Can't help, being very skeptical about the subject. I had hopes someone could convince me about something in my art, I did not see yet. But, helas, w'are back at the 1001 nights level again.

It's hard letting people see things as you see them (I can tell), but it's even harder to try and make them believe what you believe.
I think I'm allowed to make some comment on the subject for I handled shiploads of rugs in the last 20 years. (There are people that buy 286 old pre-1935 Caucasian rugs or 650 old beloudch items etc.) It makes it even harder for me, to look at rugs, as art: It's trade.

I've been looking at strange effects in rugs while restoring them. An old rug, can be very messy.
I sometimes allow myself in making a personal adjustment in the design like one knot in a different color, because it can be a very boring event, restoring a rug. Looking at my work as restorer, it's easy to tell at what time the taxman came along. I'm very human. Can be very obstinate to.
When my daughter feels the need to assist me, she's 11 years, I will certainly never remove the knots she's made. It's a tribute to the rug.

So, I can't give you any data, neither technical nor cultural, nor any related art that could backup an intentional manifest of the same humanoid errors, in this case. That's what makes a rug, a rug.
-Warps can break, so a warpknot has to be inserted.
-Wefts can break
-Insertion of "lazy lines"
-Rug repair at the spot
-Wrong calculation
-etc.

Could anyone give me some technical data, by which we can determine the effects w're encountering, that could be a solution to a lost in time, overseen cultural related aspect. In other words: People had a problem that needed to be solved. In order to keep it straight, no religion, superstition or fairytales are allowed.

Best regards,
Vincent Keers

Shirvan, 2.00x1.45 m.,1313
The border/field has been altered. Sloppy.
The tiny borders at the sides of the main border show a constant change in direction. I do not see this very often. Made it a bit more Turkomanic at the right side. My gift to you for Thanksgiving.

Best regards,
Vincent Keers

None of this is bothersome to me. What is, though, is the insistence that all of these irregularities are manifestations of the same thing and the complete absence of criteria by which we can distinguish them from irregularities that aren't. The Salon essay identifies some iregularities that aren't, but fails to specify the criteria that places them outside the group.

Vincent's Belouch in the message above this one offers an opportunity to clarify, and I ask that Yon do so by addressing the following: Vincent's Belouch includes two clear irregularities. One is a "jog" in the border, the other is the appearance of triangles just inside the border beginning after the third row of guls. Which of these (if either) is an example of the Bard Hypothesis, which (if either) is not? By what criteria were these decisions made? If both are illustrations of the Bard Hypothesis, does this mean that a rug can have multiple "internal elems"? Can we eliminate the possibility that every row and every column of motifs - indeed, every knot - defines another "internal elem"? If so, how?

Regards,

Steve Price

Regards, Yon

I believe that your last post helps us move in the right direction, and I would like to follow it a bit further.

Let's divide every knot in every rug as either being intentional (that is, planned by the weaver to be what and where it is) or an error (anything not planned). Accidents do happen, and inasmuch as it is not practical to go back and correct errors on pile rugs, let's simply accept them as what they are. Not incredibly interesting in themselves, although how the weaver deals with them can tell us something about what she thinks is important. The really interesting things, though, are the ones she does on purpose.

Now let's look at irregularities in rugs. Some are, as you acknowledge, errors. You propose that similar irregularities often seen at the same point in different specimens are unlikely to be errors. I agree, although I note that I often type "hte" instead of "the", and that is not planned, it is an error when it happens.

So, now the issue becomes, what do we mean by "similar irregularities" and "same point"? I think the stray single white knots in the lower part of a particular kind of side border in a number of Yomud pieces is an excellent illustration of a "similar irregularity" at a "same point", and it is unlikely to be some kind of weaving typographical error (although that possibility is very hard to eliminate, so we might tuck it away into a corner of our minds in case it starts to look less unlikely for technical reasons). Thus, I would accept that this is a category of irregularity introduced intentionally by some Yomud weavers. Their reason is mysterious, of course, and while I'd love to know the reason, not knowing it is not terribly bothersome.

That essentially establishes one category. We appear to agree that it exists. Your position so far is that it is a specific instance of a very broad category of things introduced for the same reason. "Border jogs", you seem to agree, are not in this broad category, at least not when they are bilateral. Other kinds of irregularities, you seem to agree, are based on aesthetic considerations that the weavers had after seeing their handiwork in the partly finished state.

Now I raise, again, the following question: On what basis do you conclude that the stray single knots on one border of some Yomud pieces express the same cultural intention as what Shiv Sikri called "internal elems"? The only obvious thing they have in common as far as I can see is that they all occur in the lower third or so of rugs.

I submit, again, that defining the irregularities crisply and classifying them gives us a fighting chance of figuring out what some of them are and, most important, of deciding which are errors and which are not. And I would take the position that every time we discover that one of them appears to be due to an error (in judgment or in execution) that might be expected to occur during weaving, we have not suffered a loss, we have gained a victory.

Regards,

Steve Price

Regards, Yon

I may be starting to get the point. In your last posting you say that the thing all "intentional irregularities" in the lower third of a rug have in common is that they reflect traditions. I guess I misunderstood from the beginning. My impression was that you were ascribing all of these to the same tradition, which is a very different matter.

Am I correct in understanding that your position is that any irregularity that happens often enough and with enough similarity from occurrence to occurrence can be taken to be intentional, and that anything done intentionally is usually done in the traditional way? Those propositions seem nearly self evident to me. The only questions that come to mind are, why doesn't it apply to irregularities anywhere else in rugs and why would anyone call it a myth?

Regards,

Steve Price

Regards, Yon

I thought we were converging, too, and maybe we are. If so, it is not on a monotonic path, and we just hit a pretty good bump. I disagree with your assertion that the examples you cite share a common location. They include irregularities in borders, fields, and both, and include some that are bilateral and others that are unilateral. The "stray single knot in some Yomud borders" is a group with a common location.

Shiv Sikri's Hypothesis and Yon Bard's Hypothesis are very different things, although both use the term "internal elem". Sikri noted the fairly frequent occurrence of irregularities in the lower thirds of rugs and saw that they can be used to divide the rug into rectangles. He calls those rectangles "internal elems", and asserts that all internal elems have a fairly specific (albeit unidentified) basis in cultural tradition. The hypothesis totally rejects the ocurrence of accidental irregularities. It insists that all irregularities share the same mysterious significance to the weaver, with absolutely no evidence for this sweeping generality.

Yon Bard's Hypothesis, as I understand it, is that many (but not all) irregularities in the lower parts of rugs, whether they define rectangular segments of the rug or not, are put there on purpose and reflect traditions. Not all the traditions are the same, or even necessarily any more closely related than, say, wearing a wedding ring on the third finger of the left hand and eating turkey on Thanksgiving Day, both of which are traditions in American culture.

Basically, your hypothesis demands little more than acceptance of the notion that some irregularities are there by intent, and there's nothing farfetched or difficult to accept about that. Sikri's Hypothesis attaches much greater relatedness to the various irregularities than that and includes all irregularities that are bilateral; I have seen no evidence beyond the anecdotal to support this idea. Indeed, his position is that the correctness of his hypothesis is so self evident as to need no proof. That's religion, not scholarship.

I am convinced that some cases of what appear to be irregularities are, as you propose, put there intentionally. That is not the same thing as Sikri's Hypothesis, which I consider to be little more than fantasy.

Regards,

Steve Price

Among Shiv's examples there were also many different manifestations: some in the field, some in the borders, some in both.

Any point above the bottom of the field implicitly defines a rectangle.

I am sure Shiv would be willing to concede that some examples could be due to other causes.

Didn't I just say all this somewhere else?

Regards, Yon

I understood what you meant by "common location"; I just don't find it specific enough to make a convincing argument. Essentially anywhere in the lower (or upper?) third of the rug isn't a very specific location. The stray knots in one border of some Yomud weavings are, to my mind at least, a coherent group by virtue of a common kind of irregularity in a common location.

And if it's true that Sikri would be willing to accept explanations other than intentional placement (that is, errors and/or adjustments), he wasn't willing to even acknowledge those as sane alternatives during the discussion following his presentation at ICOC. That, in my opinion, is why his hypothesis has met with such derision.

And, yes, you probably did say some of this earlier. One of the things that happens as we get older is that we start to repeat ourselves. Did I say that already?

Regards,

Steve Price