I’m wondering if you still have the two very handsome asmaklys that are pictured in your catalog, VANISHING JEWELS, Numbers 1 and 2? If so, would you be able to take a look and tell us what offset knotting you find in them, and in what areas it’s used? The first piece has a “tree” motif, the second, an “ashik” field.

Does anyone else have asmalyks that they could examine with offset knotting in mind? I was truly astonished to find this knotting method used so extensively in the piece I posted on the web pages. I’ve learned that it is hazardous to make such judgments from photos, so don’t know if this approach was used in most Yomut asmalyks with these motifs, or just selected examples. Does anyone know?

Best,
Marla

Oh, how lucky is the Rochester Museum! I asked about these pieces specifically, because in comparing photos of asmalyks with these two motifs—“tree” and “ashik lattice”—I see differences. Some appear to have offset knotting used to a great extent while others do not. Yours appear in the photos to be largely offset. Since we keep hearing about folks wanting to subdivide the Yomut, these quite different approaches to the articulation of the same design seem worth investigating. It would be interesting to hear from anyone who has such an asmalyk and can give it a close look.

As for tent bands with the similar winged “tree” motif, I’m indeed intrigued. Christoph Huber and I are currently working on some web pages devoted solely to the mixed technique bands—those in which knotted pile is combined with a weft-faced flatweave. We have found startling complexities within them, and a variety of structural approaches used for the same motifs. We simply have not been able to examine enough examples at first hand yet to be able to draw the conclusions we would like before posting the material publicly. Both of us would be delighted to hear from anyone who has a band or band fragment and would like to be involved in this project.

Best,
Marla

I've looked for offset knotting in two Yomud asmalyks.

The first one, which I believe to be very old (from the handle, colors, drawing - everything about it says "old"), has no offset knots that I can find.

The second one, which I believe to date to about 1875, uses offset knots in the "bird-on-a-pole" motifs in the borders. The rest of the piece does not seem to have knots that are offset (Unless, of course, the birds-on-the-pole motifs are ordinary knotting and the entire rest of the piece is offset; it's all in how you look at it, I guess).

Regards,

Steve Price

Since we're putting up asmalyks with this design, let me share an image of one Michael Craycraft drew to my attention a few years ago. He estimated that it was an "Ata" weaving.

I don't know but I suspect that the combined steepness and smoothness of the diagonals in the field design here suggest that there is some offset knotting in play in this piece.

And in a comment that really goes with the "Offset knotting as bad weaving?" thread, notice that although this weaver gives evidence of being pretty fluent with this field design, when she gets to the sides things "break down" visibly.

Left side

Right side:

What do we think is going on here? Is this, perhaps, one of Craycraft's indicators that this is not a Yomut piece? The weaver not knowing how to move smoothly to the side borders? Or is this a perfectly competent tribal weaver being "creative?"

Regards,

R. John Howe

I don't know who or what "Ata" is, but that isn't important. The notion that the odd looking stuff at the two sides of the field of the "Ata" asmalyk is sloppy or reflects lack of skill doesn't go down easily for me. It requires that we accept as true that it takes more skill to continue to execute a motif until the border interrupts it than it does to continue to execute it anyplace else. Why should that be? I can't think of a reason.

Also, notice that the weaver DID execute at least one major motif on each side, so she evidently was able to do it. I don't know what she had in mind, but lack of skill doesn't seem to me to be among the plausible explanations.

In the Rickmers Collection there are two Yomud asmalyks of this general type. In one, the lattice has a little flower in each of the partial compartments at the sides; in the other, it has more jumbled looking things. The author (Robert Pinner) attributes the jumbles to lack of skill in that instance. Again, I don't see how that can be.

This is usually the point in a discussion in which Marla pops in and shows everyone how minimal my understanding of weaving really is. Fire away, Marla. If I couldn't handle the heat, I'd stay out of the kitchen.

Humbled in advance,

Steve Price

The two Rickmers pieces offer a good comparison, as they seem to illustrate a difference in execution. The first appears to include design elements with different diagonals, and thus almost certainly offset knotting, while in the second, diagonals seem consistent throughout.

As for offset knotting in the piece above, posted by John, it appears quite clearly to have offset knotting. The important clues lie in the difference between the slants of the diagonals, not just the steepness of most. Compare the diagonals in the lattice-work spikes with the diagonals in the “guls” (or whatever they are). They are not the same.

So please enlighten us, John. What is Ata?

Marla

Steve, doesn't care what an "Ata" is but Marla wants to know.

Well, you have to be careful with Michael Craycraft, because he's not afraid to "push the envelope" on attribution and when I got his letter with the asmalyk photo and an Ata label, I wondered what the literature would say about it.

So I looked it up.

On page 181 of the 1980 edition of his "Comprehensive Guide," Murray Eiland discusses the major Turkmen tribes and even acknowledges some of the seeming sub-tribes like Kizil Ayak and Ogourdjali and then provides the following passage:

"...The situation is more complex, however, since there are still many descendants of peoples who occupied Turkestan before the Turkomans, and in many cases these have to a greater or lesser degree become Turkomanized. There are some small groups of Arab descent, including the Atas, Khojas, Shikhs, Seids, and Maktums. There are also remnants of various non-Oghuz Turkic tribes including, Alielis, Nukhurlis, Anaulis, Mekhinlis, and Murchalis..."

This passage is unchanged in the 2000 edition Eiland has written with his son.

There are three Ata references in George O'Bannon's recent translation of and commmentary on Moshkova. (Pages 121, 176 and 177.) Moskova and company write: "...In the central regions of Transcaspia, weaving was practiced by the Tekkes and other less numerous tribes...the Atas..." This passage (p. 177) suggests that these Atas aped the Tekkes in their weaving. Page 121 places some Atas in the middle Amu Darya. "...Thus the Turkmen Ata tribe includes the large Nurata subdivision..."

Atas appear to have been Turkmenized Arab groups. There appear to have been several of them, they wove pile rugs, and they may have taken on the weaving characteristics of the Turkmen tribe dominant in their particular area.

Am I the only one in this group who looks up this kind of marginal thing?

Regards,

R. John Howe

Marla kindly scanned and sent me images of the two asmalyks in Rickmers. The first is, in my opinion, a first class piece; the second one is less wonderful.

The jumbled sides of the field on the second one are not the basis for my thinking so, by the way, although I find the little flowers in that location in the first one much more attractive. I like the borders adn the openness of the field in the first one better; the overall appearance seems much more harmonious to me.

Regards,

Steve Price

The interesting thing is that even with a very smooth transition to the side borders, as in the first of these two Rickmers collection pieces, the weaver nearly always seems to do something different from merely taking the field design cleanly to the border.

This make me wonder if there is something about the technical problems in making the transition to the side border that weavers find easier to accomplish if they make such a change, ordered or not.

Regards,

R. John Howe

I don't think it's true for "ashik" lattice asmalyks that the weaver generally does something other than simply carry the lattice and its contents to the border. That is the case in the two in the Rickmers Collection and in the "Ata" (I still wonder how anyone could possibly know that the asmalyk you show is Ata rather than some other, but that's another issue), but those are exceptions.

The only special problem of approaching a border that I can think of is what to do with offset knotting if it was used in the field. If it carries into the border, the edge will be uneven or interrupted. Yon Bard pointed out that this happens in a lot of Yomud stuff, and believes it to be a manifestation of the "internal elem". I can certainly confirm the truth of the fact that it occurs in much Yomud weaving.

This does nothing to help the weaver decide what to do with the knots that don't all line up on the same pairs of warps, of course. Perhaps she becomes flustered at the prospect of having to decide what to do next.

Regards,

Steve Price

With regard to my post about "Ata:"

I am by now far too cagey to ever venture to say what might justify an "Ata" attribution. I was responding to what I thought was Marla's question of what "Ata" (as a tribal designation) might refer to.

I have occasionally seen instances in which someone has suggested that a given piece might be an Ata weaving but have never heard a recitation of what indicators one might use to determine that.

And it's likely not just a matter of tying a tribal designation to a group of defined weavings, it's also whether there are ways of defining the group of weavings itself that might need the designation "Ata."

And if Moshkova/O'Bannon are right, Ata weavings might take on different characteristics depending on the dominant tribe that lived closest to them. O'Bannon seems to say that one group of Ata weavings follow Tekke usages and may be difficult to distinguish from them since the weavings are themselves described as "Tekke." This asmalyk looks similar to Yomut weaving.

So I plead, not guilty, to having taken on the task of grounding Michael Craycraft's Ata attribution. I was merely saying what an Ata tribal designation is seen to point at.

It could be that even that is disputable since one could say, as Eiland does somewhere about the Ersari, that what is required is a pile weaver who identifies herself as an "Ata." Then we'd look to see what she was weaving....preferrably 150 years ago.

Regards,

R. John Howe

The "Ata" matter is an almost perfect example of the dual problems that we talked about recently in Salon 71 - attribution and authentication. The questions are, first: What properties place this piece into an identifiable group?, and second: What is the identity of that group?

Regards,

Steve Price