Searching for examples of a specific flatweave design in knotted pile

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Hello everyone. I was wondering if you might assist me? I am searching for examples of pile rugs with a specific flatweave-derived or inspired field design comprised of hooked hexagons in octagons arranged in offset rows, as can be found on a well-known type of flatwoven Shahsavan bedding bag (see Housego, Tribal Rugs, Plate 9).

Only a few pile rugs with this field design appear to have been published (see Antique Anatolian Carpets from Austrian Collections I, Society for Textile Art Research Vienna, 1983, Plate 56, a Kurdish “Kars-Kazak” rug, Northeast Anatolia; and Antique Oriental Carpets from Austrian Collections II, 1986, Plate 42, a rug described as a “Kazak” but possibly from the Southern Caucasus). In addition, the same field design can be found on a pile bag originally published by Rothberg in Nomadic Visions: Tribal Weavings (2021), and a pile rug attributed to Moghan/Transcaucasus, which was recently sold on Rugrabbit.com. If anyone is aware of other examples I would appreciate your posting them here.

Thanks,
Joseph R. Putnak

[Steve Price Administrator Find all posts View Profile Close Steve Price]

Hi Joseph

First, welcome to Turkotek. You're welcome to post without registering, but we ask that you please use your actual name in the username field when you do. Thanks.

Your request is unusual enough to have piqued my curiosity. Are you preparing a book or article on the subject? I'm sorry to say that I have nothing helpful to offer, but I hope others will be able to.

Best

Steve Price

[Joe Lawrence Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Joe Lawrence]

Please post a sample picture for clarity.

[Guest Close Guest]

Dear Steve,

Thank you. I still do not see a ‘Username Field’ when I post as a guest; therefore, I included my full name in my original post.

My questions stem from a general interest in the flatweave-inspired, knotted pile products of the Shahsavan and other nomadic, semi-nomadic, and settled tribal groups from NW Persia, the Transcaucasus, and environs. So, if anyone should come across knotted pile examples with designs like those on the type of flatwoven bedding bag I referenced in my initial post, I would also like to know if they were attributed to a specific tribal group or region.

To address Joe’s request, I tried twice to upload an example from my image library. Even though the image was reduced in size to 800 pixels and 100Kb, I still received a "session timed out" error.

Best regards,
Joseph

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https://i.postimg.cc/C1QPcFJn/Detail...t-wrapping.jpg

Joe: Link to the image you requested.

Joseph

[PaulSmith Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close PaulSmith]

Hi Joseph,

I wonder if the Turkmen use of the dyrnak gul could be a useful comparison. This particular Ersari version has less arms than usual and is enclosed in sort of an octagon--usually the element has more arms and is floating in a field design. but that's when you can sometimes see the diagonal effect of your example. I don't know who came up with it first, but I would think that the Turkmen didn't get it from people to the west.



Cheers, Paul

[Guest Close Guest]

Hi Paul,

Thanks! I hadn’t considered Turkmen designs but I’d be willing to bet that a fair number of their ornaments were derived from flatwoven textiles, particularly those ornaments that exhibit hooked elements. I remember reading somewhere that the nomadic Turkmen probably produced many more flatweaves than pile pieces, and not just chuvals but carpets too. It’s just that most of these were utilitarian and consequently used up, or just not valued in the market like knotted pile pieces – e.g., the anecdotal use of kilims to wrap bales of carpets for export. Coincidently, just the other day I was thinking of a flatwoven Turkmen main carpet that I saw almost 40 years ago at the old Trocadero rug shop in NW Washington, DC off of Dupont Circle. In hindsight, it was a wonderful and unusual piece with good age, condition, etc., that I had an opportunity to buy but elected not to do so. I sometimes wonder where it ended up…

Best,
Joseph

Joseph R. Putnak

[Guest Close Guest]

Paul,

Hi again. I just want to raise another possibility, which you may have alluded to. Namely, that the gul-like forms in offset rows on the flatwoven Shahsavan mafrash I posted may have been originally inspired (directly or indirectly) by the guls on Turkmen pile carpets, only to be re-interpreted again in knotted pile by Shahsavan weavers. Perhaps such gul-like forms are just part of a greater Turkic design corpus. In any case, I think the design on the mafrash I posted is unlikely to predate the mid-19^th century, at least looking at surviving examples, which would make knotted pile interpretations somewhat later, perhaps late 19^th to early 20^th century.

Joseph

[PaulSmith Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close PaulSmith]

Joseph,

Yes, the Turkmen made many flatwoven pieces. I thought of a couple of other pile-woven sources for designs related to your example. It was funny, I was just sitting here looking at the Southwest Persian Shekarlu carpet on my wall and--there were a bunch of latchhook elements in octagons staring back at me, especially in the border.



And then... you may not count this as relevant to your pursuit, but I have a nice very-old (1st half 19th-c, IMO) Chub Bash Turkmen that has a border made of small versions of the central element in your motif... but not in octagons... instead they're in little rectangles...



It's fun to go hunting a motif in my collection...

Regards,

Paul

[Guest Close Guest]

Hi Paul, everyone;

Paul, you piqued my curiosity. In a search of my image library I found a couple more examples of the hooked, irregular hexagon-in-octagon. Have a look at these two pile rugs where it is used as a scatter ornament: (1) a rug fragment attributed to the Kurds, and (2) a long rug or runner, possibly Caucasian Gendje, but attributed to the Shahsavan.

https://i.postimg.cc/9MYj2BK0/kurdis...an-area-c1.png

https://i.postimg.cc/j5Zkv3BB/Shahsavan-runner.jpg

Likely variants (close relatives?) of the same ornament can also be found in Afshar and Baluch weavings, in addition to your South Persian Shekarlu rug where it was used a border ornament. So, are these instances of independent development or dissemination from a common source(s)? And, were these and similar ornaments (here, we might also include the hooked diamonds on Jaff kurd pile bags) originally derived from flatwoven (e.g., kilim or soumak) textiles? We can speculate but we’ll probably never know for sure. In any case, examples of what would appear to be direct copying of the field design on the soumak-woven Shahsavan mafrash (posted earlier) in knotted pile seem relatively rare. Here, I’m referring not only to the form of the ornament, but also the gul-like way in which it is deployed in offset rows, and the weaver’s choice of seemingly random (yet balanced) color combinations for the octagons, hexagons, and their respective outlines.

Joseph

[Egbert Vennema Junior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Egbert Vennema]

Hi to all, perhaps a book would help ? e.g. Oriental Carpet Design: A Guide to TraditionalMotifs, Patterns and ymbols Paperback P r j Ford. ( Author.)

Egbert.