Re: Why the difference?

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: : : : Yon, : : : : The simple answer is that we still don't really know how to date tribal rugs very well and our means for doing so are limited. Virtually all of the standards to which you refer in the introduction to the Salon for the dating of rugs are inapplicable to tribal weavings. There is little evidence to corroborate the optimism and speculation that drives most of the time lines. : : : : While there may have been a few advocates to the contrary, the concept of pre-1700 Turkmen rugs was virtually unheard of just a few years ago. Even if one accepts the C-14 results, applying those results successfully to the dates of other Turkmen rugs doesn't seem to work yet. : : : : And if the long-collected, much-discussed, much-analyzed abundant Turkmen rugs remain difficult to date, what can we say about the lesser-known tribal weavings? : : : : Who among us can identify, with a reasonable degree of certainty, a pre-1850 Afshar, Bakhtiyari, Shahsavan, Belouch or Kurdish rug? Michael Wendorf may be able to speak to some documentation on such a Belouch that Jeff Boucher once owned, but hard evidence is generally lacking. : : : : Not only are we probably ignorant of when many tribal weavings were made, the older they are the less likely we are to know who wove them. Only when relatively large numbers of any particular design and type of rug are woven came we affix a label and tentative dates to them. : : : : I have a particular interest in Northwest Persian weavings, Shahsavan in particular. But I see a lot of interesting, good material that I can't identify from that region. I've adopted Harold Keshishian's approach: just call it NWP. : : : : I recently bought a Greek flokati for my daughter. I know when it was made because its label tells me, just like beer. : : : : Regards, : : : : Wendel : : : Wendel, that was an excellent answer. I would take it one step further and state that all of your comments apply to Turkomen rugs also. This may be heresy, but even with all the analyses done - c14 stuff aside - we still can not put an accurate date on Turkomen pieces other than when they were collected or acquired by a museum. We can put several pieces together and possibly make a dating hierarchy: old, older, oldest (as opposed to Mark's good, better, best); but, to put a number on them is only speculation. I imagine that the same can be said for Shahshavan or Afshar pieces also. Regards, Marvin : : Marvin, and yet you yourself referred to your Ersari as possibly pre-1800! : : But, seriously, let me rephrase my question: Why do you find in books and auction catalogs many Turkmen rugs with estimated dates in the first half of the 19th century, but other tribal rugs are almot invariably no earlier than late 19C? There are some exceptions, as Tom points out, but they are few and far between. : : Regards, Yon : Dear Yon, The operative word is "possibly". The books state late or early, but instead of 1890 and 1820, it could just as easily be 1920 and 1860 as Wendel stated above. My point is that the reference date is not certain, only that rug A looks older than rug B. We would all like to believe that we have the ability to date rugs to a 20 or 50 year spn, but we cannot. I think that Sotheby's London does it correctly: if the date is after 1835 or 1840 (I forget which), the term "antique" is not used. Best regards, Marvin

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