I looked to many photo’s of rugs searching for examples containing these “internal elems”?

For me it’s a fanciful myth. If we want to progress or if you want to convince me that I am wrong, I ask you to answer clearly to each of the next questions.

1/ Why do such “elem” appear mostly if not only in what we call “tribal rugs” and are mostly absent in more sophisticated, well planned village and workshop product?

2/ Why do such “elem” appear mostly in rugs with a repetitive design that needs to be well balanced.

2/ Why when such elem are visible “all along the wide of the rug” is the upper part of the rug more skillfully drawn?

3/ Why in some cases does the “internal elem appear at the top of the rug?

4/ Why if a weaver really wanted to drawn an internal elem didn’t he clearly do it?

5/ Which argument do we have to reject Marla’s explanations?

Thanks,

Daniel

I will try to answer your questions.

1. Why does the internal elem appear mostly in tribal weavings and not village or city weavings? The answer, I think, is that the expression of the internal elem is part of an indigenous or ethnographic tradition originating among tribal or pastoral/nomadic people. Once commerce becomes involved the weaver/weavers are no longer weaving for themselves or their people and are not communicating or attempting to communicate - they are weaving under the direction or supervision of a cottage industry arrangement. There may be other explanations, but this comes to mind.

2. Why does the internal elem appear mostly in rugs with repeating designs?

The internal elem does not only appear on rugs with a repeating design. The above bag from the Bloom collection is well known and only one example of an internal elem in a medallion piece. Note the clear demarcation beginning with the row of compressed octagons then the white stripe and the inverted animals on green. Here it seems is a clear example of an internal elem.

The other answer to your question is that the repeating design seems to be much older than the central medallion in terms of the overall weaving tradition.

3. Why is the upper part of a rug where the elem markers are visible all along the width
of the rug drawn better? (I think this is your question?)

Perhaps it is as Marla suggests, or that in this event - more the Bard hypothesis - we are seeing mistakes, adjustments etc. The Sikri hypothesis, as I understand it, says these are improvisations that are not part of the internal elem or that the part you consider to be better drawn is another expression in a three part expression that appears in many of these rugs.

4. Why does an internal elem sometimes appear at the top of the rug?

Sikri discussed this in the context of what often appears as an elongation at the top. But I think you also find examples where a row of design is added. I think Sikri would explain this as part of this three part design construction. I am unsure that this negates in anyway the internal elem theory.

5. If a weaver intended an internal elem - why not draw it clearly?

As we see above, sometimes it is drawn clearly. But the process is not always and there are several possible explanations. Among these is that once you are aware of the expression, it is obvious even when done through through subtle distortion, contrariness, or variation. Inversion is much more obvious, of course. Maybe the answer is that the elem is not meant to be obvious or clear.

6. What is the argument to refute Marla's explanation?

I am not certain there is one. There may be markers or irregularities that are simply mistakes or changes of mind, but do they explain the appearance of the internal elem in the most clearly articulated examples? I do not think they really do.

I hope this begins to address some of your important questions.

Best, Michael Wendorf

1/ Why do such “elem” appear mostly if not only in what we call “tribal rugs” and are mostly absent in more sophisticated, well planned village and workshop product?
Answer: 1. tribal and village weavers are perhaps more likely to be influenced by tradition and superstition. This being said, it is not true that this effect is absent in more sophisticated weavings. See, for example, the Safavid rug in my introduction, and it's certainly present in many Caucasian village rugs. It's just that I chose most of my examples from my specialty area, the Turkmen.

2/ Why do such “elem” appear mostly in rugs with a repetitive design that needs to be well balanced.
Answer: this is simply untrue; see the examples of ensis and prayer rugs that are not at all repetitive.

2/ Why when such elem are visible “all along the wide of the rug” is the upper part of the rug more skillfully drawn?
Answer: Is this true? Or is the top more regularly drawn simply as part of the tradition?

3/ Why in some cases does the “internal elem appear at the top of the rug?
Answer: In my example that's because the rug was woven from the top. In the case of long rugs, the irregularity will often occur at the point where the upper region forms a square (Shiv's observation), the bottom part may actually be longer than the upper.

4/ Why if a weaver really wanted to draw an internal elem didn’t he clearly do it?
Answer: The weaver just wanted to create an irregularity of some type at a certain spot. Whenever the irregularity was spread across the field or appeared in both borders, a rectangular area was created which we can interpret as an 'internal elem,' but this idea probably never entered the weaver's mind.

5/ Which argument do we have to reject Marla’s explanations?
Answer: You can find alternative explanations for almost any of these cases individually, and I am sure that they actually apply in some cases. But there are too many cases where they either don't apply at all (as with the single knot cases), or are thoroughly unconvincing (why are single aberrant border motifs so often found in this location?) that I cannot accept them as a general explanation.

Regards, Yon

You just finished telling me in another thread that Sikri doesn't make any particular claims about the traditional basis for irregularities, only that they aren't accidents. In particular, you said that he doesn't believe and never said that they all represent the same tradition. In your post in this thread you say: ...the internal elem is part of an indigenous or ethnographic tradition.... Did you mean to say, "internal elems are parts of ...traditions", or are we back to what I thought I heard Sikri say in Philadelphia?

I also have to say, again, that a hypothesis to which contradictory evidence is impossible (the weaver did it this way because that's her tradition; sometimes she did it differently because it was her tradition to do things differently sometimes; sometimes she did it, sometimes she didn't, that's the nature of her tradition; etc.) is useless from the standpoint of providing explanations with predicting power. If this is part of the hypothesis, as it appears to be from your most recent posting, you might as well posit that all rugs are actually magical plain white sheets and that the designs we think we see are only hallucinations that result from the magic in them. Nobody can ever prove this to be wrong, and that's exactly what makes it unacceptable.

It all reminds me of a line in the movie A Bug's Life, in which one of the characters says, "Doing things differently is not part of our tradition."

Regards,

Steve Price

Please separate my comments and attempted response to Daniel's questions from Sikri's hypothesis. I was attempting to offer a possible explanation to Daniel's specific question and not interpret Sikri's hypothesis.

However, I do believe that Sikri's hypothesis is that the precise rectangular area called the internal elem when it appears is intended and part of something, perhaps a kind or remnant of a woven language. I do not think he ever uses the word "tradition." At least not as you and Yon appear to be using it.

Michael

The following rug from the Mast collection was exhibited at the Philadelphia ICOC and described as follows:

The most striking features of this rug are the clear saturated colors and a composition that shows a rare degree of spontaneity. Apparent tensioning differences, the two offset Memling guls at the bottom, and the zig-zag line on the right side all indicate that two weavers, both very imaginative, were "sketching in wool" on this piece.

Spontaneity and sketching in wool or a precisely executed and marked internal elem? I do not know the answer but the Sikri hypothesis correctly or incorrectly attempts to attach a significance to such "spontaneity."

This rug also seems to relate to Daniel's second question. Here we see what might be a marker or part of a marker all along the right side of the rug. Is the top 3/4s of the rug better drawn? the memling devices seem roughly comparable when viewed on against the others but the bottom two appear off to our eyes perhaps because they are not aligned with the others.

Here is another rug:

From Central Anatolia with Crivelli type medallions - can someone state a reason for the marker that appears here other than to create an internal elem?

Fantasy? Maybe, but worth thinking about.

Best, Michael Wendorf