Posted by James Allen on December 13, 1998 at 17:59:41:
This design type is usually associated with flat weaves. Here is a piled example which has a set of irregularities which when understood have a dynamic meaning. Here is how i look at it. The major gulls are static because they are regular,symmetrical. The minor gulls are asymmetric and iterated. One usually reads from the bottom up. The bottom row of minor gulls have dropped centers. There is a dashed line passing discontinuously through the minor gull centers thus reinforcing their three dimensionality. the successive rows of minor gulls are incrementally swelled. Thew overall impression would be analogous to a bird gathering and thrusting into flight,accelerating;dropped center, then rising,swelling in size, to appear to fly over the top row. This is pure classical syntactical arrangement. It has a classical presentation but the piece doesn't look that old. This indicates that the aesthetic died a slow death. The fact that the border is done pretty well tells me the piece could be like circa 1875 so it isn't all that fresh. Jim Allen