| Subject | : | Broken Borders |
| Author | : | R. John Howe |
| Date | : | 10-02-2000 on 12:01 p.m. |
| Dear folks -
|
| Subject | : | RE:Broken Borders |
| Author | : | Steve Price |
| Date | : | 10-02-2000 on 12:59 p.m. |
| sprice@hsc.vcu.edu
Dear John, Here's what Peter Stone's Oriental Rug Lexicon says
under "Broken Border": A border which is not confined by a straight
line around the field. The border design may occasionally penetrate the
field or a field design may break into the border. Some Kerman rugs, some
French rugs and some Chinese rugs have such borders. My inclination
would not be to "map our own experience", but to accept the definition and
terminology that already exists. People understand us better when we speak
their language |
| Subject | : | RE:Broken Borders |
| Author | : | Steve Price |
| Date | : | 10-02-2000 on 04:12 p.m. |
| sprice@hsc.vcu.edu Dear Folks, The software monster struck this thread. It went blank somehow, and I restored it from a backup. I can tell that there was one message before this one, not on my backup. I hope whoever put it on will do so again. Steve Price |
| Subject | : | The Missing Posts |
| Author | : | John Howe |
| Date | : | 10-02-2000 on 06:34 p.m. |
| rjhowe@erols.com Vis-a-vis, the posts that vanished. Here is the essence of them: The next post was one from Wendel. He said essentially that Stone couldn't have said it better and questioned any reason for going on. I posted following that saying that I thought I had been misread, that I wasn't calling for a definition but rather pieces folks had heard described as having a broken border. I said that Stone's definition may be perfect but that it still has to be applied and that at least could we put up instances of the Kerman, Chinese and French types of this border that he mentions. I said that one of the things we often do in our talk about rugs is to speak elliptically about something that we feel confident that we have settled in our own minds. The whole point of this thread for me is that such understandings may not be clear at all to new folks. More, I often see experienced folks disagree about such things once the actual images are in front of us. Regards, John |
| Subject | : | RE:Broken Borders |
| Author | : | Wendel+Swan |
| Date | : | 10-02-2000 on 07:14 p.m. |
| Dear John, Perhaps I misunderstood your post. You said of the Qum: "this is not the sort of design instance to which in my experience, the term "broken border" has referred." Then you suggested that the term might apply to "extreme meanders." My now deleted post agreed with Steve. I said that while I do not yet own a copy of Peter Stone's Lexicon, reading this definition is incentive for me to buy one. I found his definition of a broken border to be accurate, concise and descriptive. Our language and terminology is constantly changing, but I think the term "broken border" is pretty clear among experienced collectors and in the trade. My last words were: "Don't fix it if it isn't broken." Cecil Edwards, a major player in the Kerman trade, writes of the broken border in Kerman after 1937: It was at this period that the ancient Persian convention of the straight line border, with its attendant guards, was breached. It was replaced by the "broken border." Edwards also refers to the "unhappy" results of adapting French designs in Kerman carpets and sides with those who "viewed with distaste the prostitution of a peculiarly Persian art by the Western decorator." It sounds like he didn't like the broken border or the borderless examples that followed, doesn't it?. He refused to illustrate the latter. Best regards, Wendel |
| Subject | : | RE:Broken Borders |
| Author | : | R. John Howe |
| Date | : | 10-02-2000 on 08:21 p.m. |
| Hi Wendel - You wrote in part: Our language and terminology is constantly changing, but I think the term "broken border" is pretty clear among experienced collectors and in the trade. My last words were: "Don't fix it if it isn't broken." My thought: Yes, but I'm not suggesting that we examine the definition at all. The definition isn't the image. My suggestion was simply that we put up at least instances of broken borders of the Kerman, Chinese and French varieties to "show" what Stone and Edwards are talking about. The fact that you and I might be clear doesn't help at all those who do not have concrete pictures of what the words refer to. Now I did say that I'm prepared for and would not be surprised at our encountering disagreement even among more experienced folks on the board once examples begin to appear. One of the things I see more frequently than you might think is experienced folks agreeing at the verbal level but then disageeing once concrete examples are consulted. But even if that doesn't happen I think examples of broken borders would be useful to post. Can someone supply one example of each of the types Stone refers to? Kerman, Chinese, French. Regards, R. John Howe |
| Subject | : | RE:Broken Borders |
| Author | : | Deschuyteneer+Daniel |
| Date | : | 10-03-2000 on 11:32 p.m. |
Dear John, From left to right in the picture below, are illustrated
one Aubusson and one Donegal broken border. It’s possible to add floral
Kermani or Chinese broken borders but is it really necessary?.
 |
| Subject | : | RE:Broken Borders |
| Author | : | John Howe |
| Date | : | 10-04-2000 on 07:39 p.m. |
rjhowe@erols.com
Today, I went to a friend’s shop who has a few rugs and a copy of Stone’s
“Lexicon.” I read the definition several times again and looked at an
image of a Chinese rug that Stone supplies and in truth it is rather like
the Qum piece that I used to start this thread in that the border is
broken into in several places by plant forms in much the same way that the
animals in the Qum piece do. So this is one possible source of the
comments of others about my own descriptions of what the term “broken
border” might refer to. In Stone’s view, it is clear that the Qum rug is
in this group. Part of the problem may be that only I am confused about
the concrete examples. The Qum rug is in and I thought it was not. I also
asked this dealer friend if he had an example of a Kerman decorative rug
with a broken border and he had one possible candidate. It was a rug with
an overall design of seeming plant forms. At the top, bottom and both
sides, the ground color became green in a meandering way. One might
actually describe this rug as one without any real border, since the
border design is a continuation of the field design with only a change in
ground color. So I don’t really have a Kerman example of the type I think
I remember. Daniel has put up some European examples and that may be
sufficient. Here is one from a recent volume of Hali that also seems to me
to qualify as having a broken border.  This example meets Stone’s definition because the cartouche
forms at the sides and ends intrude onto the field. And although the
corner devices are likely patterned on those with rugs with unbroken
borders, these too seem to spill over a bit. Now I have said that I have
no quarrel with Stone’s definition and everyone has recommended it to me
so highly that I have continued to read it perhaps to a point that is now
dysfunctional. At least it no longer satisfies me as accurately
descriptive. Stone says that a broken border is one “…which is not
confined by a straight line around the field.” Now Stone in one of his
personnas is like me, a technical trainer, tasked with saying things
clearly, and so it may well be that he has already discovered what is
unsatisfactory about this description. Since a border must go round four
sides of the field, my high school geometry teacher wound insist that it
cannot be “a straight line.” It is composed of four straight lines in the
form of a rectangle. So it is not a really accurate description. But it
still may function since most of think we know what Stone means. But do
we? Here is an image of a rug from this same issue of Hali that seems to
me to be a possible border-line case.  Here is a rug that appears to me to meet the requirements of
Stone’s definition. The field is in fact enclosed by four straight lines
as his definition seems to require. But in a man-on-the-street way, my
eyes tell me that this border is still broken in one place. Now I don’t
claim that my argument here is a particularly useful one but this example
should make us cautious whenever we experience impatience about whether
the words and the images we mean to describe are sufficiently congruent.
It’s a difficult thing to do. Thanks for putting up with me here. Regards,
R. John Howe |
| Subject | : | RE:Broken Borders |
| Author | : | Steve Price |
| Date | : | 10-04-2000 on 09:57 p.m. |
| sprice@hsc.vcu.edu Dear John, I'm not at all sure I see the point to your dissertation. Stone's "Lexicon", like any other, is largely a compendium of the meanings of words (or phrases) in general use. His definition and image under "broken border" are clear and, unless one really tries hard to read ambiguity into them, unambiguous. They present the generally accepted usage of the term, and being puzzled by "line" instead of "four lines in the form of a rectangle" as describing borders comes close to being intentional obfuscation. A border can be one side, and his description of it as a straight line is accurate. More important, I think, is the fact that you could open any dictionary to any page and select definitions that could be verbally twisted into confusion. So what makes this one noteworthy? Regards, Steve Price |
| Subject | : | RE:Broken Borders |
| Author | : | R. John Howe |
| Date | : | 10-05-2000 on 06:50 a.m. |
| Hi Steve - It may be, as you suggest, that the entire thread is wrong-headed. It is clear that I'm in a rather small minority. Its root for me, though, was in the thought that we often use terms without thinking much about what they refer to and so it is not surprising that we might be using similar language sometimes to describe somewhat different things. This was my suspicion about the expression "broken border." Hence, my initial suggestion that we simply put up examples. It was only as the thread proceded and the difinition was being touted that I saw that Stone's use of "a straight line around" was in fact not accurately descriptive. And that thought might still be pointlessly pedantic. It is just that we do need to be cautious when we adopt language to refer to things that both the language is as accurate as we can make it and that the examples actually being pointed to by a given description are agreed upon. It's often a very difficult thing to give accurate, reliably referential descriptions of things in the external world. In this case, it may well be that I was the only one experiencing any confusion. Regards, R. John Howe |
| Subject | : | RE:Broken Borders |
| Author | : | Steve Price |
| Date | : | 10-05-2000 on 08:20 a.m. |
| sprice@hsc.vcu.edu Dear John, Maybe your affliction is peculiar to Washington, where every third person is a lawyer and parsing words is a local art form, but in most of the world people are fairly comfortable with language that won't survive such analysis but manage to communicate pretty effectively anyway. There are no enforceable laws regarding language meanings, and general acceptance is what gets things into dictionaries. My endorsement of Stone's listing of "broken border" was nothing more than recognition of the fact that what he says about it is what most rug collectors mean by the phrase and that there seemed little point in rewriting it for our own amusement. I still think that. Steve Price |
| Subject | : | RE:Broken Borders |
| Author | : | R. John Howe |
| Date | : | 10-05-2000 on 09:08 a.m. |
| Hi Steve - Actually, my tendencies are probably shaped primarily by having been modestly (perhaps too modestly) trained at one point in the social "sciences." But I take your point. Regards, R. John Howe |
| Subject | : | RE:Broken Borders |
| Author | : | Marla Mallett |
| Date | : | 10-05-2000 on 09:44 a.m. |
| marlam@mindspring.com Jim Jones' website displaying part of his collection of Chinese Art Deco rugs shows at least a dozen examples of classic pieces with broken borders: www.artdecorugs.com. Marla |