Of rugs and borders
Dear all,
I find the panel layout of this rug most intriguing - at
least for a Caucasian rug.
Even what should be the main border is "paneled".
Isn’t
it, by any chance, one of those Caucasian reinterpretations of French
tapestries?
Last year someone presented on Show and Tell one of those
rendered French theme: a Kuba Zeikhur bearing a central cartouche with fountain
and griffins - and colors very similar to this one.
Then there is the "S"
border. This kind of border is usually found on Caucasian soumaks, or on knotted
rugs with the same design of the soumaks (as it happens, I have one of the
latter).
Here is a detail of a Daghestan soumak from plate 16 of Wright
& Wertime "Caucasian Carpets and Covers"
What do we know about this
border? I mean, supposed origin and use, both in time and space.
I saw on Hali #86, page 149 a West
Anatolia rug with "Phoenix in octagons" (which, by the way, recalls the octagons
in Caucasian sumaks), 15th or 16th century. The "S" border is exactly the
same.
To
be precise, on page 98 of the same Hali there is a Northwest Persian bag face
(plate 13) with almost the same border…
Regards,
Filiberto
dear tukotekees and filiberto,
i believe the usual nomenclature is
"compartmented".
sincerely
richard farber
Hi Filiberto
I've read that the "S" form derives from a symbolic
representation of a dragon. Maybe there's something to that, but I don't know of
any evidence for it.
Regards
Steve Price
Richard, Filiberto -
Rug terminology is often varied and the source of
controversy.
"Paneled" is most frequently in my experience used to
describe the field of a particular species of Bakhtiari
design.
"Compartmented" is also often used to describe field designs,
there are for example some compartmented Turkmen bag face designs and some
Beshiri main carpet ones that often draw this description. And most Turkmen
engsis of the "hatchli" design variety have "compartments" in their
fields.
The "S" borders that Filiberto refers to above are hard to see on
my monitor, but I think the enclosures surrounding the "S's" would most usually
be described as "cartouches."
I am not certainly how closely one can
legislate about these terms, excepting that I don't think I've seen "cartouche"
used to describe a field design.
Regards,
R. John Howe
Filiberto -
I can't give you a citation at the moment but in some
categories of weaving such "s" seem to be treated as an indicator suggesting
that a "tribal" attribution would be appropriate.
Some Turkmen, the
Salors and the Saryks in particular used such "s's" often without the
cartouches. Thompson treats usages that have "compartments" or "hexagons" as
indicating that the weaver did not know how to make "a continuous 's' border."
He gives line drawing examples on page 75, Plate 8, in his Turkmen catalog done
with Mackie.
O'Bannon's translation of Moskova does not seem to provide
any Turkmen instances of "S" borders, excepting possibily three from the "middle
Amu Dyra." There are some clear instances of "Arab" s-borders
given.
Pinner talks briefly about a somewhat different type of meander
"S" border in one article in Turkmen Studies I (page 127) but ends saying that
this design does not belong to rugs and textiles alone but is rather an instance
of a "universal ornament."
Regards,
R. John Howe
Richard,
Well,
I’m trying to be a bit original…
Steve,
John,
I’m not speaking of the almost universal S and/or chained S
border.
I’m inquiring on this EXACT type of "S" border: with the "s"
inscribed inside cartouches of different colors alternated with multicolored
diamonds.
The diamonds (generally square but in the horizontal border of the
Anatolian rugs they are also hexagonal) are surrounded by sort of brackets. The
field is generally white but in Ralph’s example is yellow.
OK, here is my
rug. Perhaps you remember it, I posted it some time ago. Now it’s
restored:
If
the age of the Anatolian rug is accurate, this kind of border maintained a
remarkable continuity of style for at lest three centuries.
Regards,
Filiberto
dear turkotekees
i believe that a cartouche is compartment that
contained an inscription !
i will look for a piece with such a
compartmentment and send it to filiberto to add to this
note
sincerely
richard
Richard et al -
It does appear that the term "cartouche" is often used
to refer to a piece with an enclosed area containing an inscription but it seems
not to be reserved exclusively for this reference.
Here is Peter Stone's
entry for "cartouche" in his Lexicon.
"An enclosed area in the field or
border of a rug, often containing an inscription, though other design elements
may be so enclosed. The outline of the cartouche is usually a rectangle with
rounded, cut or scalloped corners."
I'm not sure that Peter would claim
to be the last word on such things but he does show signs of being both serious
and careful.
Regards,
R. John Howe
Dear all,
It seems that I’ll have to change the title of this thread
to "Of rugs, borders and SEMANTICS"!
I added the picture that Richard sent, thanks
Richard.
Regards,
Filiberto
Hi Filiberto -
Yes, and it demonstrates that even our cautious
tendency statements can often be in error, since Richard's image provides
immediately an example of a cartouche used as a field element rather than as
part of a border design.
Regards,
R. John Howe
Hi John,
Well, Stone wrote "An enclosed area in the field or
border of a rug" didn’t he?
Now, BACK to the border… Just realized I
forgot to mention that each of the small diamonds has a cross inside.
"S"
and crosses… Gantzhorn would have shouted "ARMENIAN"!
Regards,
Filiberto
Scorpion?
Steve mentioned the possibility that the "S" border could be representative
of a dragon. I recall a Hali magazine with an article by an Afghan-based
westerner mentioning the use of a scorpion motif. It was used to ward off
scorpions, which are quite a bit more common than dragons in that area. (Harry
Potter's England, and Romania, may be more dragon friendly)
The use of goats
wool as a selvage material was also thought to deter the pesky scorpions.
If
we can find some Romanian dragon designs we may be on to something.
Patrick Weiler
Hi Pat,
Gantzhorn says that the S is the first letter for God in
Armenian, though the Armenians also associate the S with a dragon…
But I
don’t want to go into the matter of meanings!
I’m only trying to collect
information about this distinctive (and, allow me, rather rare, besides
Caucasian sumaks) kind of border. Yesterday I found another example (Opie’s
"Tribal Rugs" detail of plate 8.7):
Actually two examples, because
the upper one seems to be a variation.
The detail is from a Bakhtiyari kilim, 19th century.
If we want
to be Gantzhorn-ians we should notice that there are Armenian villages inside
the Bakhtiyari area.
Regards,
Filiberto
Dear Filiberto,
Our rug is one of four analogous rugs that I know of.
Ours, and two analogies have similar borders of "S"s enclosed within hexagons.
The first of the attachments was offered by Christie's London une 14, 1984, lot
# 41.
While the outer border features free-floating "S"s, the inner
border features Ss enclosed by hexagons.
The second attachment is plate
8 in Battilossi's Catalog #4.
It features an outer border of S's within hexagons.
The
third of the analogies, while related, features an entirely different border
system, so will not send an image. It was lot #168 in Rippon Boswell's first
sale of November 11, 1976.
Regards,
Ralph
Thanks for posting the two images, Ralph.
Interesting variations. Not
very successful in the Christie's one, in my
opinion.
Regards,
Filiberto
Ubiquit"s" border
Filiberto,
These photos show another version of the S border. This one
has no smaller diamond-with-cross device between the S motifs, but does have two
of the small triangles between the cartouches:
This is probably a
14th century Armenian Balouch bagface, quite likely the prototype for the
design.
These photos
do not have much contrast, due to being taken in the blazing sun, but you may
notice that there appear to be pairs of light blue S cartouches along each side
border, with a single dark cartouche between them. One of the two blue
cartouches is actually a green made from a blue overdyed with a yellow that has
faded somewhat. The lower S cartouches are the green ones. They appear a bit
darker than the light blue ones.
It may be that the cartouch itself was used
to highlight the S motif, because in versions without the cartouche, the S is
not as noticeable. I have an old Hamadan with just S shapes in the border and no
cartouche or diamonds. It does not have quite the "punch" that this device has
when enclosed in a contrasting color.
The field, too, has a version of an S
enclosed in a cartouche. Perhaps the original "tile" design field was adapted to
a more simple border device?
Patrick Prototype Weiler
Thank you Patrick.
I guess the Balouchis copied it from the Turkoman
because I found three examples of it (i.e. without diamonds) in Jourdan’s
"Turkoman": two Saryk torbas (plate 29 and 31) and an Ersari camel trapping
(plate 274).
Another one on a Tekke (but copied from Salor) asmalyk is inside
the catalog of an exhibition in Genoa of Central Asian Carpets.
So, it seems
that is a Turkoman variation of the border and it was used only on small
pieces…
I still wonder about who invented it
first.
Regards,
Filiberto