Posted by Wendel Swan on August 05, 1999 at 13:56:10:
A pile rug of 3.5 x 7.5 feet was presented for general discussion. The yellow ground was filled with motifs commonly seen on Shahsavan flatwoven bags, but an attribution any more specific than Northwest Persian or Southern Caucasus was not suggested initially.
Marla Mallett described the fact that the wefts appear to be sinuous or wavy as being due to "weft ease" or the manner in which the wefts are inserted and the length of the wefts. Such a characteristic was said to indicate a sign of "tradition without much history." The reference was to the tradition of the weaving group that produced the rug, not the lack of experience in the individual weaver.
Talish and Caucasian were two plausible attributions suggested, but the structure was not appropriate for the former and the latter was a bit too general. Attempts to place the rug by identifying the humans depicted were not successful.
General comments about the needs of nomadic people for pile weaving led into a discussion about the nature and extent of nomadism among the Turkmen - prolific producers of pile carpets yet generally held by most rug collectors to be nomads. The tentative conclusion reached was that the duration and length of Turkmen migrations (in the broadest sense) MIGHT be shorter than those of the nomads of NWP and Eastern Anatolia.
An image of a flatwoven khordjin (probably Shahsavan) with nearly identical motifs was presented as was the image of a pile rug (possibly Armenian).
Wendel