gave all the information necessary for you to identify the original. You were the payer in this operation we undertook and I am quite sure she would be happy to help you. I would have preferred you do that rather than imply that I am a liar. I think you have wandered over the line in abusive language aimed at me. After 25 years you ought to know I wouldn't try any such BS in a public forum like this. I quoted it, just like I said, word for word.

Steve Price

Hi Jim

I never doubted that such plasticity was within the range of human visual perception. Nor do I doubt that O'Donovan was telling the truth. My skepticism is entirely about your interpretation of the cause of the perceptual difference between us and the Turkmen that O'Donovan described, and about your extending that interpretion by building several layers of speculation upon it.

It's interesting that 13th-14th century drawings by desert nomads used negative images but changed that practice soon thereafter. O'Donovan's encounter with Turkmen who couldn't recognize monochromatic "positive" images occurred in the last quarter of the 19th century. Incidentally, I don't think O'Donovan reported that these Turkmen could recognize "negative" images, although he suggests that possibility.

Regards

Steve Price

Martin Andersen

As the tread is still alive, I cant help another post

Even though I would love to be considered a true space cadet, I do also love the in-betweens so I will try to make a flat-landing on this.

As a flat-landing understanding of Jims hypothesis I find it self evident that the old nomadic Turkmen people must have had another visual perception of spatiality than a rational flat screen reading individual of today. Crowing up and constantly moving around in an open radical horizontal environment and living in a curvatured yurt totally decorated with patterns is very different situation than the boxes, squares and illusionary representations in which we are moving around. And I would suppose that the contemporary Turkmen individual today has a perception which rather close to our. So sometime in history there has been an alignment – and personally I find it strait forward that the general boringness of post-russian Turkmen rugs could be seen as a cultural expression of this. And I find Jim’s attempts on going deeper and more detailed into this bold and fascinating.

As for all the more specific readings and interpretations of meaning into this I agree with Steve that we are in rather deep water. In these interpretations it is of course almost impossible not to superimpose our own cultural notions of art, craftsmanship, spirituality ect. on the silence of the weavers. And I agree that these interpretations quickly might say more about us than about the rugs. On the other hand, no rugs are harmed by this, and Jim sure has a special ear on their details.

I still hope for more comparative material regarding the specific designs on the Torbas of this tread.
I have just found this from the former Pinner collection:


ex Pinner



I wonder if Pinner would also refer to this border as Peikam? Because if so then the definition is rather wide and would of course include a lot of Torbas, both Tekke and other tribes, like this Kejebe piece:



They are of course the same basic design as the Hoffmeister border, but they certainly are very different stylistic.

Best Martin

(ups, cross-posting with Steve - I see it is all getting a bit heated)

Filiberto Boncompagni

Hi Martin,
If that is true, why Turkmen only had a “different visual perception”? For the same principle it should happen to other Central-Asian nomadic ethnicities as well as Australian aborigines, African nomads and North-American natives.
If there’s evidence about that, I’ll be ready to agree. Otherwise I’ll remain highly skeptical.

Incidentally, I have a personal request: I invite posters to make a more parsimonious use of quotations. Please refrain from quoting whole posts: it’s making this long thread much longer and scrolling it down the whole time is a bit irritating, don’t you think? Thanks!

Filiberto

Martin Andersen

Hi Filiberto

Well I thought it commonly accepted that visuality is cultural coded. And I certainly also think that Australian aborigines among others have had a visual perception very different from ours. Of course not necessarily different as in black and white, but different none the same.

Best Martin

Steve Price

Hi Martin

The fact that visual perception is subject to shaping by external influences seems to be a fact, and I don't recall anyone even suggesting that O'Donovan didn't witness a result of that in his encounter with the Tekke.

Going from that to some of the positions it's led others to insist are correct is a pretty big leap. What we actually know, assuming that O'Donovan wasn't pulling our leg, is that the Turkmen he met in 1881-1882 didn't perceive certain images printed in black on white sheets of paper. From this, he surmised that they might have been acculturated to perceiving negative space, although he doesn't report drawing something in negative space to see if they could perceive that image or looking at whatever images they had among their possessions to see whether they were done in negative space.

There are a number of other possible explanations, so us linear thinkers can't get beyond listing plausible possibilities. On the other hand, there are those who believe that they are able to reach firm conclusions and even to invoke evolutionary explanations for why those Turkmen perceive things as they do as well as why we perceive things as we do, all apparently by intuition and inspiration. Unfortunately, the hypotheses leading to the conclusions are untested and the evolutionary explanations fail even the simplest tests.

Regards

Steve Price

Martin Andersen

Hi All

I know that most of you probably are a bit bored by my Torba now. But I have finally managed to take two photos which might illustrate and explain the inconsistency of the photos I have posted of it.

The colours of the Torba changing radically according to viewing angle and light source.
These photos are taken in direct setting sunlight, with the same camera angle and camera settings, no colour adjustments – just the rug turned 180 degrees



Any comments on this? In an earlier tread, were I tried to describe this, Pierre had a colour technical descriptive term for it. Pierre also meant that It might have happened as a result of synthetic overdyeing. I still have a hard time thinking synthetic colours in this piece, but of course nothing is 100% certain not even with this c14-test.

Here in my own little culture this shinny wool certainly gives me a hard time visually perceiving colours

Best Martin

Steve Price

Hi Martin

The fact that pile rugs look much darker when viewed from the end woven first than they do when viewed from the end woven last has a straightforward explanation that might even be correct.

The pile is beaten down with a comb during the weaving, so its tips tilt toward the bottom as the weaver is facing it; that is, toward the end woven first. That results in the viewer seeing lots of pile tips (not very reflective) when viewing from the end woven first, lots of pile side-of-the-yarn (much more reflective) when viewed from the end woven last. Hence, the difference in the amount of light reflected to the viewer's eyes.

The orientation of the pile resulting from beating it down with a comb is also the reason you can tell which end was woven first by just rubbing the palm of your hand up and down the rug. In one direction (toward the end woven last), you feel the resistance of the many tips. In the other direction, there is much less resistance.

Regards

Steve Price

James Blanchard

Hi all,

With some trepidation...

First, I think it is interesting that despite the more recent emphasis of this discussion, the initial posts by Martin and Jim with respect to the age of Martin's torba focused on fairly traditional ways of estimating an old age:

--- Design elements (Martin pointing to the border design and minor guls).
--- Structure (fine weave, floppy handle, wefting).
--- Colour (Jim indicating that the colour was similar to other old examples).

I mention this only to remind myself that most folks, even those who look beyond the usual ways of assessing things, embed those more creative views within a larger set of observations and inferences.

Second, although I have previously been skeptical of some of the more subjective viewpoints regarding the circumstances of weaving (i.e. stoned Turkmen women weaving objects to create "waving" guls which are observable when under the influence of drugs), I have no doubt that the design and drawing of older Turkmen weavings distinguish them from more recent weavings. It does not take an inordinate amount of experience or practice to make these broad distinctions. My wife, who does not share the same level of interest as I or other collectors, is still able at a glance to comment "I don't like that one so much... the drawing is much too 'stiff'". Almost invariably, she is able to distinguish between ones that most sophisticated collectors would see as being "late" and "commercial" from those that are earlier and probably more "traditional". Similarly, I am not nearly as experienced or knowledgable as most of those who have commented on this board, but I was one of the first to post a comment on Martin's torba with a "WOW". That is the first time I have used all capital letters to comment on a rug on Turkotek. I sensed, and still do, that his torba is of a high and uncommon class of weaving. I didn't pretend to know how that related to age. My point is that I think that even relative novices like me and my wife can see the differences without having spent an inordinate amount of time or "spiritual" effort. I am not trying to diminish the expertise of others, but I am cautioning against making this seem more than it is.

Since this seems to be a thread of various theories about how and why older Turkmen weavings differ in terms of drawing (after all, this is "drawing" in the most basic sense, constrained by a narrow range of available colours and the construction knot-by-knot). Let me offer a theory that is somewhat more prosaic than some others'. Turkmen weaving is perhaps the most prescribed of all. When a young women begins weaving she knows exactly what the designs must be, regardless of her own artistic sensibilities. She knows exactly which major and minor gul, which border, and the layout which is determined by the size of the weaving. She evidently did not have a "blank canvas". Even her palette was defined for her... lots of red, some blue, a bit of secondary colours and white. She spent much of her time weaving many objects with exactly the same design and layout. Creating a thing of beauty within such a strictured idiom left her with few options. But she could play with spacing and perspective. So to create dynamism within the rug she could vary the dimensions and spacing of the elements. Over time, weavers probably developed techniques that effectively created this dynamism. Were they deliberately creating depth? Maybe so. Were they just trying to create a more interesting and less "stiff" drawing? Maybe so. I just don't know how we could ever know the reasons for these decisions, though it might be fun to speculate.

Why did Turkmen weavings lose this property in later and commercial eras? Again, I think we can only speculate. Perhaps during the later era the production was just focused on consistently and efficiently creating the "design", without much concern about whether the result had a pleasing "je ne sais quoi". After all, they were just trying to sell the product, and the buyers didn't seem to need creativity.

Like many collectors, I enjoy contemplating why a rug attracts me so. What makes it "special". I also enjoy the "storytelling" aspect of rug collecting, and how these objects have an intimate connection to other foreign cultures and distant eras. It is all rather romantic, and if it weren't it would be hard to justify the "premium" that we collectors pay for the beat up old rugs that we hang on our walls. However, I start to get nervous when things get too too serious.

Cheers,

James

Filiberto Boncompagni

Hi Martin,
I see Steve answered already. Anyway, I noticed the same effect on a close-cropped Baluch of mine: if the pile points towards the source of light, it appears much darker than when the pile is pointing away from the light.
Regards,

Filiberto

Martin Andersen

Hi Filiberto & Steve

I understand that the pile direction is a part of the explanation, but the degree in which the colours are changing is lot more then I have seen before. But perhaps that is just related to the shininess of the wool?

best
Martin

Steve Price

Hi James

Interesting thoughts.

Your post reminded me that Turkmen rugs probably weren't intended to be viewed hanging on walls, and their storage bags weren't usually two-dimensional objects in the real world. They had stuff in them, so there must have been bulges and sags in situ that we never see or even try to see (most Turkmen bags have had their backs removed). I can't resist wondering out loud whether collectors who feel transported into the earlier time and exotic places of pre-20th century Turkmen weavers take this into consideration during their interactions with bagfaces displayed on walls, on the pages of books, or on dealer's tables.


(It's not my fault; the devil makes me do it).

Regards

Steve Price

Pierre Galafassi

Hi Martin,

Your Torba is a beauty, congratulations! I do not understand the highly sophisticated but a trifle obscure concept of dimensionality which is being discussed. In my simplistic view your Torba has much more life and personality than most, including most museum pieces I have seen so far.

Steve has already described with his usual competence (and speed) the reasons for a change in intensity of coloration, which occurs with all rugs when seen from the ends woven first or woven last. Usually in this case one observes only a change of "color-strengh" but no (or a very limited) change of shade ( a brick red remains a brick red it just gets stronger or paler).

There is however another coloration phenomenon which also occurs with most dyes and mixtures of dyes on all fibers, thus on rugs too.
We call it "lack of color constancy":
The same textile viewed under two different light sources (for example the warm daylight under a window exposed to the south and the cold daylight under the northern window, or the even cooler artificial light in a shop window) will have different shades, for example a bright scarlet shade unter light A will turn to a bluer shade of red under light B.
All dyes, natural and synthetic, suffer to a certain degree from lack of color constancy, some more than others (*). In a modern dye-house, a competent dyer will minimize this problem by choosing the right dye recipe.

Lack of color constancy inevitably causes a third phenomenon which we call "metamery":
For example if the red shade of rug A has been dyed with madder and the red in rug B has been dyed with a different recipe of dyes (for example chrome dyes), but imitating exactly the red shade of rug A (as judged under daylight), when one looks at these two rugs under a different light source (say artificial light) there will frequently be a significant difference between the two reds. This might have been the case of the carpets discussed in the older post you mentioned.

Best regards
Pierre

(*) I hope nobody will jump in, explaining that through special intervention of Mother Earth and with help of the tribe's stoned Chaman, natural dyes did not suffer of poor color constancy in the Mangyshlak peninsula between 1827 and 1876.

Jim Allen

FYI Nobuko Kajitani had a special room constructed in the MET's basement that was light tight. In this room she had two columns of four different light sources. As I remember they were morning light, evening light, mid-day light, and various types of artificial light. She took my chuval and torba in there and studied them each under all eight light sources. She also exposed them to a strong ultraviolet light source. This procedure she considered very important in evaluating bags etc. The UV light made artificial dyes stand out like a sore thumb. What a privilege it was getting instruction from her.

Steve you are right about the bags sometimes being full of stuff. Not always though and in the stuffed state (imagine Martin's torba) the effects I am trying to describe would be magnified. I say this because the gulls would be pushed forward toward the observer.

I just got this message from a customer of mine. I get to laugh now."I found about two weeks ago in Pinner's Turkoman studies 1 a statement from N. Burdakov (on page 14) that the grandfathers were producing torbas. As I read it the first time I couldn’t believe it and I was laughing. I was almost sure this was a translation error ore a joke. Now after following the ongoing discussion on Turko thek maybe this Burdakov statement is correct." Now I don't need to find O'Donovan's statement." Thank God it was Pinner so you can't just poo-poo the statement.

Pierre Galafassi

[quote=Martin Andersen]Hi Filiberto & Steve

I understand that the pile direction is a part of the explanation, but the degree in which the colours are changing is lot more then I have seen before. But perhaps that is just related to the shininess of the wool?

Hi Martin,
The answer to this question is also in Steve's post. The difference of color-strengh is a consequence of the difference of light reflexion. As you rightly guessed a more shiny fiber will show a larger color-strengh difference.
It would be logical to expect that pile length, yarn thickness and wear would also impact this effect, but I have never verified it.
Regards
Pierre

David R E Hunt

Hi Martin

I think the correct expression lies more at "depth perception is learned, and people who live in differing envviornments can learn to interpret depth in different ways", rather than "visuality is cultural coded".

The classic example of this type of alteration in depth perception is found in a book by cultural anthropologist Thomas Harris (if I am not mistaken, it has been 30+ years after all), and consists of African Pygmies, when having been transported to the plains from their native dense jungle habitat, asserting that animals seen in the distamce constituted "little animals", and owning to the fact that they hadn't learned to interpret depth and perspective.

However, since we all live in the same at hand enviornment, we should all have the same at hand perceptions of depth and space. To my thinking it doesn't follow that there should be any "crossover effect" of one type of learned perception influencing the other, hence I am dubious of Jim's assertions regarding Turkmen weaving and depth perception.

Please don't misinterpret Jim, I enjoy and have enjoyed reading your stuff for some time, but conjecture isn't science. But then what of this Turkmen business of ours truly is science?

It makes for some interesting reading, but the margins of error and limitations of a sampling of this small size renders these C14 pieces little more than curiosities, IMHO.We try to do too much, us Turkomaniacs. These multidisiplinary tightrope acts of psychology, anthropology, ethnolingual history are just too much...

I'm glad that you have once again noted these color changes in your torba, and depending on direction from which it is viewed. I myself had seen what I had assumed to be a Tekke small rug, which demonstrated both this peculiar change in appearence and these same muted/washed out colors. It was finely woven, and the dealer seemed to pour it out on the floor. Extremely thin and supple,if my memory serves.

Iv'e been pondering this Turkomaniac thing for some time now, and it seems to me that this is how it falls out. I believe fellow Turkotekker Marvin Amstey said it best, something to the effect of "Why don't we just appreciate Yomud weavings (and by extension, all of our weavings in general) because they are beautiful?" and I think this a great place to be . Shouldn't we seek pieces, as colloctors which are either beautiful or interesting, and preferably both?
Sure there are study pieces or ethnographic pieces, but for myself I want something beautiful to look at when i glance at the wall or my floor.

I'd like to try a comparison and contrast of both your torba, and the image that Kurt submitted of an example from his collection, to see what kind of conclusions I can come to. Just free form, throw it out there, my thoughts ideas and interpretations. Simple art appreciation, in a comparison and contrast format. Please, try this at home, it's what it's all about IMHO


Find below the two pieces in question, Martin and Kurt's Torba, respectively. Note that I in no way make any claim to any expertise on this subject, and that these are just my impressions.





My first impression is that of a disparity in age. Martin's strikes as of a more recent vintage, to be honest. The colors are less bright and clear, and there seems to be a smaller number of colors. One almost gets the feeling that some dye run could be involved in the odd color qualities demonstrated by the first piece.

The proportions also seem crampled in the first piece when compared to the second. The design elements are larger in proportion to the field of the weaving, in comparison to the second, but the elements have been pushed closer together. Granted, in Tekke main carpets this enlargement and cramping of design elements is representative of one "school of thought" in design evolution, and an early one at that, but in conjunction with the quality of colors demonstrated, I am not left with an impression of age.

There also exist disparities in the depth and amount of detail found in the respective weaving. The second piece demonstrates a real delight in detail, where as the first is notable for it's lack. I for one am not convinced of the idea that crude= old. It is my impression that much of the time the opposite is true, crude= new, and detail=old.

In short, owning to the unusual proportions, the crude drawing, and, to be honest, the less than beautiful colors of the first torba, I would place the first much later in time, and I suspect could in fact date from the late 19th to early 20th century. A very late piece, and seeming uncharisteristic of the time period in general, but it has some rather odd qualities which to me just don't say older. And the C14 test results do indicate the possibility this conclusion.

But ultimately, per Marvin Amstey as indicated above, it's all about beauty anyway. Even if the first piece would turn out to be older, which it may well be, I still believe Kurt's to be much more beautiful and desirable. Of course martin's piece is interesting and makes a great ethnographic artifact, but Kurt's is absolutely delightful by comparison

Remember, I am not an expert and this is just my interpretation...

As for the purported dimensionality in the torba, I for one don't see it. Yes, there is a little something going on there with perspective, but no more than what is going on with this Ali Eli Chuval of mine. Also note that it is stuffed to form a large pillow.



I am not convinced that percieved dimensionality in Turkmen gull weaving is a function of age, or for that matter intentional, but I won't say that it isn't there...

Dave

Filiberto Boncompagni

Hi Jim,

Dave doesn’t see it but, for the record, after your photoshop job I DO see what you mean:
that the vertical line upon which the stars are "spinning" is shifted to the right. This is but one more visual trick to make the gulls pop out in space. The increased visual density of the top row of gulls enhances this effect greatly and they seem to be coming forward, up, and out of the frame IMO.
Regards,

Filiberto

Pierre Galafassi

[quote=Jim Allen]FYI Nobuko Kajitani had a special room constructed in the MET's basement that was light tight. In this room she had two columns of four different light sources. As I remember they were morning light, evening light, mid-day light, and various types of artificial light. She took my chuval and torba in there and studied them each under all eight light sources. She also exposed them to a strong ultraviolet light source. This procedure she considered very important in evaluating bags etc. The UV light made artificial dyes stand out like a sore thumb. What a privilege it was getting instruction from her.

Hi Jim,

What you describe is the (cheap) standard equipment using so-called Norm lights, used in about every dye house on this planet. As are the much more sophisticated and expensive colorimetry devices, which calculate recipes to obtain any shade, calculate its color constancy, predict metamery etc..

But I doubt very much that Mrs Kajitani taught you that "UV-light made artificial dyes stand out", because this would simply not be true.

In fact many dyes, natural and synthetic, are capable of re-emiting in the visible spectrum a small part of the UV light they absorb.
This is definitely not a way to differentiate between natural and synthetic dyes in general, it can only make one particular synthetic dye or one particular natural dye stand out. Unfortunately, since it it would be a simple and cheap method.

I do believe however that measurements (*) of the color constancy (or lack of it), might be, after the necessary calibration work performed in a competent lab, a tool to catch the "rigolos"(in french) who make money with suckers, selling them "natural dyed" rugs which are in fact dyed with standard chrome dyes. At this stage it is only a theory of mine, we shall see if a lab, specialized in natural dyes, will confirm it.
I am not trying to be difficult.
best regards
Pierre

(*) Such devices exist in mobile-phone size.

Kurt Munkacsi

Hello Jim - let me offer my sincerest apologies if you feel I crossed a line and insulted you personally. I did not intend that and was only changeling your academic standards.

If you have a set or C-14 results from Dr. Jull that show the chuval is indeed 17th century, the same age as the Ardabil and Cairene carpets that were tested along with it. I will be the first to acknowledge doubting you.
Please send a copy to myself, Steve, David or anyone else you might choose and let's get them posted on the forum and close this part of the debate once and for all.
Also you have mentioned the monumental work that Swiss collector and researcher Jürg Rageth is working on. As you are aware Jürg has compiled C-14 test results for well over 100 Turkmen pieces and has done extensive dye analysis on many of them. The "Tekke" chuval will included in the book with both the Arizona and Zurich C-14 test results. If you have another set of corrected results from Dr. Jull please send them to Jürg so the publication is a accurate as possible. (Dr. Jull's office won't release any info to me because my name does not appear on any of the original paper work)

Again my apologies if you feel I insulted you.

PS: still waiting for you to supply some background on Dr. Carriere's dimensional studies you so often cite.

Chuck Wagner

Hi all,

I'm sorry. I don't buy this "intentional dimensionality" suggestion. And I am a very visual person, one of those who can relax my eyes and look at a dots-only autostereogram for 1 second and see the intended image.

You can ignore my observations on Paul's example as long as you like, but the bottom line is that all these features are actually a function of on-the-fly design implementation with periodic "oh-shit" moments for the weaver, whereupon the proportions of the rest of the motif are adjusted to reduce the number of such moments in the future.

That a relaxed-eye image of a regularly repeated pattern appears to give depth to the image is due to the contrast generated by inaccurate overlay of the overprinted motif images (the field color competes with the edge of a design element) - and often enhanced when a dark section from one motif is co-imaged with the light section of another motif.

While I agree that the true meaning of art varies with the eye of the beholder, I do not think the one can reasonably read a message into an error. To suggest that a series of ill-proportioned design elements are actually a planned autostereogram or some attempt at perspective rendering is certainly anyone's right, but at the cost of ignoring the obvious, IMHO.

Regards,
Chuck Wagner

(Steve - we need a Grinch smiley as well as a pie-fight smiley)

Filiberto Boncompagni

Hi Pierre,
Right. Perhaps Jim meant “UV-light made restorations stand out” because that’s the use of UV-lights after all (I mean, with objects d’art).
Regards,

Filiberto

Steve Price

Hi Pierre

Inexpensive hand held UV lamps have been around for ages. They were used to detect fluorescent compounds in every lab that did paper or thin-layer chromatography (fluorescent compounds absorb light at one wavelength and emit light at a longer wavelength; UV has a shorter wavelength than any color in the visible range).

Many dyes are fluorescent, and a UV lamp is commonly used as a way to detect areas of a rug that have been repaired or restored. If different dyes were used in the restoration than those in the original, it will usually be obvious under UV light. One that was in the news in the past few years was the Turkish carpet belonging to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.


Hi David

I look at rugs more or less as you and Marvin do - the aesthetic is the most important element for me, too. Some other folks have very different interactions with their rugs, of course. In any case, the marketplace is such that older rugs command higher prices, so it's worthwhile learning what we can about age attribution.


Hi Kurt

I believe the entire corpus of Carriere's published work on fractal analysis of Turkmen weavings is the report of his results on two juvals, presented at ICOC in Philadelphia and published in the proceedings of that conference.

Regards

Steve Price

Pierre Galafassi

Hi James,

I do share your "more prosaic" theory.
To your question "Why did Turkmen weavings lose this property in later and commercial eras? Again, I think we can only speculate. Perhaps during the later era the production was just focused on consistently and efficiently creating the "design", without much concern about whether the result had a pleasing "je ne sais quoi". After all, they were just trying to sell the product, and the buyers didn't seem to need creativity.
One could speculate that a quasi systematic use of the "carton", even by former nomads, killed whatever creativity was left. A friend of mine told me that many Afghan Ersari weavers are addicted to the "carton" and need to be strongly "motivated" to work as they did a hundred years ago.
Best regards
Pierre

Pierre Galafassi

[quote=Filiberto Boncompagni]Hi Pierre,

Right. Perhaps Jim meant “UV-light made restorations stand out” because that’s the use of UV-lights after all (I mean, with objects d’art).

Hi Filiberto and Jim,
Yes of course this is an old use of UV light, standard in museums, and hand-held UV lamps are dirt cheap.
I was alluding to hand-held colorimetry devices: these are relatively new and indeed not cheap. Those equipped with the complex software which allows to calculate color constancy are the most expensive.
regards
Pierre

Martin Andersen

Hi David

I sure agree that Kurts Torba is very very beautiful, and I sure wouldn’t mind having it hanging side by side with mine for permanently comparison

But I have to make a little aesthetic defense for my own:

I am not sure but I would guess Kurt’s to be larger than mine, else it should be extremely fine knotning. I would guess 108 cm wide? Mine is only 97 cm wide. So the comparison should perhaps proportional look something like this :





I have tried a lesser colour adjustment than Jim, trying to get closer to how it actually appears in optimal lightning.
The pieces are aesthetically of course completely different. I love my own – but certainly understand why one for aesthetically reasons would choose Kurt’s.
But I can assure you that there is no colour runs in mine, and if you saw and felt the texture of the rug I am also rather sure that you wouldn’t place it late 19th early 20th.

And I could imagine matters of pure aesthetics and taste as parameters of discussion (not to say development and chronology) being not much less problematic than dimensionality

Best
Martin

Jim Allen

I will go to Kinko's and get a high resolution scan with enhancements. I suppose I can get the thing to be fairly readable. If you have any experience with the old rolls of heat sensitive fax paper you can imagine what 14 years has done to it. Also Kurt I remember that torba well and there is no way that it is so red. I remember its color as dark almost a maroon red. Is your picture photoshopped or have you done a German wash on it? I remember it as quite low and almost as faded as Martins. It is the torba you got from Ronnie isn't it? Also nobody has said anything about my old Tekke chuval being as old as the Ardebil or the Cairene carpets. Jull's statement was simply that those two carpets and my chuval were the only three pieces that were convincingly pre 1700 AD. Your amendments to the Jull reports, regarding tree ring information, seems to indicate it might be older than about 1650 AD. Look at your ranges and do a simple mean analysis on each range. Your own information is quite amazing actually.

Jim Allen

Under the intense UV light Nobuko used natural dyes looked very different from synthetic dyes. The obviousness of repairs, that are often color matched with permanent colored inks, is in general due to this fact IMO. I am surprised that the quotation collected by Pinner about grandFATHERS weaving torbas as gone unnoticed. Where are you Pierre?
Kurt could you tell us if any other chuvals or torbas with chuval gulls will be in Rageth's book? Also I thought about photographing my fax and photoshopping the image so I could send it right along to you. Would that work for you? The second page with the ranges of dates is the same as your letter so I don't need to do that one do I?

Jim Allen

You mentioned an upward displacement of the gull centers within the gulls of the top row and now I can clearly see how that helps my eye perceive the popping up or flying off sensation I get looking at the composition. If Tekke torbas were, as Pinner hypothesized, wedding appurtenances in the same why that asmalyks are to the Yomud, then we have a fairly good reason for the movement of the gulls. The gulls were at the very least tribal emblems and the movement up and out of the frame (borders) could signify the movement of a bride from one clan to another. I am pleased with this idea because I have never had it before. That is getting rare for me and is purely a product of this discussion; so at least I am getting something out of it. .

Martin Andersen

Hi Jim

Funny I was also just now wondering about the Torbas as wedding trappings as opposed to being just bags. Not quite like you, more about why the Torbas were made in pairs, and how much easier this discussion regarding the asymmetries would be if we were actually looking at a pair

And another thing: The red main field on my Torba has a rather clear abrash, making the horizontal center part visible lighter than top and bottom. It can be seen on all the photos, its not only reflection, seen from the back there is a color difference. Yet another effect to make the design bulge.

best Martin

Jim Allen

You see a carefully placed break in the field color of a great many old Yomud and Tekke bags with chuval gulls. Think of this color break as an internal horizon. The break will often be in the lower third of the field and cross the lower half of the gulls in a single row. When you think of this break as intentional and the effect as that of a horizon this adds tremendous depth into the composition. One will also notice thin lines of abrash that serve similar purposes. Just one more visual trick I've mentally cataloged to judge the age and quality of pieces. The abrash of darker red in the lower third of your torba also helps the perception of depth when seen as intentional and as a horizon. Happy looking!

Jim Allen

Turkoman weaving is technically the finest NOMADIC pile weaving on Earth. Essentially all classical Tekke and Salor pre- 1750 weaving is knotted at 300 KPSI at a bare minimum. These artifacts are super tight and super supple. I have been told that this level of knotting is limited by the tensile strength of the hand spun wool. It would take higher warp tension than the hand spun wool can take to weave finer objects. I had this all explained to me by Manus Sirinoglu who is a fourth generation rug merchant and silk rug manufacturer from Turkey. One of his family members actually wove a silk rug at 2,000 kpsi. He tells me it took three or four attempts to actually finish one this tight because the warps kept breaking. If you know much about Kum Kapi rugs you know the Sirinoglu name. The point of this is to explain why Turkoman rugs would exhibit aesthetic effects other types of nomadic weaving don't. The Turkoman of classical periods didn't sell their weaving unless it was an emergency. The main carpets were probably more woven "documents" than they were dirt coverings. I see them as tribal and clan identifiers and ritualistic objects. The chuvals and torbas actually satisfy all the requirements of a language. In the context of a clan each individuals work would have instantly identified the weaver as a specific individual, just like our voices do for us. These bag faces would also represent the weaver's virtue to the world just as our language and our skill in using it does for us. Thirdly these weaving's represent the weaver to the world at large plus serve as the basis of an appeal. They represent the virtues of a girl and the foundation of a dowry. In other words they are an appeal to others for love. Weaving skill. like embroidery skill in England and earlier America once did, was perhaps the primary way a young maiden represented herself to the world. In very old Yomud main carpets I see encoded information concerning how to live and survive as a nomad in a large and menacing world. Well if I start interpreting various Turkoman design complexes I will be writing all night. In conclusion Baluch work was predominantly for selling and their designs were predominantly borrowed from others. This is why they will never be very valuable. If you know many Kurdish people you know that goes double for them. The Turkoman are nomadic ROYALTY. I do know that there are a FEW extremely fine and wonderfully woven Baluch pieces but this is the extreme rare piece where it is the norm for any and all truly OLD Turkoman weaving. I know I am going to catch hell for writing this here but somebody needs to say it.

James: Later Turkoman work, after 1882 in fact, was mostly made for sale and all the romanticism was lost. In fact it was dying well before 1882. There is only room for one nomadic group atop the aesthetic pyramid representing weaving greatness. For quite a while now this group has been Turkoman. The only way I know how to demonstrate this fact is by referencing auction sale data which is available to us all. .

Martin Andersen

Hi All

Putting Valhalla, age speculation and interpretation aside - and just suggesting that Jim might have pointed out a stylistic element:

When we see red colours in the rugs, we assume that the Turkmen worked stylistically with red. When we see octagons and cross shapes we assume they worked with pattern - Then why is it so controversial to assume that they worked with optical effects if we all can see them? Do you think the Turkmens couldn’t?

And if the dimensionality is a stylistic element it cant be that impossible that it might have been used in different levels of refinement in different periods and places, like the colours and the patterns.

Best Martin

Steve Price

Hi Martin

I don't think anyone has denied that it's possible that Turkmen consciously employed dimensionality in generating designs, layouts and motifs. Certainly, I haven't. What I've disputed is the assertion that it isn't just a possibility, but a conclusively demonstrated fact. As a corollary, I also dispute the extensions made from it; for example, that the weavers used it to a greater extent or more effectively before the 18th century than in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Regards

Steve Price

Rich Larkin

Can someone with a more retentive memory than I, or more stamina, say whether an image of the Jenkins chuval (mentioned occasionally in this thread) has been posted? If not, where can an image be seen?

Rich Larkin

Jane Collins

In human development motor skills and language skills begin to converge at a parallel time frame
to enhance earlier pattern recognition. In a certain milieu unencumbered by the strict imposition of learning to 'write' or read, in the way we consider it, the propensity towards 'art' coming through all the senses would allow for its practice and learning or a translation into energy for exploration - just as O'Donovan describes (male and female 'occupations). A fact of learning then, and we can learn to see!
Extraordinary discussion!

Chuck Wagner

Jim,

My comments regarding dimensionality are strictly related to the suggestion of an intentional act on the part of a weaver to create a 3-dimensional "stereograph" effect. All the visual evidence presented to date, when taken holistically (looking at the other evidence as well - like the knot count on the spacing grid, and not just cherry-picking the asymmetric guls) is easily explained in the context of a design geometry driven by the weavers reaction to space management issues.

My comments are not directed at "higher level" and rather more ethereal artistic dimensions (often a product of the viewers interpretation rather than the intent of the artist), or to the intentional juxtaposition of contrasting colors to create an effect without requiring relaxed eyes. Use of contrasting colors is broadly known throughout the creative world and has no particular intrinsic spiritual connection - think eye-dazzler kilims.

In the case of Turkoman work - when viewed with relaxed eyes - the apparent 3D effect has nothing to do with the changing shape of guls, rather it has to do with optical interactions as noted above. Thus I do not agree that the changing shapes contribute to a dimensional effect. I think they are the result of compensation for screw-ups. You have to weave a couple inches incorrectly - bump into the next design element - before you notice that it is incorrect.

Regarding spiritualism in Turkoman weavings, I think the 17th and 18th century Turkoman have to be set apart from much of the rest of the nomadic world at that time, for the following reasons:

1) That part of the world was firmly in the grip of Islam long before that time period, and artistic reference to non-Islamic spiritual beliefs was, well, rather harshly discouraged. Thus I think any pre-Islamic spiritual element to Turkoman weavings of that period resides far more in the design itself and far less so in the mind of the weaver - more a remnant of times long gone.

2) The Turkoman were nomads, but as a people they were highly organized, with vast agricultural and animal husbandry assets, and in constant contact with invasive surrounding cultures. They were not the in the same class of nomadic culture as nomadic native aboriginals in North America, East Africa, or Australia. These cultures retain their intrinsic cultural spiritualism to this day.

3) Turkoman ? We are talking geometric designs here after all. The reason this chat can go on as long as it has is because it is very difficult to read spirituallism into Turkoman textile work. Want spiritualistic design ? Take a look at Huari weavings, Navaho weavings and art, basically, almost anywhere but Turkoman work. The spiritual references in Turkoman work are largely implemented as minor design elements based on metalwork and jewelry like amulet carriers, etc.

Random thought dump over for now.

Cheers,
ChucK Wagner

Pierre Galafassi

Hi Jim,
I am here Jim and enjoying the various opinions.
After having misquoted O' Donovan (known by other Turkotekers too) you have quoted a customer of yours quoting Pinner quoting a Russian who might be famous only in his own datcha. The chase has been fun, but I won't spend 200$ to check your sources again.
I'd rather take your word that grandFATHERS with arthritis and Salor Khans are obvious weavers for "300KPSI-at-a-bare-minimum-" torbas.

Best regards
Pierre

Filiberto Boncompagni

“grandFATHERS with arthritis”. I like that

Besides, I infer, weaving requires skill. Acquiring skill requires time. Weaving grandfathers – or male weavers in any case – being such a common phenomenon should then having be spotted more frequently by our O’Donovan(s) et all.

So far, instead, we have only a reference by O’Donovan which I’m still unable to locate (now I found the whole text on the web) and the other clue is a “grandfathers” quoted by Pinner, which could stand for “ancestors”.
Notice that usually we use “ancestors” and not “ancestress”: it could be the same for the use of “grandfathers” at the place of “grandmothers”.
Regards,

Filiberto

Martin Andersen

Hi Steve

Just trying to follow the logic of my stylistic argument:

If we agree that we see some kind of spatial effects in the rugs, why do we need any other proof than the rugs to accept that the Turkmens worked with it?

Wouldn't that logically make us need proof outside the rugs before we could accept that the Turkmens worked stylistically with red colour?
The red colour might also have been unintentional

I of course certainly understand that there regarding age and interpretation is a lot of deep water around this.

best
Martin

Steve Price

Hi Jim

Marla and I both have a special jijim ... I keep mine ... where I can easily take it out to touch it and look at its incredible beauty. I don't even know what group wove mine and I don't care. It MOVES me!
That's pretty much my reaction to the art I like enough to live with. It's a very different reaction than what Michael's been describing as our proper interaction with ethnographic arts.

Their designs were coded in some way and stored in their brains, much like our language is!!!!!



Hi Martin

If we agree that we see some kind of spatial effects in the rugs, why do we need any other proof than the rugs to accept that the Turkmens worked with it?
I can, with very little effort, see faces all around me. Just about every object that includes two more or less parallel elements plus another element beneath them can be seen that way. I don't spend much time wondering what the guys who designed my kitchen appliances or the front of my car were trying to communicate about humanity with those designs. The fact that I can see face-like forms doesn't mean that the guys who put them there were intentionally creating faces. The fact that I can see dimensional (perspective) effects in some Turkmen weaving isn't proof that the Turkmen "worked with it" (I'm assuming that you mean, consciously and intentionally).

Wouldn't that logically make us need proof outside the rugs before we could accept that the Turkmens worked stylistically with red colour?
The red colour might also have been unintentional.
I doubt that the predominance of red in Turkmen weaving was unintentional. That's not the same thing as saying that I know the reason they use it so much. Perhaps, in the distant past, they discovered or were taught how to dye wool red, and weren't very good at blue or yellow yet. This might have simply started a tradition of using red that still exists. Do I know that to be true? Of course not. That's why I don't try to convince anyone that it must be.

Regards

Steve Price

Jim Allen

Car designers quite intentionally arrange grills in conjunction with headlights to create the illusion of a virile animal or some other subconsciously coded car enhancing life form. They intend to make the car look like something that represents the car to the niche they are aiming it at. Liquor advertizers and the military often take this a step further. When I was studying this in school we looked at an Army ad that featured a tank with suggestively raised gun barrel with the word SEX carefully worked into the shadows surrounding the canvass at the base of the gun. This was really mor ein vogue in the 60's but it is still seen occassionally today. WE had a ball studying and cataloging what kinds of things were drawn into the ice in glasses seen in liquor advertisements.

There was an Islamic prohibition against representing the human form. This led to calligraphic writing evolving a style that included such flourishes that the writing itself started to resemble living things. Today examples of this style are worth a lot of money.

The Turkoman were early adopters of Islam but there world wasn't that different than ours regarding this subject. Jihadists intend to ram Islam down our throats even if they have to kill us. It was accept Islam or die for the Turkoman. They kept on with their shamanic beliefs and animist practices. AS for the faces you see in weavings and by weavings I mean all Islamic area nomadic weaving, you DO see faces everywhere and the better and more powerful these faces seem to an observer the more money they seem willing to pay for it. This fact has resulted in rug sellers taking their detail shots to emphasize the quality of any "faces" they find in their wares.

The question is how did the Turkoman memorize their designs. I would think by the simplest method available. Remember that some people in this area of the world memorized the entire Koran. Take a look at any chuval gull. Think about our do-ray-me-so-fa-la-de-do as representing the musical scale. Look at the back of the chuval gull. Now let’s consider how one might most efficiently memorize the sequential arrangement of knots that make up the gull. Starting at the bottom center lets assign a sound for every color used in the gull reading either to the right or the left. A special sound might be employed to indicate the end of a line. The number of knots in each row can be transformed into a string of sounds where each sound designates a color of wool to be tied into the gull’s progression. It doesn’t take that long to assemble a code of individual sounds that determines the lower left or right quadrant of the gull. Now imagine the weaver had to memorize this string of sounds that I like to call a chant forwards and backwards. With this mentally encoded chant learned forwards and backwards the weaver has all of the information needed to reflect the one quadrant twice to recreate the entire gull. I was thinking about this when I said that “Their designs were coded in some way and stored in their brains, much like our language is.” At any rate you must come up with a hypothesis to explain how the Turkoman weavers memorized the exact replication of their gulls using only their memories because this is how they carried their designs around, in their brains.

Sort of tongue in cheek JA

Steve Price

Hi Jim

... you must come up with a hypothesis to explain how the Turkoman weavers memorized the exact replication of their gulls using only their memories because this is how they carried their designs around, in their brains.
Here's my hypothesis: they looked at the weavings around them and saw the guls, motifs, layouts and motifs. How's that for out-of-the-box thinking!



Regards

Steve Price

Filiberto Boncompagni

Steve,



Your lack of fantasy is so pitiful!

Filiberto

Kurt Munkacsi

Jim - I've attached to new scan this one is done from a 8 x 10 transparency taken by Don Tuttle. No color correction, photoshopping etc,. (The other was a scan of a Paul Rogers 4 x5 transparency) Maybe this is a little more like what you remember.
I think Martin was asking about the dimensions so I've included the TA.



Tekke 6 Gul Torba #1299
First Quarter of the 19th Century
East of the Caspian Sea, Turkmenistan
106.5 x 45.75 cm (42 x 18 in)

knot: Asymmetrical, open right, 2 ply wool
horizontal 12 per inch x vertical 21 per inch = 252 per sq. inch

colors: (8) red, dark orange, ivory, navy blue, medium blue, green blue, yellow (a few knots mixed in with the green blue), medium brown.

warp: wool, ivory to dark brown, natural, z2s. no depression
weft: wool, dark brown, natural, s plied. two shoots alternating

sides: original not extant
ends: bottom - original not extant
top - warp faced plain weave folded over, first 1/8" red dyed warps, then 3/4" with dark orange dyed warps then folded under and sewn down.

condition: very good, some loss at sides, pile overall low

Jim Allen

This is much more like I remember. The technical description is virtually identical to Marvin's Tekke torbas illustrated in Vanishing Jewels as plate # 50 and # 51. I think this is a pretty rare technical description for Tekke torbas. I see a lot more in the range of 180 to 220 KPSI. Then the oldest ones start at 300 KPSI. The mid 250's is a class all unto its self. It is very interesting to look at your torba and Marvin's two and how VERY different they each are. In fact their dissimilarities are what fascinates me. Yours and #50 have the rarest of all Tekke torba borders and #51 has an extremely rare design. Do you have nay thoughts that would help us connect this small group?

Martin Andersen

Hi Kurt

Thanks for the photos and the measurements

(just a small personal victory. I may not be able to judge age, but centimeters I am rather good at, I guessed 108cm and it is 106,5cm )

best Martin

Martin Andersen

Hi James

I think It is a beautiful small Tekke, I would probably agree with conventions on its age, and they may of course be wrong. I wouldn't think that pure aesthetics alone can define age.
As for Jim's suggestion on dimensionality as a stylistic element, I wouldn't think that Jim would see it as just one simplistic methode that once and for all would just rule out all other ways of judging age. I would think it could be a possible stylistic element on par with others. Probably still a lot a weighing back and forth.

best Martin

(Edit: With pure aesthetics I here meant the subjective appreciation of beauty, as opposed to stylistic evaluation. These are of course often overlapping aspects.)

Kurt Munkacsi

Jim - you know Michael Craycraft came up with a really good thought many years ago. To paraphrase him he said - the main guls had to do with tribe and borders had to do with family, clan or village. That kind of makes sense to me. They are Tekke by probably made by some obscure little clan or family.

Martin Andersen

Hi Kurt and Jim

Any chance you could post photos of #50 + #51?

best Martin

Martin Andersen

I have a stupid rug weaving question: Does anybody know on what kind of loom the Torbas were produced? I wonder if the weave was rolled up during the process, or if the weaver was able to see the whole piece as the weaving progressed? I assume she was - just wants to be certain.
Also I think I have seen a photo where both Torbas in a pair were on the same loom, can that be correct?

Best Martin

(and no offence to anybody, but I suppose we all know that Jim’s suggestions and speculations are not hard edge science. Isn’t it a bit over the top to make 2/3 of the postings in this tread to be about philosophy of science? Couldn’t we keep it a bit closer to the rugs?)

Martin Andersen

Hi Steve

Yes you were right about splitting.
But thanks for the discussion, even though it has been heated it sure also have been interesting - and fun.

So I just try to summarize regarding my Torba before the tread closes

One view on the Torba could be: it is a rather sloppy weave, the weaver didn't really control or cared about the total layout, the colors are boring, the elements are cramped and not symmetrical drawn, c14 test are unreliable, all in all it is perhaps an odd piece but aesthetically not pleasing and therefor probably not very old.
This view of course negatively superimposes a lot of aesthetic and stylistic criteria on the weavers intentions. Not surprisingly, I would find this wrong

One could go the other way around: I would think it commonly agreed that the Torbas was a part of the dowry and treated with great care and respect. And that they are some of the finest weaves the Turkmen made, and a knot density around 325 kpi is a high technical investment. The Torbas' format is relatively small compared to main carpets , and I assume that the weave was not rolled up during the weaving process (not sure on this), so probable the weaver saw the whole piece as it progressed. I would trust that the weaver did her very best, so I would give the rug the benefit of being the result of the weavers intention.

And looking detailed at the rug I would say that this intention has not involved a mechanical and rigid execution of detailing the patterns and retaining the symmetries - on the contrary I see a larger focus on horizontal asymmetries and on a strange totality, creating an organic whole bringing life into the plane, in some aspect perhaps bordering spatiality. The Torba has a lot rare and perhaps unique elements and if the c14tests are regarded serious, then probably as a minimum 4 generations of Turkmens have taken care of this rug.

Either a sloppy odd piece - or a precise piece with its own intentional stylistic expression that differs from most other Torbas either published or floating round the net.

As for the interpretations and speculations on specific meaning into this I will refrain, it is of course deep water.

Best
Martin

And thanks to Steve, Filiberto and Turkotek for providing this open forum.

Jim Allen

Your Tekke rug is nice and looks like it is made from excellent materials. I don't think it is a mat. I personally call longer rugs like this sleeping rugs. Earlier examples generally have an "X" motif worked into the border. I take this as a talisman menat to ward off evil from the sleeper. The Tekke were in dire straights at least ten years before their final defeat at Merv. During this period they were weaving like mad and the work was excellent as was the wool and dyes. The main rugs had piled elems and they made some really large ones. I have heard that they also made some large silk rugs but I have never seen one. Kurt tells me they were sold in Persia where they got the most money. The Tekke needed money for armaments to fight the Russians. They were especially desirous of cannons. This leads me to think that your rug is circa 1875. Looking at it I see what you mean and the colors do the most to establish space in the weaving. A rug made for sleeping may or may not have been for sale. The Tekke lost everything of commercial value after their defeat. The Russians and the Persians all wanted to get their hands on their wealth and that was almost entirely carpets.

I have been down this road you have trod on here at Turkotek and I flipped out the first time and got banned from posting. This time I knew what to expect. Winning anybody over is basically not an option. Stating your opinion is an option and I feel that if I put out good ideas they will eventually take root. Believe it or not I can detect major changes in Steve's attitudes. He was viscous with logic towards me originally but now I would say we are friends. It helps to know that, of the posters, none but Kurt actually collect Turkmen weaving to the exclusion of everything else. Kurt is under the influence of an evil genie in a cyclotron. I am trying to find him a favorable jin to help him find the yellow brick road again.

Martin: I would post the two torbas you asked to see but I bought all of Marvin's published torbas and still own #50. I think it would be breaking the rules to post it. Please buy the book. It is small and fantastic. There are a lot of lovely rugs in it but of vastly more importance are the scholarly articles that begin the book. Read Dr. Woods article several times and read each and every footnote closely. I tried to memorize it and it well definitely educate you. All Turkomaniacs owe Marvin a heartfelt thank you for his work on that book.

I asked earlier about who bought the "pair" to my old Tekke chuval. Surprise surprise I have been informed. Now to get him to send some weft to Dr.Jull. A little birdy tells me I will be duisappointed with Rageth's up coming book. That depressed me a lot. There has been a little bit too much shooting the messenger type posts relative to my posting. I was of the opinion that Pinner was of the highest caliber writer in the field and if he quotes a source it is precisely because he believed it. I am having trouble finding messengers now.

For those of you who might want to read more of my rhetoric concerning Turkman rugs please visit a-bey.com. Michael you can find my contact info there and I would like to carry on with you after the thread closes. I already have Martin's contact info.

We are wearing Steve out so let's all go through the last few days posts and reread them. A lot was put out there with no comment. WE all could use a few days rest and time to catch up.

Steve: I can definitely sympathize with you and the great deal of work you have been doing. If it makes you feel any better I have gotten a pile of emails from people who have been closely following our discussion with great interest. Let's all give Steve a break and leave out all future emotional and personal baggage generated from these discussions. Most of US are old farts and shouldn't be thin skinned. I am perhaps the worst as I wear my heart on my sleeve.



Goodnight everybody!

Martin Andersen