Rachel Armstrong

Hi everyone,
I have truly enjoyed this salon and the postings from members - it's nice to know that there are other collectors who inexplicably end up with odd ducks!

I'm posting four of my uglies, although I use the term affectionately. These are rugs that I have not been able to fit in anywhere but that hold a special place in my "keep pile".









I hope these don't give anyone nightmares!

Enjoy ~

Rachel

Dinie Gootjes

Hi Rachel,

I hope you were not going for non-GMO certification for those?
I notice that the third one is high-tailing it to Chuck's concentric hexagons. They seem to be sharing the same green pastures.

Actually, they are great. I don't know what I would produce if I had to draw lions free hand, working up knot by knot, row by row. They are stuff of one's fondest nightmares.

Dinie

Rich Larkin

Hi Rachel,

I'm with Dinie. Anybody who wouldn't provide a home for that quartet, synthetic dyes or no synthetic dyes, ain't got no heart.

Rich Larkin

Rachel Armstrong

Hi Dinie and Rich,

I really do love the ugly quartet but I think I need to have a separate room just for them - a large room since they are all in the 6' x 8' range. I keep trying to talk my husband into building an addition exclusively for my rugs, ugly and otherwise, but so far, no dice..

Still hopeful,
Rachel

Rich Larkin

Hi Rachel,

I say, throw him to the lions!

Rich Larkin

Joel Greifinger

Patrick,

Your thought (and viscera) provoking salon has elicited responses that raise profound issues of taxonomy in the approach to rug oddness and ugliness.

At various points, it has been unclear how best to classify particular pieces. In the case of this little South Persian (Yalemeh?) number, I'm torn between an "odd duck" (given its fowl population) and a "cute ugly". I've decided to go with the latter since what drew me to the piece is that it is like having purchased somebody else's kid's drawing to be put up on their refrigerator with magnets. It feels like the drawing went directly from crayons to wool.





Is it sufficiently ugly to justify inclusion? Tough to say, since I like it. And isn't that the focus of yet another thread?

Joel Greifinger

Rich Larkin

Hi Joel,

I'm here to help. There's an opening on my refrigerator for displaying that piece. Since you're just up the road, I'll be coming by to relieve you of it.

Rich Larkin

P. S.: During the loan period, I can research the Yalameh question thoroughly and file a report.

Patrick Weiler

Rich,
Do you have a two-sided refrigerator?
Joel,
I may have the rug which your weaver copied from! My impression of both pieces is that they are Luri, from the 1st 3rd of the 20th century. They may be the final vestiges of tribal production, the first examples of recently settled village weavers, or the early commercial production of what may have ultimately become Yalameh workshop pieces. Some of the colors on my piece appear a bit faded, probably from several decades in the sun, but they are actually more pastel than saturated hues. It may also be from a lack of understanding by the weaver for the need of contrasting colors adjacent to one another that makes designs stand out.
The warps are two-ply with one being dark goat hair and the other white wool, with a section purely of goat hair and a few inches of purely white wool. Yalameh rugs would most likely have a cotton foundation. This piece has semi-to-fully depressed warps, symmetric knots and two shots of either pink or goat hair wefts.



And speaking of fowl, the two birds at the top of the field appear to have had their wings clipped! They are outsize and much darker in color than the rest of the rug and they have the whole field to themselves. There are no other creatures on this rug. I purchased it from the internet and was not certain if the rug had been cut-and-shut at the top due to the unusual treatment of these two birds, but it seems like the weaver just ran out of room at the top of the rug and instead of completing the top edge of the birds in the white outline, she just put a row or two of the dark blue field color above them. It is a fun and funky piece which, true to the Salon, would not be a masterpiece of anything other than the Quirky Luri style and taste.

Patrick Weiler

Joel Greifinger

Hi Patrick,

That sure does look like the Mama of my little 'child's drawing' rug. I'm not surprised that it may be Luri, given its brown, mixed brown and white wool warps and the, how did you put it, "Quirky Luri style". The other tell-tale clues are the drawing of the rosettes (a subject well addressed in a discussion of your Luri salon of yesteryear http://www.turkotek.com/salon_00097/s97t12.htm) and the random variability in the structure. Here's a view of the back:



And now Rich wants to put it up on his refrigerator! It doesn't get any better than this...

Joel Greifinger

Patrick Weiler

Joel,

Thanks for that photo of the back. It clearly shows the almost lime-green color which my piece also has. It also appears to have depressed warps. And the clincher is the motif so characteristic of Luri weavings, the little diamonds-on-sticks in the inner fields of the latchook-guls.
They didn't have television back then, so they must have spent hours gazing intently at their rugs.
Wait, I have television and I STILL spend hours gazing intently at my rugs.

Patrick Weiler

Chuck Wagner

Hi Rachel, et al,

Well, those lion rugs are not really ugly, they're just quite primitive w/respect to rendering. I quite like the color schemes. Now, as many Turkolurkers are already aware, I do not shy away from ugly-ish if I think there are some endearing characteristics to an otherwise not-particularly-collectible textile.

When I see laterally symmetrical mundane replication of design elements, I immediately think: boring thoughtless production run. But, when I see some elements of randomness, originality, creativity, and maybe a sense of humor, I'm interested.

Thus the acquisition of this took place:



Hope I didn't hurt your eyes..

Regards
Chuck Wagner

Rachel Armstrong

Hi Chuck,
Your lion rug is definitely a star in the 'ugly but cute' rug world - it has great personality!
No eye problems here
Rachel

Patrick Weiler

Rachel,

Your first rug does not portray a Lion at all. It is a goat. It has two horns. When was the last time you saw a Lion with horns?

I suspect that part of the reason for the less-than-realistic lions is due to the horizontal nature of the design. It would be like writing vertically on a piece of paper instead of horizontally, but without turning the paper or your wrist.
Note that most of the other motifs on these types of rugs are woven as though the rug was to be viewed vertically rather than horizontally.
Also, Tanavoli speculated that some of these representations were based not on actual lions, but lion sculptures. Some of these are rather abstract in appearance.
Chuck, yours does look more like a lion, but it also looks like a friendly dog waiting for a treat. Scary!
You probably really only bought that rug for the beautifully rendered odd duck directly under the Lion.
Here is my Lion Rug, which is actually a Horse Cover. The Lions are only a small part of the overall design, as opposed to the major motif in typical Lion Rugs.

Even these lions are placed vertically, top-to-bottom, similar to most Lion Rugs. You can see by the tassels to the left that the piece is actually hanging on the wall, with the "top" to the left.
They may be a bit difficult to make out as lions, but I suspect they were copied from lion statues.

Patrick Weiler