It seems to me that these four-lobed medallions have adapted Persian styles to their Caucasian weavings. Compare your medallions to this from a small silk rug from 16th Century Kashan:

Most of the 19th Century Caucasian rugs (even those with floral motifs from the Eastern part) are geometric and the medallions resemble the eight-lobed or octagonal examples of Anatolia. Those you show do not. The four-lobed medallion appears most commonly on Persian and Indian weavings.

Although their actual chronology may differ, you seem to have presented these embroideries in the sequence in which the design evolved. But the second and third are really too similar to draw a distinction.

(Why am I always reminded of Matisse's cutouts when I see Kaitag embroideries?)

Wendel

The central medallion does, indeed, seem to have much in common with the Persian/Indian four lobed medallions.

The character of the drawing in many Kaitag embroideries seems Matisse-like to me, too. http://www.turkotek.com/salon_00010/salon.html
Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the drawing in much of Matisse's work seems very Kaitag-like.

Whether the design on the pieces shown evolved more or less in the order I presented them or in the other direction is an interesting point to ponder. The Turkmen analogy would lead us to believe that the earliest ones were the simplest and least crowded, as in the order in which they appear in my essay. On the other hand, if the purpose was to confuse and distract the evil eye, perhaps the busiest, most irregular ones came first and are actually a first step in the direction of becoming more ordered and more under the influence of external textiles. Anything much more disorderly than the fourth one in the series would probably not even be recognized as being part of this design group. I can't dream up any very compelling arguments for favoring one or the other direction. Of course, the state of orderliness in this group may not represent a historical progression at all.

Regards,

Steve Price

Which came first, the Persian or the Turk?
The Kashan design you show looks eerily similar to medallion Ushak designs from the 15th century. Hali has an article in the current issue, saying the medallion may have been derived from Ottoman book bindings of the mid 15th century.
It is also the same medallion in modern (19th century) Bijar carpets, too.

If so, why would this design be used to protect a baby from the evil eye?

It does have some similarity to the cintimani designs of three circles with dots in them, which seem to have some apotropaic applications, but this design has 4 components, not 3.

Searchingly yours,

Patrick Weiler

Protection against the evil eye in central and western Asia is afforded by bright colors in irregular patterns, with more or less random dashes of color. Things that look like eyes - concentric circles and concentric diamonds, particularly with blue elements, also afford protection.

I doubt that the formal arrangement of the models (for want of a better term) on which these pieces were based was seen as protective. Indeed, it is entirely plausible that the first of the four examples I showed was a dowry wrapper rather than a protector of babies. Note, though, that an "eye" motif is right at the center of all of these, and that bright colors in distracting, irregular arrangements is seen in all four (albeit, most pronounced in the second through the fourth). The fact that the corner containers and the two at the top and bottom of the center medallion are sometimes left open also speaks to the relative unimportance of the formal design.

Incidentally, the relatively regular arrangement in the first specimen is less common than the more exuberantly drawn examples.

Regards,

Steve Price

You refer to the first of these embroideries as possibly a dowry wrapper.
Is this similar to the "Gangsta Rapper" dudes we hear about, or is there actually something that is wrapped inside this weaving and presented to the groom? What might that be?
Do other cultures use similar weavings to wrap dowry things? Such as "flour sofrehs"? Are dowry wrappers weavings that are used for other purposes after being used as wrappers? Is there a way to differentiate a dowry wrapper from a Run-of-The-Mill, Evil Eye, Baby Protecting, Apotropaic Heirloom?

Curiously,

Patrick Weiler

You ask some interesting questions. I'm not sure anyone knows the answers to them all. Basically, what we know about these embroideries (Kaitag and Dargin in general, not just this design group) is what Robert Chenciner learned when he was doing anthropological field work there around 1990. In a very abbreviated nutshell, it was:
1. There are three categories - the baby protectors, the dowry wrappers, and the funeral cloths.
2. Nobody could remember anyone making one of these things, so probably none had been made since the first quarter of the 20th century, at the latest.

The dowry wrappers enclosed the bride's dowry as it was transported to her new home (or to the groom's family home, I don't recall which right now). The dowry was displayed on the opened wrapper. What happened to the cloth after that? Since the cloths are still around, we must assume that they were stored and reused when it was appropriate, most likely within the same family (perhaps to wrap the dowry of one of the bride's daughters).

The only basis on which we can guess what a particular piece was used for is design and color. The very formal examples, which are obviously derived from formal Ottoman textiles, were dowry wrappers. Those with the wide palette of bright colors and irregualr drawing were the baby protectors. Those that might be seen as stylized maps or with figures of horses were the funereal cloths. The group to which we assign any individual piece is a judgment call, and subject to the usual uncertainties of educated guesses.

The first of the four pieces I show, clearly more formal (that is, drawn with more regularity), is somewhat ambiguous: it could be an anti-evil eye, or it could be a dowry wrapper. I think it's most likely a baby protector, mostl ybecause of its resemblance to the other three. Those are clearly anti-evil eye textiles.

Can we be sure a putative dowry wrapper isn't a representative of some group other than the three Chenciner listed? I guess we can't be sure, but since the locals categorized all the embroideries into those groups when he interviewed them, the default position is that there are no other groups (at least, until there is some evidence for their existence).

The whole thing is very new - until Chenciner's report few of these things were known, and they were usually attributed to Uzbekistan. Thus, what we know is very limited. On the other hand, there isn't a long history of misinformation about them, either, which helps, as does the fact that none were produced in response to commercial pressures from the west, since nobody in the west knew that they existed.

Regards,

Steve Price

Curvilinear motifs, including those that look rather like medallions, occur on all sorts of objects in the middle east, so it wouldn't be difficult to find book covers that look like rug medallions.

I recall a lecture by a professor from New York a few years ago who specifically said that the Ushak medallions were copied or at least strongly influenced by designers who went to Northwest Iran and brought back the designs or at least the inspirations for the designs.

Wendel

Are other weaving cultures known to produce Baby Anti-Evil-Eye Protectors? A rug dealer I know from Iran has what he says was a small rug - bag-face size really - that was woven "for him" as a baby. (Either he is a lot older than he looks or it is just a tale, because it appears to be 1st quarter 20th century or older and he is not yet 60.) It is not of this quatrefoil design, though.
What about Dowry Wrappers? How did other weaving cultures display the dowry? Gucci shopping bags?

Patrick Weiler

The notion that there is a malevolent force that acts in response to envy is very widespread in Asia and along the Mediterrranean. Defenses against it include carefully concealing anything that might excite envy in others (in much of Asia, even the most trivial of purchases is wrapped, and I believe that this custom has its roots in the need to conceal the good things that are yours) and various kinds of amulets. The protective items generally have confusing and irregular elements, figures of eyes and various stylizations of the eye, mirrors, and, for some reason ,the color blue. It's hard to imagine that babies aren't of special concern.

The dowry display is another important cultural tradition in much of the same part of the world, although specific customs vary, of course.

Regards,

Steve Price

Perhaps I should have started a new thread instead of posting Turkish carpets under the title “The Persian connection” but I think there isn’t that much difference here between these Turkish and Persian designs.

I would like to start with the ornament in the medallion of a Karapinar dated to the 16th-17th century (HALI 58 p. 61) because in my eyes it belongs to the same family as do the Kaitags under discussion.

I think many of the correspondences are quite obvious and I here only would like to point to the appendages Patrick mentioned in the other thread. This medallion is a bit a rude variant of the ornament to be seen on many classical carpets including the central medallions of the also already mentioned Ushaks.

The Star-variant Ushak in the Saint Louis Art Museum (HALI 6/1 p. 47, also dated to the 16th or 17th century) is interesting in different respects.
- It shares the outline with the Karapinar above and even more with the Kaitag embroideries.
- It doesn’t share the inner structure with the Karapinar but is in this respect quite near to the Kashan Wendel has posted above.
- The central part of the medallion corresponds if turned by 45 degrees to the medallion of the Karapinar. The two flowers which are growing from each of the four palmettes are corresponding to the appendages.

The round compartments in the corner of the Kaitag embroideries, having the endless repeat of the medallions on the Star-variant Ushak in mind, may represent the lobes of those medallions supposed to surround the whole one in the centre. This would explain the red or gold “ angles ” in the middle of the shorter sides as well.
If this would be true, then we could argue that the woman using on the last example two different colours for corresponding parts of the motif (red for the outline of the medallion and the round compartments, gold for the angles) didn’t understand their connection anymore. And this is possibly one of the points to consider if we try to determine its place in the chronological order.

If the medallions of the Star-variant Ushak would diagonally be aligned we would get a picture almost identical to the silk and gold lampas in the David Collection (When Silk was Gold, p. 135; for a similar piece see HALI 96 p. 143). This silk which is discussed in the chapter “Luxury-Silk Weaving under the Mongols” is labelled “Eastern Iranian world, ca. 1260”.

To summarise, I don’t have an easy solution for the origin of the ornament of these Kaitag embroideries. It looks to me like a combination of the two (different, though related) medallions.
And the lampas indicates that a Turkish or Persian origin (whatever this means) of the whole complex of ornaments can’t be established on the basis of Safavid or Ottoman textiles.
But I would opt for the latter as transmitter to the Caucasus.

Best regards,
Christoph