I believe that the mystery bag is from one of the Chahar Mahal groups,
possibly either Lori or Bakhtiyari. In Lori and Bakhtiyari Flatweaves,
Amedeo de Franchis and John Wertime illustrate many sumak bags with rub strips, including khordjin and salt bags. In fact, nearly all have this mixed technique.

One bag, with an asymmetrical rub strip but of approximately the same format, has the same sumak pattern as Jerry’s.

I have had the opportunity of seeing Jerry’s piece as well as the Persian bag face illustrated in From the Bosporous to Samarkand. I’m also quite familiar with the genre of Shahsavan and Caucasian bags illustrated. These others are all very different from Jerry’s.

Jerry’s mystery bag is considerably coarser than one would suspect from the TurkoTek images. I own a large Qashqai mafrash side panel similar in design to the one in From the Bosporous to Samarkand. Mine is more finely wrapped than Jerry’s, but not nearly as fine as the FTBTS piece.
Coarseness is typical of Chahar Mahal area sumak.

As to the sumak patterning, I own Shahsavan pieces with that border design. In my opinion, Jerry’s bag is definitely not Shahsavan. In the flesh, the results are entirely different than what the Shahsavan produce. Nor does it really resemble any other Northwest Persian weaving with which I am familiar.

When I saw Jerry’s piece, I assumed it was Kurdish on the basis of the offset knotting. As I am not familiar with any other group to use offset knotting as systematically or extensively, I couldn’t imagine who else wove it. Yet the Kurds, as far as I know, just don’t weave much sumak nor can I ever recall seeing the Kurds use the sumak field pattern often (if at all).

A number of Bakhtiyari and Lori sumak and pile rugs use some variation of the hooked “Jaf” medallion, however.

If it is true (and I am not disputing this) that the Kurds always used two-ply instead of three-ply cotton warps, then there is no reason to think it is Kurdish except for the offset knotting. Its presence, I think, is not persuasive.

Wendel

What matches with your hypothesis are the cotton foundations and the single wefted structure. These two features are usual in Chahar Mahal rugs. Nevertheless I have never seen one weaving of this area with offset knotting.

Thanks,

Daniel

I agree with you about the offset knotting. I don't think it is possible to reconcile the offset knotting with the other structural features and the design.

Since it unlikely that we will ever know exactly who made it, perhaps it is just as well that we refer to it as a somewhat mysterious bag.

Best,

Wendel

Your thoughts are compelling. Jerry did ask an almost rhetorical question in the salon about what happens to anomalous weavings with few analogs. It may well be that a weaver a generation removed from the tradition of these bags merely selected a design that was attractive. A stutter in the timeline of the tradition.

An altogether unrelated thought is that the counter on the home page of Turkotek has rolled past 100,000 visitors. Steve, did the lucky number 100,000 win a Turkotek mug, t-shirt and a guest spot on Regis? Congratulations.

Patrick Weiler

I hadn't noticed that the counter hit the 100k mark. We don't pay much attention to it since it only counts hits on the home page, and there's no way to know how many people bypass that page and go straight to the discussion boards except early in each new Salon, or how many hits equal one person. That is, the counter doesn't really count the number of individual visitors nor does it count the traffic to the site. It does give us, in hidden form, the number of home page hits daily, and we get an idea of whether that number is going up or down over time from it. At the moment, it's around 120 home page hits a day, up from about 100 a year or two ago.

Regards,

Steve Price