Yesterday, Wendel Swan and I met by chance in a local restaurant and he said he had seen my salon essay but that I should not expect him to post in its discussions.

I think he was expressing modesty about his knowledge of these rugs, something that I think is rather widely shared.

But I think Wendel is mistaken about not having something useful to contribute here, because I know he is one of those very interested in very old weavings and that as part of that interest is also interested in some of the rugs in this salon grouping.

I want to suggest that he might be well-placed to say a little about how it is that folks like himself and John Wertime find in some of these non-Turkmen Central Asian rugs, aspects that "feed" their interest in very old textiles.

Regards,

R. John Howe

These "new" old weavings do bring a novel design/color/structural format to the plate compared to the weavings more familiar to the Western market. One might assume that the opening up of these Central Asian regions to the West after the fall of the Soviet Union brought many of these weavings to the market.
Now the question arises whether this new esthetic predates the Turkmen/Afghan weaves we know and love or are these new designs and types derivative of the former?
Are these "Other" Central Asian tribal rugs the rural offspring of centuries of influence by their more powerful neighbors?
Or do these weavings retain an unsullied ancient link that developed into the more numerous Turkmen/Baluch/Eastern Turkestan weavings?
Why were there not numerous examples of these types of weavings collected by the Russians when they exploring/exploiting these areas in the 19th century collecting Salors and Tekkes and Yomuds?
Was the true wealth of designs witheld from the Russians because the collectors were given just the commercial goods? Are these Other weavings the "Real Thing" and therefore is the reverence bestowed upon Turkmen weavings misplaced?

(I guess it is a good thing I didn't ever plunk down a $100,000 or so for an old Turkmen main carpet)

$100,000 richer,

Patrick Weiler

The questions you raise here are interesting and sound but most go in slightly different directions than the one I had in mind when I started this thread.

I'm going to give Wendel a day or two yet (he composes carefully) in hopes that I can lure him into at least this part of the discussion but one phrase you wrote is aligned with what I had in mind.

You wrote in part:

"...Or do these weavings retain an unsullied ancient link...?"

For those of you who have Hali, issue 100, you can do a little homework by reading John Wertime's article, "Back to Basis," pp. 86-97.

If I am unsuccessful in engaging Wendel, I will ultimately "mine" this article a bit myself in order to assuage the nearly unbearable curiousity that my mysterious question above has no doubt engendered in some readers less familiar with this issue.

Regards,

R. John Howe

Thank for doing this.
Some spectacular rugs you've been with. Where you allowed to feel and smell them? I'm jealous.

The rugs I like most are 20 + 24.

It surprised me

these two rugs are Central Asian. Could be Afshar/Senneh as well. This isn't a very wise thing I'm doing here, but after three days it just struck me as strange that I liked the ones that seem to be a little out of the Central Asian range.

(Nr. 24 is a beautiful tessellation of the Boteh design, never seen this before.)

Do you know, why they made the attributions as they are? Was it on colors?

Now I'll dig up Hali 100.

Highly appreciated
& best regards,
Vincent

Patrick raised some interesting questions, above. I’d like to hear some answers myself, in particular to this one: Why were there not numerous examples of these types of weavings collected by the Russians when they exploring/exploiting these areas in the 19th century collecting Salors and Tekkes and Yomuds? - but I bet nobody knows…

And why this material reaches the market only now? The Soviet Union collapsed ten years ago.

Regards,

Filiberto

I am not going to summarize John Wertime's article in the 100th issue of Hali. It needs reading on its own.

Instead, let me suggest why Wertime and a number of others are quite interested in some rather contemporary weavings and how that is linked to their interest in some of the oldest weavings known.

Two quotes may make things relatively clear.

At the beginning of this article Wertime quotes the scholar Irene Good as follows:

"The new does not always slay the old, and some most primitive method may survive for some special use, surrounded by the methods of superior culture."

And in the early paragraphs of his own article, Wertime writes:

"...I believe that important insights into the earliest forms and the initial development of pile rugs can be gleaned from 19th and 20th West and Central Asian 'primitive' rug types. Such rugs can be seen as relics from the distant past whose character and methods of manufacture have continued largely unaltered into the present..."

So some of the rugs in Jim Blackmon's salon may provide "windows" on what the oldest pile weavings were like and how they came to be. The julkirs are in this group, as are all the rest of those with "symmetric knots woven on alterate raised warps." So is Rug 17. It is no accident that Wertime pointed out from the audience that this piece has "slip-loop" pile, since he argues in his article that "slip-loop" pile is a likely interim step between flatweaves and knotted pile.

So this is the source of this rather surprising interest in some rather young rugs by some experienced collectors who are visibly interested in very old ones.

For others also interested in such things, Wertime's article is a convenient summary. The work of Elizabeth Barber, especially her volume "Prehistoric Textiles," presents similar evidence and makes similar arguments.

This is another sense in which these non-Turkmen Central Asian weavings are interesting to some.

Regards,

R. John Howe