| Dear folks - Christoph Huber's well-researched and imaginative
article/salon might be seen to provide a kind of answer to an old debate
about rug design sources. A number of writers have long held that Central
Asia is the likely source of many rug designs. Others have responded that
this seems less likely arguing that designs likley tended to flow from
more technologically advanced areas to those that are less so rather than
the reverse. (e.g., cities to country-side, or China to Central Asia).
While the argument offered here does not claim to exclude alternatives, it
might (if the civilization that Huber refers to here was relatively
advanced) explain how Central Asia despite being, in more recent times,
largely unsettled territory might still once have had an age that could
make it a plausible candidate as an important source of rug design, even
for those who hold that such sources were likely technologically more
advanced. The trivia occurs in Huber's paragraph just before his first
images in this editied version of his Ghereh article. It is only the
second use of the word "glyptic" that I have ever seen in print. The first
I encountered in a Michael Innes murder mystery. "Glyptic," I found, when
I looked it up, means "carved" especially with regard to jewelry. The
stones in cameo rings are instances of the glyptic arts. Huber's accurate
usage here, is an encouraging sign of a nice erudition. Regards, R. John
Howe |