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Subject	:	Pile Bag with Offset and Vertical Knotting
Author	:	Kenneth Thompson mailto:%20wkthompson@aol.com
Date	:	09-26-2001 on 10:23 a.m.

Dear Daniel and Marla

This is a pile bag face, almost certainly Kurdish and probably from Khorassan, that I had up on the Show and Tell section earlier.

It illustrates several of the points raised in this salon, particularly the perceived need to use offset knotting to adapt a traditional flatweave pattern to a pile piece.

The bagface has both hooked diamond lozenges and Turkmen guls. As you can
see from this scan of the back, the weaver used offset knotting for the
steeper lines of the hooked lozenges, but standard vertical knotting for the
Turkmen guls.

For comparison, this is a hooked lozenge from a weft wrapped Kordi saltbag.

Best regards,

Ken

Subject	:	Re:Pile Bag with Offset and Vertical Knotting
Author	:	Marla Mallett mailto:%20marlam@mindspring.com
Date	:	09-26-2001 on 10:56 a.m.

Dear Ken and all,

Thanks for posting this bag again. Your detail shows the offset knotting clearly, and also, for any of us who were doubters, shows the single weft, which appears to combine a blue and white yarn. Seeing your soumak example, I wonder if brocaded Kordi pieces exist with this motif. Does anyone know?

Looking at Ken’s curious bagface, I’m reminded of another “mystery” piece that someone posted a while back on the Show and Tell pages--maybe even three or four months ago. As I recall, it was a predominantly red piece, subdivided with rectangular compartments containing small guls. It was also described as having offset knotting throoughout. No conclusions were reached at that time as to a reasonable attribution, and it would be interesting to see it again, along with Ken’s piece. Does anyone remember the piece and who may have posted it?

Best,
Marla

Subject	:	Re:Pile Bag with Offset and Vertical Knotting
Author	:	Marla Mallett mailto:%20marlam@earthlink.net
Date	:	09-28-2001 on 12:26 p.m.

The piece in this photo is not the one I mentioned above, but may be similar in some respects… I don’t remember clearly enough. I’m presuming this small mafrash to be Yomut, but wonder if any of you would label it differently? The hooked motif is the same as in Ken’s bag face above, and is also produced with offset knotting—the motifs within the diamonds as well as the diamonds themselves and the small corner pieces. Likewise, all diagonal elements in the skirt motif use offset knotting. So in which piece is the hooked compartment design a copy? Ken’s Kurdish (?) bag, or this Turkmen example? The pieces also have similar rows of small animals.

DIMENSIONS: 21” x 14½”
STRUCTURE: Symmetrical knots, 8 knots horizontally, 26 knots vertically, 208 knots per square inch. Offset knotting in field and skirt; inward-opening edge knots (“Yomut edge knots”) along both selvages; stacked knots in the border areas. No warp depression.
YARN SPIN: Z.
WARP: Brown 2-ply wool.
WEFT: Brown 2-ply wool.
PILE: 2 wool singles.
SELVAGES: 2 warps overcast with brown wool singles.
COLORS: (8) Rose red, ivory, dark blue, natural brown (faded), peach, medium blue, yellow. Some colors appear to be synthetic.
BACK SIDE APPEARANCE: Smooth and flat, with barely visible wefts.

The effects of the very unbalanced weave, with more than 3 times the number of knots vertically as horizontally, are especially obvious when we compare the horizontal and vertical borders.

I wonder if anyone has seen similar skirt motifs in main carpets or ensis done with offset knotting?

Best,

Marla