Moschkovas text is
not helpful...
Ok, I managed to get one of those
books cited:
Moschkova, V.G: Carpets of the People of Central Asia of the Late XIX
and XX Centuries. - Tucson, 1966. Edited and Translated by George W.
O'Bannon and Ovadan K. Amanova-Olsen. ISBN 0-9653421-0-7.
In chapter 6 ,,dyes and dyeing techniques" are reported. I had read
another copy of it several decades ago - and felt disappointed again.
With the exception of isparak dyeing on p. 39 the
,,fermentation dyeing" applies only to a lengthy preparation of the
yarn, sometimes, but not always, combined with a cold alum treatment
and sometimes followd by a kind of ,,fixing" with chogan. For a
madder red (p.38) ,,...the yarn was sprinkled with madder and left for
one night. In the morning the dyed yarn was washed in clean water". (No
quantities are given nor further details)
Sorry: even if one would use big surplus amounts of madder this would
not give the deep red tones we love in good Turcoman weaves.
The chapter on Indigo is so disparate that one would not get any useful
dye following it.
So it appears that this chapter is like the ,,material" one could
collect in Anatolia in the last decades: a puzzle of single details
that cannot be arranged to form a ,,working" mosaic picture. It is not
even clear who actually made the dyes, some village weavers themselves
or professional people, located either in weaving center villages or in
small cities in the area. Only one remark on p. 39 [,,According to
weavers, at the beginning of the 19th century in the remote regions of
Central Asia (the western Caspian region and others), where there were
no domestic dye works, yarn was sent off with pussing caravans to the
Khiva Khanate, Iran and even to India to be dyed blue."]
Yes, this is a rational guess if one looks at the dye qualities of the
somehow ,,early" Turcoman weaves. The question remain whether the
madder-based dyes were not made in a similar way.
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