This is like a problem we encountered during your excellent workshop on rug “handle” at the Textile Museum. We each know what certain weaves and wool qualities feel like, but these qualities are hard to put into written objective terms that mean the same to all readers. To publish and be taken seriously you need “hard”, clearly measurable criteria, such as dimensions, foundation structure, degree of warp depression, knot counts, specific selvedge characteristics, etc. These let everyone operate comfortably from a common, objective basis for judgement. Since I don’t have Neff and Maggs, I don’t know whether their data base and terms let one do this. But it would certainly be useful if such a system existed and gained acceptance. Another project for your spare time?

Best regards,

Ken

Thanks for the subtle texture of your thoughts here.

I think you're right that "weave pattern" is usually and best used in combination with other indicators. Notice how it is usually used. A piece is encountered, usually pile up. The observer sees the patterns, the colors, the end finishes, the selveges, the kind of wool and perhaps even handles it a bit BEFORE turning it over and looking at the back. So at the point that most folks are assessing "weave pattern" they have quite a bit of information that can help in attribution. So I don't think it usually functions as a "knock-down" indicator by itself (except perhaps in a case as distinctive as the Borodjert; Sennehs were an instance like this when we talked about handle).

And I think you are right to compare efforts to use handle in attribution. I've been watching some experienced folks use and talk about handle, since we did those two sessions on it, and I now think that many of them use it in the sense of "does this feel different from what rugs of this sort usually do?" That's a lot "softer" an indication than would be the suggestion that you could use handle (or weave pattern) by itself to make estimates of attribution.

And there is also the problem of mounting true empirical tests of the use of weave pattern. How to conceptualize them rigorously? When is a person who is claiming to use weave pattern doing so and when is he/she in fact leaning on other indicators to some extent? And the language of description with regard to weave pattern does not seem well developed. I think that's why Neff and Maggs are often tantalizing but unsatisfying with their indications that a knot node shape is "different" or "distinctive."

I do plan to do some rug-related things as I move toward retirement but this one is not likely one of them. I expect I will move closer to modest efforts at weaving and at rug repair. I like the tactile side of things a lot.

And I am making some progress: I applied for Social Security today.

Regards,

R. John Howe

One reason I was taken a bit with what Ken Thompson wrote above is that it triggered several associations for me.

One of these is thinking about how the use of "weave pattern" is likely learned in the communities that use it a lot. I suspect that it is a rather tutorial kind of learning. Likely one of the prerequisites is that one needs to be situated so that one sees and handles a lot of rugs. Second, one must have access to expert opinion on "weave pattern," that is easy acces to certainly one but better yet a number of people who are already expert practitioners of its application.

Learning will consist of gradually becoming able to make the recognitions that these experts do. I think there will usually not be much explanatory language associated with this tutorial experience.

A novice looking at a particular Hammadan may opine that it's a "Tafresh." (110 km east of Hammadan) "No you fool!", say the experienced practitioners, "It's obviously a Tuisserkhan" (40-50 southwest of Hammadan). "There's a Trafresh in that pile over there."

So the novice looks more closely at the two pieces and gets a little better notion of this distinction.

Notice that there not much description in this tutorial experience, only expert assertion that something is or is not the case. One is left to one's own devices to determine the actual differences.

And the degree of intersubjective accuracy of communication may be modest and the novice finds out if he/she has learned how to apply weave pattern in this instance by venturing an attribution some time in the future, using the understanding he/she has come to largely on the basis of his/her own comparisons but without much resort to language.

This suggests to me that the learning is usually rather approximate and that there is lots of chance for errors and misunderstandings to creep in and to be passed along.

Especially since some distinctions are laden with market needs for distinctions in quality. Does a "Haroom,"sp? which I have been told is a more rural and lower quality type of "Kashan," have a weave pattern on its back that is recognizably different from a higher quality of Kashan?

I find the likely transmission of the use of weave pattern from expert to learner interesting because it resembles other instances in which learners are introduced into a skill by expert practitioners in ways that are mostly "tacit," (unstated) and "tactile" (I mean here that the "knowing" is often primarily in the "doing.")

I have lots of trouble distinguishing the varieties of Persian decorative rugs. I read my Cecil Edwards dutifully and try to handle and compare lots of rugs of this type as I visit my dealer friends but it seems largely to go in one ear and out the other.

I will say to my Persian friend Jamshid Aghamolla, "What is this rug?" He'll say "A Teheran." Me: "How can you tell?" Jamshid: "From the weave."

I find these kind of exchanges infuriating. He has obvious access to far more information about the rug than just its weave pattern. But he is clearly seeing something distinctive about the weave pattern that helps him make this recognition but he never puts it into words. In fact doesn't show much interest in trying to do so.

This makes me think that this expertise is often of the sort that is largely beyond language. Not necessarily that it couldn't be stated linguistically but rather that it usually is not much.

This is the source of Ken's suggested project to me and it would be a useful one for someone to take up. But that person needs to be prepared to experience a lot of frustration and contradiction.

There is good research on efforts to map the tacit rules followed by experts. It suggests that in their efforts to verbalize their skills they not only often report erroneously but that they do not describe accurately what they themselves do when they apply their skills. They are not necessarily trying to be deceptive. They just have real difficulty converting something that is used at a near visceral level into accurate, useful verbal description.

Regards,

R. John Howe

Regards, Yon

I think you are right, that usually "rug weave" is often used in a rather approximate way and that often experts will not agree. I too think their batting average might be fairly low. Lots of errors and contradiction. The mode of use makes it very difficult to test what is being asserted.

Comparative tests could readily be constructed but it might be hard to discern what weave pattern recognitions were being employed.

But the center of the advantage of what Neff and Maggs are arguing for is identified in Wendel's question: which do you prefer a written description of how someone in your family looks or a picture of them? The obvious advantage of the picture says something.

It seems to me that my inability to describe the features of my three daughters in a satisfactory way does not intrude at all on my ability to recognize them.

And think of how many such recognitions we use like this in everyday life? And how accurate they are? Have you kissed anyone recently in error mistaking her for your wife? So there's some real capability in what Neff and Maggs are pointing at.

I do think you are right to be suspicious about how frequently it is realized at the level of weave pattern. I suspect that for most it operates in combination with other factors to permit folks to make decisions by a rapid process of elimination about what something is.

I remember a rug morning debate about a piece a few years ago. Wendel thought the piece was a Tabriz. Others thought differently. Someone said, "What makes you so sure that it's a Tabriz?" Wendel said, "How do you recognize your children?"

Sounded glib to me then, even non-responsive, but I'm beginning to think that it could have been profound.

There are such recognitions and they are surprisingly accurate. Why not potentially about weave pattern too?

Regards,

R. John Howe

am enjoying the discussion, thank you.

You wrote about the different ability and capabilities in 'knowing someing':

--------"This makes me think that this expertise is often of the sort that is largely beyond language. Not necessarily that it couldn't be stated linguistically but rather that it usually is not much." . . .

you continued:

--------"There is good research on efforts to map the tacit rules followed by experts. It suggests that in their efforts to verbalize their skills they not only often report erroneously but that they do not describe accurately what they themselves do when they apply their skills. They are not necessarily trying to be deceptive. They just have real difficulty converting something that is used at a near visceral level into accurate, useful verbal description."

You have shown us two of the most important reasons for the study of 'arts' in school-- the need to learn to analysis, value and yes, apreciate areas that are not in the verbal areas of our thinking and then to be able to transfer our knowing and appreciation into words.

I could well imagine that adults who were asked to discuss music acting painting dance etc as children might do better in verbalising non-verbal knowledge or to be more specific to AND EXPLAIN the questions that you raise about rugs. We dont need to just know facts, but as you so well expressed we need to be able to creatively respond to the complex levels of existance in the world around us.

Sincerely

Richard Farber

We should take care that our children and grandchildren have the chance to develop the skills needed to analysis and verbalise areas that are not usual in the area of spoken response.

Thanks for these thoughts.

There are folks who hold that "tacit" knowledge is not just "unstated" but also often "unstatable." As you have detected, I am of the school that believes that it is useful to attempt to bring to consciousness, to the extent we can, the rules that we follow tacitly in vary field of practice. (It is probably the central professional act of my work.) Else we do not, in a sense, have real control over our skills.

I once knew a writer for The New Yorker magazine who described her writing experience as falling into a kind of trance where she was the instrument but had not much conscious control of what went on. She was also very religious and I used to kid her that her explanation denegrated the writer's skills but appeared to elevate the writer's connections.

There are also folks who feel that, in areas such as the visual arts and music, the move to explanatory language is always unavoidably one that entails a kind of alienation from the experience with art that should be central: the direct appraisal of the image or the music without any intervening words. These folks sometimes go so far as to suggest that any move to language about such things impoverishes the experience one has with art.

My own inclinations would still be not just to have a direct visceral experience with art but also to attempt to say or write some things that might make that experience even more enjoyable. That is what your advice about teaching children in this area seems to suggest too, to me.

Regards,

R. John Howe