The Kurdish "grain bag" below is not the most technically perfect weaving in my collection. It is not the most rapturous, intricate, colorful, "ethnic/tribal", not even the most beautiful. But, it holds a special place in my collection and my heart for other reasons.

I had seen it on a business trip a couple of months earlier and when on another trip to bring an old hulk of an antique car back home for my fathers old junk car collection, he loaned me a few dollars to pony up the money that the dealer wanted for it.
He died a few weeks later and the rug is a remembrance for me of a very special road trip.

Patrick Weiler

This bag is unusual because, when I bought it several years ago, I had not seen any like it. The antique store owner said it had been bought from the estate of the son of the man who had collected it from Iran many years ago. (Can we EVER believe these guys?) It is obviously old and has in-the-field repairs along with a closely striped back. Many Kurdish weavings have similar field and border designs, including saltbags and mafrash. The size is the same as Baluch balisht.
A couple of years ago I saw what appeared to be new, almost exact, replicas of this type of bag for sale at a big city rug store. The colors are not as old and the striped backs did not have the variation in stripe width.
I do not know if they are being sold as old, but I also do not know if there is contemporary use of such bags in NE Iran/NW Afghanistan or if the weavers were just filling a perceived demand.
I really like Kurdish weavings. There is such a variety due to their dispersion around the rug weaving areas, from the Caucasus and Iran to Turkey, Iraq and Afghanistan. Many (other than Senneh kilims) have an almost crude, childlike appearance to them, almost as though they purposely made them crooked, with oddly contrasting colors and designs which often collapse into abstraction.
It attracted my attention when I bought it because of the clear, saturated dyes, intricate weave, complete condition and unusual function. It just so happened that a profound situation occurred around my acquisition of it, making it even more important to me.

Thanks,

Patrick Weiler

From the photo it looks like you found a really nice Quchan Kurd weaving that is certainly worthy of the memory of a departed parent. I would be delighted if my children associated me with having made it possible to acquire a weaving that moved them in the same way. (I would also love to come across such a nice piece myself, but that is a normal symptom of people afflicted with the collecting disorder, only one prion away from Mad Cow Disease.)

Gule gule kullanin, as the Turks would say. (Loosely, May you derive great joy from possessing it.)

Best regards,

Ken Thompson