Posted by Steve Price on 04-02-2002 01:30 PM:

Here are 5 more

Hi People,

A well known dealer who graciously offered to remain anonymous in order to avoid promoting his goods sent me images of these 5 chanteh. They are part of his inventory but are not advertised, so unless you happen to wander into his place spontaneously they will not be offered to you for sale.

I thank him for his consideration and, of course, for sharing these with us.

















Steve Price

Same But Different

Steve,

It is very gracious of Anonymous to lend these images for the Salon.
I am struck by the similarities in some of these pieces to those shown in the Salon. The first piece here appears to have pile borders and a flatweave field with a pile diamond in the center. It also has what seems to be a tuft of yarns at the top, green and orange, as an extra little decoration. The top and bottom boteh borders are like those in the full chanteh-size khorjin in the Salon.
The second bag looks somewhat like the flatweave bag with the pile panel in the Salon. The medallion in the center of this bag has a Kurdish look.
The third bag has small squiggles reminiscent of the "dragon sileh" weavings. These tend to have the same little squiggles in the bodies of the dragons.
The fourth bag here also has a Kurdish feel, with the pile panel making it a miniature version of a full-size khorjin. The diamonds in the border are familiar from many Jaf Kurd bags.
The final bag is a bit harder to get a handle on, but the borders of botehs are the same as the top and bottom borders of the first bag.
The first and third bags appear to have remains of tassles. Tassles do not seem to be too common on full size khorjins, but are quite common on these smaller weavings. From the Bosporous to Samarkand shows a couple of chanteh with tassles that are quite a bit like the second chanteh in the Salon, diamond-pattern flatweaves.
If we are voting, I vote for bags 1 and 2 as my favorites in this small group!

Patrick Weiler

Hi Patrick,

I would like to emphasize that the dealer who sent these to me volunteered to remain unidentified right from the start . He simply wanted to share his images with our readers.

I mention this only to remind those of our readership who may forget it from time to time that many dealers are well informed, honorable people who can be terrific resources for the collector in a lot of ways. I wish we had more of them participating.

Regards,

Steve Price

Name That Bag

Steve,

It is very nice to have these five chanteh to compare with the dozen or so others we have seen so far. The chanteh in general is uncommon enough that most rug collectors probably don't have any.
Chanteh do, however, have a lot in common with the khorjin, since they both are a small format with designs derived from their larger relatives the rugs. But there are a lot more khorjin around than chanteh, so it is good to have these additional bags on the Salon.
Analyzing the design of a chanteh is like playing that old game show Name That Tune, where the contestants try to name a tune in as few notes as possible. In the case of the chanteh, we are often confronted with only one design element from a much larger design.
The second chanteh shown above seems similar to Kurdish designs, but I have also seen a piece labeled Baktiari with this interesting forked cross design. The colors look similar to the bag I showed in the Salon with the pile panel, maybe coming from the Veramin area or west of there into the Chahar Mahal area.
One thing common to these small weavings is the same thing that has been said of typical SW Persian tribal rugs, that there don't seem to be any that are very old. I am not familiar with any chanteh much older than mid-19th century.
Wendel shows the 16-17 century sweatmeats bag, but this is definitely not Oriental. To my knowledge, there is no collection of 18th century chanteh.
If you have any, let us know!

Patrick Weiler

Hi Pat,

I find attribution of these little pieces to be more uncertain than for most things. Perhaps it's because the designs are sometimes just fragmentary, although the peculiarities of the technique in some also confuse me. The brocading on a number of them, for instance, is not typical of larger bags from what I assume to be the same regions.

Regards,

Steve Price

More evidence

The bag number two above has a design shown in the Tanavoli book, Shahsavan, on plate 169. He calls it a spanner wrench design, a version of the Stellar Designs. It is from the Khamseh area.
Plate 209 in the Tanavoli book shows a bag with the same main field design as the 4th bag, what he calls a flower and bud design. Interestingly, the Tanavoli piece also has a pile section at the bottom of both faces of this double khorjin. He says it is "...an uncommon feature in Shahsavan khorjin weaves. This probably indicates influences from Kurdish settlements north of Qazvin."


Patrick Weiler

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