TurkoTek Discussion Boards

TurkoTek Discussion Boards

Subject	:	Sheep!
Author	:	Steve Price
Date	:	08-22-2000 on 08:17 p.m.

sprice@hsc.vcu.edu Dear Jerry, I actually found a 19th century Persian carpet with sheep. Unambiguous, no foolin', sheep.

This image is taken from an ad in HALI (#77, p. 25, 1994). The ad only includes the detail, so I don't know what the rest of the rug looks like. It is attributed by Alberto Levi and Daniele Sevi to northeast Persia, last quarter 19th century, with an overall size of 13'5" x 5'0". The sheep are, as you can see, very realistically drawn, and the menagerie on the detail incldues elephants, leopards, deer, a horse and (my favorite) a chorus line of dancing bears. Party on, you near-eastern party animals! Steve Price

Subject	:	RE:Sheep!
Author	:	Jerry Silverman
Date	:	08-23-2000 on 01:55 a.m.

And the prize for the First Posting of a Undisputed Sheep goes to Steve Price! Oh, did I mention that the Prize is a lamb chop dinner at Iron Mike's here in beautiful downtown Chicago? Yum. (So interest doesn't plummet, Second Prize is a box of lamb flavored dog biscuits.) -Jerry-

Subject	:	RE:Sheep!
Author	:	Michael Wendorf
Date	:	08-23-2000 on 09:46 a.m.

Dear All: It seems implausible that the rug in detail is 19th century. The dancing bears are clearly grooving to the Grateful Dead. That party didn't start until the 1960s; or are we to assume the Dead got their dancing bears from a carpet? Hey, watch your speed. -Michael

Subject	:	RE:Sheep!
Author	:	+Ken Thompson+
Date	:	08-23-2000 on 06:20 p.m.

Steve Congratulations on finding a REALISTIC depiction of sheep (unless they are the rarely seen black-eared curly-haired dancing Gobekatan Koyunkopekleri* that the Qajars used to liven up their otherwise dreary court banquets.) This, however, was the exception, since the sheep look like our conception of sheep. But, as the Leslie Orgel post indicates, we may not recognize a geometrically stylized sheep when we see one. I suspect that many of the quadrupeds we see on bagfaces may be sheep in generic animal clothing, but we don't know how to "read" the shape. I wonder if there is some tribal convention--tails up? tails down? horns back? no horns, etc--that has yet to be identified. Since so many tribes have sheep-related names (Yuncu, Akkoyunlu, Karakoyunlu)it seems unlikely that the emblem isn't lurking there somewhere, even if we can't pinpoint it. In any case, Steve, congratulations on actually finding a recognizable example. Now let's see who can decipher a geometrically projected sheep. Regards to all, Ken Thompson *Turkish for Belly-dancing Sheep-dog (Species now extinct)

Subject	:	RE:Sheep!
Author	:	Steve Price
Date	:	08-24-2000 on 10:15 a.m.

sprice@hsc.vcu.edu Thanks for the kind words. Like I keep telling people, I'm not just another pretty face.

Steve Price