Posted by Erol Abit on February 11, 1999 at 10:28:26:
In Reply to: Re: Let's face it posted by marvin Amstey on February 10, 1999 at 18:11:04:
: : For years this Sil-I-Soltan published in Oriental Carpets by Robert de Calatchi as plate 69 has puzzled me. For the longest time I refused to believe that human faces were intentional.
: : However, as I said in a prior post, there is a tradition of duality of images in Persian weaving and I now could accept that this rug expresses duality as botehs with human faces.
: : Although it doesn't show here, the botehs are the bottom of the rug are just botehs, not either real or imagined faces.
: : Wendel
: They certainly look like faces to me. They are in the tradition of the very interesting article on mythical creatures in Hali 102. I'm most familiar with them in Sehna rugs. On the other hand, these rugs are all in an urban tradition; not tribal, ethnographic images. The Hali article points out that the images represent fairy tale creatures or animist traditions from stories about bears. However, I submit that these are not usually found in ethnographic rugs unless they are hidden; similar in manner to what Jim Allen was talking about. I still haven't had anyone comment on why human images don't appear in 18th/19th c. Turkish rugs - or at least in the western half of the country. Regards, Marvin
The tribal weavings were changing very slowly comparing with urban weavings. That is, usually a tribal rug was slightly different in details than its similar, previously woven rugs with more animist/floral designs. So tribal rugs were copy-like rugs with small differences. Maybe this is because the tribes were having too hard life to weave new style rugs often. Could this be a reason why not so many human figures haven't been seen on tribal rugs? On the other hand, the urban rug designs were changing faster by the contributions and empositions of kings, princes, artists etc. When coming to Turkish rugs, especially after 18th century, ottoman sultans were much more being interested in islamic and persian effects not only on the rugs but also literary and music etc rather than turkic cultural effects. They were supporting only such arts. It is allready discussed that human figures are not widely used in pure islamic arts. The calligraphic style rugs were more interesting arts to sultans.
At that time, tribal weavings in anatolia even in western anatolia was still being made like copy of previous rugs which are animist/floral rugs as I mentioned above. They were poor and just trying to meet their needs for life while sultans were living so comfortably at the same time.
Regards,
Erol