A Rosette is a Rosette is a Rosette?

One of the almost ubiquitous features of Luri weavings is the Rosette. It is almost possible to identify a Luri rug from the rosette alone.
Here are a few rosettes. Can you easily tell which are Luri?









Patrick Weiler

Photos #2 and #4, and maybe #7....

Is this Luri?

Patrick, what do you think of this one - Luri, yes or no?

NO

Tracy,

I think it is not Luri, simply because it is not simple enough. It has those three-knot motifs in the petals. I do not recall having seen them on a Luri rosette. Khamseh, perhaps? I love the deep blue of the background.

Numbers 2,4 and 7 are from the rugs in the salon.

Patrick Weiler

Eyes Wide Open

Tracy,

I must have had my rosette colored glasses on when I replied to your posting.
Now that I take another look at the examples I posted above, I see that the fourth photo shows a rosette with markings in the petals of the rosette, one of which may be three knots in an angle form, similar to yours. They are not, however, uniform. So, either your rug is a very uniform Lur, or my rug is a very cheap one!

And for those few (if any) curious minds, the first photo is a Khamseh bagface, the third is a Kurdish rug, the fifth is a "modern" (25-30 years old) Qashqai "firuzabad" millefleurs prayer rug and the sixth is a Tabriz.

Patrick Weiler

My rosette might be considered a "trick question". Here's the piece:



I've been thinking for some time that we're on much more solid ground attributing by geographic areas than tribal affiliations. It's been awhile since I read your initial post-- do you address the weavings of Lurs settled in the Veramin area?

Introducing - the Veramin Connection

Tracy,

1 I have not addressed the Veramin Luri weavings. Yet.

2 The blue background made me suspicious that your rosette could have been from a Veramin mafrash panel. We call them mafrash panels, but have you ever seen a full Veramin mafrash?
The similarity between your rosette and the Luri rosettes may indicate a family resemblence. You are more than welcome to forge ahead in this salon with information about the Veramin Lurs.

3 The geographic area attribution of weavings is probably the most common. We label things NW Iran, or The Caucasus, or Shiraz, until someone figures out how to make more specific distinctions. The books Woven Gardens, Opies two books and others have done a lot for SW Persian weavings. Burns Kurdish book has certainly given the study of those weavings a jump start. I have heard it said that the more we know, the more we realize that we really don't know, so we end up lumping things into the geographic area again.

4 I like your Veramin piece!

Patrick Weiler

Dear Patrick,

Veramin mafrashes are certainly rare, but I exhibited one in one of my Masterworks shows. The pile panel which we are all familiar with is only used on one side. The kilim extends across the bottom and continues up the other long side, unlike most other mafrash forms which have "finished" faces on both long sides. The end panels are unusual, as well. They are in a "salt bag" shape and indeed I have seen a few detached ends surface with that attribution. Another unusual feature of these ends is that they have alternating 1-2" bands of pile and kilim.

Best Wishes, John Collins

Hello, Rosey

Tracy,

Even if I had slid the old, wooden chest down from among the cobwebs of the attic, pulled out all of the Shahsavan, Caucasian, Qashqa'i and Anatolian bags and dug down to the bottom, where I keep my stash of Veramin mafrash, I would not have necessarily found an analog to your lovely Veramin Rosette:



As you can see, my rosette is a smaller, square-ish version, almost incidental to the overall design:



Chuck, you may see another example of the "blocky meander" border in Tracy's mafrash. Not in mine, though.

What I like about my mafrash is the row of cheerleaders all around the major border, some upright with arms stretched out, alternating with others doing a handstand. Therefore, I assume that this mafrash is evidence for a powerful Veramin region football league, with cheerleaders on the sidelines.
And little dogs as mascots.

Deductively yours,

Patrick Weiler

The Veramin Connection?

Tracy,

Here are a couple more photos of the small rosette from my Veramin mafrash:





A close look will show that there are offset knots in this weaving!
Marla Mallett may be interested in using this example in her Offset Knots project.
You can easily see the offset knots by looking at the white border stripe. The blue field knots are "between" the white knots. You can see on the upper photo that the blue knots "waver" above and to the right of the rosette. On the lower photo, it looks like a river of blue knots swings out to go around the rosette "rock" in the river.

So, Tracy, does your mafrash have any offset knots?
We know that many tribes mingle in the Veramin area. Perhaps this mafrash was woven by a Kurdish woman and yours, if it has no offset knots, may have been woven by a Luri woman who used her tribal rosette, too!

Wavering,

Patrick Weiler

Patrick, I never even considered looking for offset knots... I'll have to check and will post results here.

Patrick, I checked.... no offset knots in the Veramin piece I pictured earlier. I have another one I can check, if I remember to dig it out. Now you've got me wondering what conclusions we might draw from offset-knot-Veramin-rosettes versus non-offset-knot Veramin rosettes...

confusing conclusion

Tracy,

The offset knotting in this mafrash is not used to articulate the design features, it is used only in various areas of the field and along part of the single-line border stripes surrounding the field. Kurdish weavers use offset knots to sharpen diagonals or change the angle of a circle in their design motifs. I have no idea why this weaver would use offset knots to no apparent purpose.
It does make some of the horizontal border lines thinner, since the rows of knots above and below can be closer to the row in between. Perhaps the weaving was "misbehaving" The weaver may have offset the knots to compensate for an unknown shortcoming in the weaving process. But I am unaware of this technique being used for that purpose in any other weavings.
I have a Varamin bagface with a similar border, but no offset knots. This mafrash, though, looks quite a bit older.
Daniel Deschuyteneer shows a Luri rug with offset knotting on Marla Mallett's web site page on offset knotting:
http://www.marlamallett.com/offset_knotting.htm
Perhaps there is some connection between Luri offset knotting and Varamin offset knotting.

Patrick Weiler