rjhowe@erols.com
A few years ago I was in Utica, N.Y. to deliver the eulogy for the first
professor I ever had in college: a man who had been my intellectual
mentor. At the meal after the funeral, my wife and I were describing our
route south and asked where there was likely antique hunting in the area.
We were pointed toward an antique row that runs along Route 20. There in a
coop I saw this Caucasian piece. 
(Note: The purple stain in this image is on the photo but not on the rug.)
I knew why the design of this piece appealed to me. Its octagon-shaped
medallions seemed similar to some Yomud usages. Here, for example, is the
back cover of the catalog for the Jon Thompson sale in 1993.  The image is a detail of a Yomud main
carpet, intended to be the star of that sale but which did not ,as I
recall, sell. I asked the price and was told $160 and so I asked the
owner's name and phoned her after coming home and bargained a bit and
bought it for $117. I told her in the process that it seemed to me to be
only a study piece and that it was not a candidate for restoration and
that, in truth, is what I thought. I don't collect Caucasian pieces and so
I showed it to a few dealers and couldn't get anyone to offer me more than
$150 for it. One dealer friend to whom I owed a favor surprised me by
pursuing me about it and I relented and sold it to him for $150. Over the
next year I watched him violate what seemed to me every rule in the book
about how much to put into a restoration. He made two restoration efforts
locally but was not satisfied and finally sent it to Turkey and had it
fully restored including the reweaving of both ends. It was admittedly
now, a quite impressive and rather expensive piece. I went to the Denver
ACOR and bought Ralph Kaffel's book on Caucasian prayer rugs and
encountered plate 37, which looks like this.  Plate 37 and the piece I had bought
seemed to me to be nearly identical and Kaffel's text was intiguing. He
says that plate 37 "was one of the first to be attributed to Moghan. Jean
Lefevre identified this type in 1981 as distinctive group of prayer rugs,
with a strong geometric style which he assigned to the Moghan region…Three
further examples of this type have subsequently published. All four
examples feature a white-ground field with octagon pattern and kochanak or
"horn" devices under the prayer arch. (In this rug kochanaks also appear
in the spandrels.)" When my Hali arrived in which the Denver ACOR was
treated, Peter Stone, who is reputed to know his Caucasians a bit, singled
out plate 37 and rhapsodized about the rarity of such a Moghan piece. I've
been comparing the piece I found with Kaffel's plate 37 for awhile now and
the only difference I can see (excepting for the lack of kochanak devices
in my rug's spandrels) is that the octagonal medallion designs in mine
seem a little flatter top to bottom than those in the Kaffel piece. And
while I'm not sure I can distinguish a Moghan handle from a Shirvan
handle, my piece seems to me to have a classically Shirvan feel. I've not
seen the Kaffel piece in the wool. But the possibility is exciting. My
little $117 "study" piece is still for sale here in Washington, but may
now be too expensive for me to afford on two grounds. Not only has a great
deal been invested in its restoration, but it may also be the fifth known
member of a rare group. You can never tell what you're going to find in
the next booth of some coop. And sometimes you can't tell what you've
found when you find it. Regards, R. John Howe |