Posted by Yon Bard on June 20, 1999 at 20:23:20:
In Reply to: Dating Turkomen weavings posted by James Allen on June 20, 1999 at 12:47:35:
: "Many people assume that the most beautiful expression of any design is the oldest, with the questionable implication that designs arise spontaneously in full
: perfection and do nothing but degenerate subsequently." Yon do you think it might be the incidence of genius and the fact that works of genius stand out from the rest and are preserved while the chaff falls away? I have seen enough classical looking Turkomen with synthetic dyes to know that great weaving was done into the early 20th century. As for C-14 results there are enough early dates now to assume that some of them are accurate or close enough. Sure some pieces touted to be early will turn out to be recent but who cares the vector is firmly established, 16th century Turkomen weavings do in fact exist. Now the question is will anybody pay the added decinal place people want for them? Jim Allen
Allen, the argument that great pieces are preferentially preserved implies that an old piece is likely to be good, but not that a good piece is necessarily old; but you make the argument yourself that good pieces have continued to be made. However, I do wonder how much the argument about the preservation of good pieces really holds. It sounds plausible, but can it be verified? Does it hold for other art forms? There is a lot of mediocre ancient art still extant.
Regards, Yon