Joel Greifinger

Hi all,

Some collectors must have a 'peak moment' when a trusted dealer excitedly calls, having located a new-to-the-market 'best of type' piece in the collector's area of interest, saying that he has convinced the owner to consider selling. Or, at least I imagine that must be a thrill, never having been in that position.

For a prosaic 'rug gatherer' like me, the closest parallel may be coming across an absolutely filthy weaving (in hand or online) that perhaps may wash-up into something pleasing and, though often tattered, plausibly "collectable". And, did I mention, it's also got to be cheap.

This Timuri(?) rug arrived, as the seller had promised, covered in grime. The handle was stiff from all the packed-in dirt. Knowing that the weather forecast predicted unseasonably warm temperatures for the following few days here in New England, I set about a marathon soak, Orvus, scrub and rinse cycle that eventually had the water running nearly clear. With anxious anticipation, I set it out in the sun and after some hours the wool felt silky and the rug had become supple. Having pinned it up to photograph in the backyard, I took these shots in indirect sun and have removed some of the shadow using Photoshop.

The rug's design combines a major border often used on Timuri main carpets and the 'shrub in honeycomb" field more common on bags. I haven't yet managed to count all the colors, but there are lots of them (including dark and medium blues, aubergine and a wide assortment of reds) as well as a fair amount of corrosion from two different dyes. It measures about 7' x 3'6", including the kilim ends that still have the complete decorative borders of brocaded S motifs.









Thoughts on the what, where, when and by whom (and whatever else)?

Joel Greifinger

Paul Smith

Hi Joel--

What a lovely sparkly old Baluchi-Timuri-whatever! Congratulations on snaring this one! Such beautiful colors--it looks like there is cochineal in that purple-red...

Frank Diehr's Three Dusty Dozen, p.24-25, features a very old Timuri main carpet fragment that has a somewhat-more-spacious drawing of that main border and also began with honeycomb shrubs at the bottom of the field. I don't think yours is that old, but if those colors are all good, I'd think it was from back in the 19th c., in spite of the fact that it means nothing when I say something like that.

Paul

Dinie Gootjes

Hi Joel,

Congratulations. Nothing better to counter the winter blues than washing a dirty rug and finding something like this.

You mention that this shrub design is more common on bags. Yours is also drawn a bit differently, with the 'leaves' forming clear reciprocal 'birds' heads'. I found more than a dozen of those bag faces, but none of them had this form of the design. I did find it in a rug, however, also more colourful than the majority of Baluch pieces. This rug is on the market at present, so let's not discuss comparative merit, value etc.





I found two more rugs with the design, but none with your kind of palette, nor your border.





All of them were just called 'Baluch' .

By the way, the design is often shown the other way around. That gives you a kind of elibelinde motif, see the second picture. Of course the Baluch were weaving these rugs in the Bronze Age .

Dinie

Donald Ruyle

Hello Joel:
All I can add is congratulations on a good find. It looks as if your rug might still be a little wet in your images and I suspect that the colors may change a little as it dries completely. The orange color is a little suspect, but I understand that a synthetic orange was used as early as the mid 1880's. I really like your rug and the stand out feature aside from a great color pallet, to me is the complete kilim ends. In my eyes, a Balouch rug looses it's appeal as it looses the kilim ends (the longer the kilims, the more the appeal). Let those who may know, evaluate the colors. I will hazard a guess that your rug is late 19th to early 20th century and so, is about as good as anyone buying today could hope to find. Again, Congratulations! and enjoy!
Best regards,
Don

Joel Greifinger

Hi Folks,

The very old Timuri main carpet fragment that Paul mentioned from Three Dusty Dozen is the only example I've seen that has the same combination of field design and major border. However, in that case, the weaver changed her mind and shifted over to more frequently encountered Timuri main carpet "inkwell" rectangles:



If we isolate that beginning and stack it next to a slice of mine...





Don - The rug was fully dry when the photos were taken and, a week later, those variations accurately represent the colors in the rug.

Joel Greifinger

Dinie Gootjes

Hi Joel,

I continue to find the dispersion of the motifs in the honeycomb interesting. Most bags have a design which can easily be compared to a flower head on a stem, with two leaves coming out of the stem. The leaves can be bent up or down:





Then there is the drawing in your rug, with two reciprocal triangles coming out of the base, let's call them bird's heads:



I did a tally of all the 'shrub in honeycomb' rugs I could find on the internet and in our own actual and virtual collection. I found 8 rugs, including a few prayer types. Of those, 4 had bird's heads only, two had both forms, like for example the Diehr rug Paul mentioned, and two had leaves only.

For the bags, I found 14 examples. Of those, only one had the bird's head:



This piece in currently for sale, so I will not say anything about it, except that it might be a double chanteh more than a khorjin. But as it is certainly not a rug , I will count it as in the enemy camp.
The other thirteen had the leaf form, though a few come closer to the triangles, with 'things' coming out of the base, but none of these had the clear triangle drawing of the rugs:







I don't know what this all indicates, maybe nothing, but I found it striking that though several people mention that the design of the rugs is found more often on bag faces, a form often found on rugs is actually pretty rare on bags.

I wonder whether they could have come from a different design tradition. One mainly floral in origin, maybe even related to the well-known Kurdish and Caucasian shub in octagon.

The other one might be related to elements of design like the following, from p. 62 of Frank Diehr's Treasured Baluch Pieces:



But here we enter the realm of pure speculation.
Other/more thoughts anyone?

Dinie

PS: I left the Dokhtor-i -Ghazi shrubs out completely. They are too far removed from the shrubs on Joel's rug. Different genus at least . They occur on rugs and bags.

Joel Greifinger

Hi Dinie,

I hadn't noticed the "leaf/birdhead" variation in the shrubs until you pointed it out. Now, looking over the many bags with this pattern, it's clear that the "leaf" design predominates to the point of making "birdhead" examples a rarity. This seems to be the case even in bags that are somewhat distinct from many others in palette, and presumably age. Here's one:




Rugs with only the "leaf" type seem, as you say, to be unusual. In addition to the one you posted earlier, here's the other I've seen, this one from the Sorgato Baluch exhibition:



The "birdhead" shrub seems also to have been used as a device inside the "inkwell" of some Timuri Main carpets with that common design:





Returning to my rug , you mentioned that, aside from the Diehr fragment, you found one other rug that had both forms. Perhaps it's this prayer rug that sold at Grogan in 2007 and was listed in the HALI 155 Auction Price Guide p.143:



When I came upon this one, I was struck by the marked similarity of design, but especially of palette with my rug. If you switch over to just "birdhead" shrubs, take off the major border, create a mihrab and (big and) replace the bottom border with a rather surprising elem, you get pretty close to a copy.

Here's a beginning; I'm not handy enough with Photoshop to do the rest:



My question is: when we see this sort of similarity of design and palette, is it a reasonable inference that the pieces were made at approximately the same time and place (without necessarily knowing when or where that was)?


Joel Greifinger

Joel Greifinger

When I first posted the thread, Paul's assessment of the rug contained the proviso:
echoed by Don's suspicion: At the risk (risk? the utter certainty ) of beating a dead horse, I'll address the question of whether the rug contains synthetic dyes. I don't believe it does, although the colors in the photo of the back of the rug may have suggested otherwise. That shot was taken indoors with flash and so the resulting colors are quite a bit brighter than they appear in person.

I agree with Paul that the purplish red looks to be the cochineal-based color that is seen with fair frequency on some older Timuri pieces. The orange (or perhaps I should call it cantaloupe or apricot or, if I want to be a bit riskier, burnt orange), is also a shade that is recognizable from Timuri pieces that are generally attributed to the 19th century. Here are a couple of examples from Timuri Main carpets. The first is a fragment:



The next sold at Southeby a while ago:




And here's a close-up of mine, attempting to get the color as close to how it appears in hand in good indirect light as I can:



As I mentioned earlier, when I got the rug, I soaked it for about 16 hours and then gently scrubbed it in successive Orvus baths before thoroughly rinsing. At the end of the process, while it was still wet, I gave each of the colors the "white handkerchief test" but got no color transfer. So, I believe the dyes are natural. And, as with many older Baluch, close up and with enough light, the number and gradations of the colors just seem to multiply.


Dinie - A further development along the 'shrub-type' line. I looked back at a Timuri bag that I have and, with my eyes opened to the differences, realized that I own a "mixed bag".




Joel Greifinger

Rich Larkin

Hi Joel,

If that's what your "orange" really looks like, count me in. And increase the security measures at your house. And, oooh, I like that last one, too.

Rich Larkin

Dinie Gootjes

Hi Joel,

Nice bag. Nothing wrong with that Timuri combination of orangey red and their great blue. By the way, if you have a "mixed bag", the owner of the Grogan rug has "triple mix": the first row has straight 'leaves'. I knew I had seen them somewhere, but I could not find them when I needed them.

Dinie

Donald Ruyle

Joel:
Indeed, I was wrong to be suspect of the orange color in your rug; Looking through the Balouch rugs I own, I see that most have the same color. In fact one has a whole field of rust-orange and was sold to me as circa 1870. I am a bit envious of you making such a great find. Your rug certainly compares well with any posted here.
You ask: "My question is: when we see this sort of similarity of design and palette, is it a reasonable inference that the pieces were made at approximately the same time and place (without necessarily knowing when or where that was)?"
To me, your rug and the prayer rug are so similar that they could have been made by the same person or in the same family. And your little "mixed bag" knocks my socks off! Again, congratulations!
Don

David R E Hunt

Hi Joel

Interesting find. Any possibility of getting a few good photos of this rug?

Dave

Joel Greifinger

Hi Dave,

I sort of thought that the ones I initially posted were pretty good,
with the exception of the one of the back that I took with flash. The others were taken outdoors, in indirect light. If you give me some specific requests , I'll try to come up with good images.


Joel

Rich Larkin

Hi Joel,

I think maybe Dave wants to see some pics of the Timuri bag you recently posted. I know I do!

Rich Larkin

Chuck Wagner

Hi Joel,

Here's another "mixed bag" - actually, we've looked at several of these over the years - silk in Baluch pieces, etc - but never really discussed the design in the context of a larger rug (as I recall, anyway).






The reds on this one have faded a bit, synthetics, I suppose.

Regards
Chuck Wagner

David R E Hunt

Hi Joel

Those are fine for preliminaries, but now for the keepers. Imagine you are taking a couple photos for publication in your favorite rug rag/online
venue, or better yet that you are putting this rug on display in your home. Find a nice clear area on a wall with good direct lighting (improvised will do as well)and attach said weaving with tacks, push pins, spreading it out nice and even. Then step back and take a couple photos.

A shot of the entire carpet, or even say just the upper half will do, a view of the field, of the border,and of the flat weave end. You could evenfold up a corner, pin it back, and take a shot of the back under the same lighting conditions.

Light does crazy stuff to balouch pile, as demonstrated in this link herehttp://www.turkotek.com/salon_00124/s124_t6.htm

Good luck, I would like a decent photo of this rug to ad to my private data base

Dave

Joel Greifinger

Whoops!

My "mixed bag" is certainly from the same stable as Chuck's. It's half of a khorjin that's been cut and it would have fit comfortably into that 'silk in Baluch pieces' discussion, as you can see from the knots in the flower heads:







Rich - Dave slipped the previous post in while I was posting the bag. He does want more shots of the rug.

Dave - It's always wonderful to revisit your photos of that terrific giant Baluch Main carpet of yours. Talk about a great Baluch orange! What I hadn't noticed till now was the similarity of the minor borders to the border on the bag I just posted.
In terms of the requested publication-quality photos, I don't know if I have an appropriately large free wall with decent lighting, and taking down the hanging rugs that cover most walls in my house generally means wrestling with extendable ladders (don't ask), but I'll try.

Joel Greifinger

Joel Greifinger

Hi Dave,

Unfortunately, I don't expect you'll be much (any?) happier with these new photos of the rug. I don't have any available white wall space of the requisite length in my house, so I hauled out the ladder and tacked the rug to a high overhang in my living room. It was a sunny day and the room has good South exposure, but it never quite provided the opportunity for full, direct sunlight that many Baluch rugs (and those who love them) crave.



Here's a bit of the borders:



A corner with a view of the kilim and what remains of the brocaded S motifs:



And some additional shots of the field of shrubs:





At least I didn't fall off of the ladder.

Here's a shot of the back:



And here's the only shot I could manage in full sunlight. I hung the rug over the balcony and ran down to the back yard to take the picture. It was very windy, so most of the pictures feature the rug fluttering in the brisk breeze. This is the calmest moment:



Chuck,

The reference to the "Baluch Use of Silk" in the archives sent me back to discover this lovely bag that you posted, that's relevant in the current 'shrub-type' context:



Joel Greifinger

Rich Larkin

Hi Joel,

Thanks for the full shot of that sweet little mixed bag khorjin. The blue is fabulous. I'm guessing from the condition and the colored tufts running under the (very nice) supplementary weft border that the piece isn't the oldest one around. If that's true, it shows that very nice things were being woven perhaps longer than we tend to think.

Rich

Joel Greifinger

Hi Rich,

I absolutely agree. The bag has wonderful Baluch wool, that terrific blue and is nonetheless clearly what would justly be called a "late" example, woven perhaps well into the 20th century.

Joel Greifinger

David R E Hunt

Hi Joel

Thanks, these are much better. A lot of this cochineal color in here I see.
It had to have been inexpensive at this point in time for the balouch to have used it so lavishly?

Dave

Joel Greifinger

Back at the beginning of the thread, Paul wrote,
and Dave recently added,
I share the assumption that there is a good deal of cochineal in the rug. Which brings me back to a question that has been discussed a number of times before on Turkotek: does the presence of cochineal in a "Baluch" piece provide a marker that can aid in establishing where, when and by whom it was made? Let's call it...the Baluch cochineal question.

Reading the 'tea leaves' of the existing Baluch literature only provides limited clues. The early acquisition of "Baluch" pieces by what is now the Victoria & Albert Museum may provide the first one. The "Timuri" carpet that Pittenger describes that was purchased in 1883 appears to have cochineal highlights, though this is not stated in either his, or the museum's, description of the piece:
http://www.tcoletribalrugs.com/article27VABaluch.html

Of the published pieces that explicitly list cochineal (as opposed to the shades that it produces), in the description of colors, most are attributed as Timuri and as having been woven in Khorassan.

For example, in Baluch Aesthetics, Tom Cole comments on this Khorassan example, "Cochineal is seen here in the center of the medallion, used sparingly. Cochineal, while eschewed by Turkmen enthusiasts may be considered an earlier feature in Baluch pile weavings."



and in commenting on the relatively early age of a bag in From Tibet to Timbuktu, the authors note, "Most apparent is the use of a new color for the lattice, a pinkish-red, almost certainly one of the expensive insect dyes, either lac or cochineal."



So, while the use, even extensively, of what appears to be cochineal in a "Baluch" piece may not be dispositive, there are some clues that it points to a likelihood that it is considered "Timuri" (whatever this ultimately means), was woven near Khorassan and is, in that wonderful ruggie formulation, "old enough".

Ya think?

Joel Greifinger

Rich Larkin

Hi Joel,

I think I do think. About the Timuri with the cochineal highlights at the V & A, I take it you mean that prayer rug that is the first image in Tom Cole's article. Where do you perceive the cochineal? I saw that one up close about thirty years ago, and don't particularly remember cochineal bits in it. Of course, I may be very mistaken. I don't see it leaping out of the picture.

Nice rug, anyway.

Rich Larkin

Joel Greifinger

Hi Rich,

I didn't mean the prayer rug (Fig. 1) but rather the "Timuri carpet" (Fig. 3) and particularly the detailed picture of the field. When I say that it "appears to have cochineal highlights", I mean something like, "if I look at the picture on my best monitor at the right angle, it looks like some of the devices might be dyed in cochineal." Equivocal enough for you?

The other "evidence" is, well...a bit stronger.

Joel

Rich Larkin

Hi Joel,

Right. I agree the main carpet looks like it has cochineal. I never saw that one up close. It was acquired in 1937. Fig. 1 was the 1883 acquisition.

Rich

James Blanchard

Hi all,

I like this line of inquiry. I think that the use of cochineal in Baluch pieces is uncommon enough that it would be interesting to look at the various types of pieces that have it.

Here is a rug of mine with a lot of cochineal. It is a particularly rich shade.

James

Rich Larkin

Hi James,

I was hoping that one was coming.

There are two shades of, apparently, cochineal in it. Do you have the impression it is the same dye in different concentrations?

Also, there are what appear to be spots of a grayish color, most notably (in the second image) just below the vertical bar of cochineal to the left. What's the story with that?

Finally (to refresh my memory), what is the approxinate size of the rug?

Rich Larkin

Joel Greifinger

Hi James,

Like Rich, I was hoping that you would bring that terrific cochineal-laden rug into the conversation.

Rich,
About that V&A accession date: 1883...1937. I've been working on reading those pesky Arabic numerals, but I still have a ways to go.

Here's the link to more details (and images) on the V&A site:
http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O168416/carpet/

Joel

James Blanchard

Hi Rich,

Yes, there are two shades of cochineal, one that tends to a darker purple.

The bit of "grey" looks to me to be undyed wool, and is sort of a light taupe. At some point I think someone decided to "fill in" some of the highly corroded areas (which had been dark brown) with this undyed wool. It is the same colour at the back of the rug.

James

David R E Hunt

Hi Folks

Chuck had stated earlier that

Notice the cochineal shade. Does Chuck's observation hold true for this as well.
Either way, this is still an interesting rug...



Dave

Joel Greifinger

Hi James,

Could you post a close-up of one of the field motifs with the lighter shade? It would be helpful to be able to compare that with the various other examples identified as cochineal in other pieces.

Joel

James Blanchard

Hi Joel,

Here are the two shades of cochineal, from the same flower.

James

Rich Larkin

Hi James,

Do I understand you to be tabbing as cochineal, the pink color and the purple color in your last close-up images? I would have thought they were the pink color there and the magenta color in the gul in the close-up posted under the shot of the whole rug. I would imagine we could start an entire war about the source of the purple, but I wouldn't have considered it cochineal based.

Rich

James Blanchard

Hi Rich,

Actually, I do think that both are cochineal based, including the purple. In vivo, it looks very much like the same family of colours, though darker. I don't recall ever seeing that sort of purple on another Baluch (or other rug).

James

Richard Larkin

Hi James,

If the idea is that the purple in your very close shot is cochineal dyed over indigo blue, I can buy it. It is a different shade of purple than one ordinarily finds in Baluch rugs. In truth, I had never noticed that color in that excellent rug of yours in past showings.

Rich Larkin

James Blanchard

Hi Rich,

I don't know if that might be cochineal over indigo, but it sure doesn't look like madder to me. But perhaps I am underestimating the range of colours that could be ascribed to madder.

James

Steve Price

Hi Folks

I think I just heard the orchestra strike up Pierre's entrance music.

Regards

Steve Price

Pierre Galafassi

Well, when the boss calls, I suppose I have to go to work.

Hi James,

I fully agree with you, both rose-to-purple shades can't be made with any known variety of rubia, including madder.

If we assume that chemistry did not meddle in these shades and that it is made with genuine natural dyes, (american-, polish- or armenian-) cochineal is the only credible suspect.

The slightly duller & trace bluer shade might have been obtained
a) using a (pale) grayish wool instead of a white one like in the case of the brightest shade, or
b) using a previously indigo-dyed very pale blue wool, or
c) using an alum mordant very slightly contaminated with iron
d) forgetting to extract from the cochineal dye bath its natural grayish impurity
(A competent dyer would have first extracted this grey impurity by introducing in the dye bath a little lower-quality wool, and only then the good white wool, but I do not see why Timouri young ladies should not have a right to fall in love and have lapses of concentration too).
Best regards
Pierre

Joel Greifinger

Hi Pierre,

While we have you here...
I'm trying to develop a sense of the range of shades that have been produced using cochineal, particularly in Baluch rugs. Would you say that any of the colors in this one are from cochineal?





Thanks,
Joel

Pierre Galafassi

Hi Joel,

We do agree, don't we, that
a) All shades feasible with natural dyes can be matched perfectly with recipes based on synthetic dyes (even old ones, say even older than 1920)
b) Making decision on whether a shade is dyed with synthetical- or natural dyes on a mere picture requires a lot of faith in fairy tales. There are only a few exception like an infamous orange, a teeth-grinding poison green, a fluorescent pink etc.. which appear now and then on carpets and which are obvious and criminal synthetical dyes.

This being said and agreed, I would guess that only the bluish red shade in the middle/right of the second picture looks very "cochinealy" to me.

Giving a look at this older Turkotek thread about the "Quest for Salor red" you will find a comparison of the shades given by the three major red wool dyes suitable for rugs, when properly applied with the same, standard alum
mordant (Rubia, lac and cochineal).
Starting from this "standard shade" of cochineal, you can extrapolate many of the other possibilities of shades given by this dye:
a) you can make it less bluish, more neutral red, but still bright, by replacing part or all the alum mordant with a tin mordant.
b) you can mix increasing proportions of rubia in a cochineal dye bath (Alum or tin mordant) and obtain, logically, shades which are between the two standard recipes, thus not as "brick" as a pure rubia dyeing, not as bluish as a pure cochineal dyeing and surely duller than the latter.
c) Starting from pure cochineal shade, you can create increasingly bluish and duller shades by introducing a little iron salt in the alum mordant. The shade is very sensitive to iron concentration and the points are quickly reached where you get a very dull violet , a dark brown or a violet grey or black.
However, by artful dosing of the iron quite nice "parma" and "lilac" shades are possible.
d) By dyeing with cochineal/alum a wool, previously dyed a pale to medium shade of indigo, you can reach a variety of purple and violet shades too. this was once upon a time the recipe used by "petites canailles" trying to fake imperial purple.

Perhaps I should add a last information about another possible origin of any cochineal dyed wool in nineteenth century north-western Balouch rugs:
Nineteenth century travelers, like Ferrier, Mc Gregor, Steward, Fraser etc.. warmly praised the Baluch tribes living south of eastern Khorassan (Southeast of Meshed) for their outstanding talent as highroad robbers.
They played in the same upper league as the Teke. The only technical differences in their business plans were that
a) while the Teke used the best horse in central Asia, these Balouch used the fasted camel in all of Asia for their business travels.
b) the Turkmen hunted slaves, selling them in Khiva or Bokhara, while the Baluch were specialized in leaving their victims stark naked and without a dirham in the middle of the road, frustrated but alive.
I leave it to the judgment of Turkotek specialists which was the best approach.
My guess is that these baluch tribes did not have to bother too much about how to dye with cochineal (waiting for the sky to provide soft water). They probably had enough cochineal dyed wool (or silk-) cloth to unravel and weave with.

Best regards
Pierre

Joel Greifinger

Hi Pierre,

Here are the extremely helpful comparisons from your Quest for Salor Red salon to aid with visualizing the possibilities you listed:





Joel

David R E Hunt

Hi Pierre

You had asserted that

"Making decision on whether a shade is dyed with synthetical- or natural dyes on a mere picture requires a lot of faith in fairy tales. There are only a few exception like an infamous orange, a teeth-grinding poison green, a fluorescent pink etc.. which appear now and then on carpets and which are obvious and criminal synthetical dyes"

and I respectfully disagree, but let me further qualify my disagreement.True, just based upon the color itself and no other factors it comes down to chemistry, but circumstances are more complicated than that. Some synthetic dyes are blatant and glaringly obvious, owning to the ways in which they fade, deteriorate and run, and would be readily apparent from a Black and white photograph. We have to make the call in regard to dyes at some point, and chemical analysis of most dyes just isn't practical, and often, neither is seeing the weaving in the wool.

Dave

Rich Larkin

Hi Dave,

I think you may be missing Pierre's point. True, at some point, we have to make the call on the rugs we see, we can't do the chemical analysis, and we all think we have the eye for 99% of it. And, yes, the big faders and bleeders are obvious. But my understanding is that when the proper technical analysis is done, even among persons with an experienced eye, there are more than a few surprises.

Rich Larkin

David R E Hunt

Hi Rich

Sorry, I was operating under the assumption that this was a given.
Besides, he does infer that few synthetic colors are discernable
from a photograph, and I myself am a little more adventurous than that

Dave

Pierre Galafassi

Hi David,

Let me first thank my Counsel Rich Larkin, who has indeed perfectly summarized my point. And Joel who has taken the trouble to search for the slides in the archives.

I do not think that you and I, David, disagree as much as you might think.

There is indeed no doubt, as you state, that some of the early synthetic dyes, in particular the so-called «aniline dyes» (triphenyl-methan dyes ) are easy to identify even on pictures, because of their absolutely lousy light-fastness, far worse than any natural dye traditionally used for rugs.

It is also true that other early synthetic dyes, mainly some red and magenta so-called «acid" dyes, are notorious for their poor wet fastness (bleed), worse again than traditional natural red rug dyes (Correctly applied madder, lac and cochineal reds do not run under the wet conditions to which rugs are supposed to be exposed, including cold washing).

However, these lousy synthetic dyes appeared on the market during the second half of the nineteenth century (ca.1860 onwards) and were gradually replaced by better dyes even before the end of that century. First, by better «acid» dyes, then from 1920 onwards by so-called «migrating 1/1 chrome complex-» dyes, which rapidly achieved over 90% of the market for rug dyes. Both the wet-fastness and the light-fastness of this later generation of carpet dyes are good, at least as good as the best natural dyes and mostly superior.These 1/1 chrome dyes are not significantly brighter than the usual natural carpet dyes and shrieking shades cannot be produced with them even by mistake.
Several carpet-producing regions actually banned by law, with severe penalties, the most disastrous early synthetical dyes.

Now, sure, a handful of these lousy «anilin» ancestors are still produced (for other uses) and one can still buy them, not only on markets in Pakistan or India, but also in Europe or USA. I still fondly remember an epochal joke using 100 g of the «anilin dye» called Victoria Blue when I was a (mischevous») kid. (This was long ago of course, but still well into the twentieth century).

And it is true too that modern «acid dyes» for polyamide (suitable for wool) do feature, in part, very bright shades. However, their lightfastness is now comparable and mostly better than the one of natural dyes (thus no fade) and their wet fastness is superior to the ancestor’s (hardly any risk of bleed).
These modern «acid» dyes are not supposed to be used for carpet wool, but they probably are nevertheless used, for various possible reasons like greed (they are cheaper than 1/1 Cr complex), the weaver’s taste for shrieking shades, ignorance etc..

However, even with such modern bright "acid" dyes, well chosen and used in «trichomy» by a competent dyer (I assure you, for having worked with them during 35 years, that most are competent), one can match perfectly all shades obtained with natural dyes. In that case, no experienced eye, only HPLC or TLC will give up the fraud. As many experienced rug purchasers and dealers know, the little ahem...forgery is even sometimes perfected by the weaver by an addition of cheap spent fibers of natural dyes to the dye-bath. Some fibers remain attached to the wool and are supposed to prove a dyeing with natural dyes.

I can only quote Rich: ... «when the proper technical analysis is done, even among persons with an experienced eye, there are more than a few surprises». One of the causes of «surprises», as often mentioned by Steve in these pages, is that one takes as a fact that when a dye fades or bleeds on a rug it is, without any possible doubt, a synthetic dye. Unfortunately this «fact» is wrong:
- Some (few) recipes with natural dyes can bleed and some others can fade (just give a look at some «polonaise» Safavid rugs).
- The synthetic dyes most used since the early twentieth century by industrial dye-houses and serious artisans neither bleed nor fade.

I suppose, David, than after my (much to wordy) post we still can debate on what « few synthetic colors» is supposed to mean in percentage.

Best regards
Pierre

Rich Larkin

Hi Dave,

You've raised an issue that could easily be a separate thread. It is the recognition of critical issues in rug assessment through images online. And, to hijack a concept from the real estate industry, the three most important such issues are, "color, color, and color (in that order)."

(This being a generic discussion of issues bound up in rug commerce, I hope it doesn't offend the Turkotek rules.)

Stepping aside from Pierre's excellent points for the sake of this discussion, you duly noted that we ruggies are forced to make calls in these areas as best we can. We think or hope we have an eye for what is "right" and what is "wrong." (I think Pierre's cautions are applicable whether we have the rugs in hand, or on a screen; but the risk of error is greater when we ar looking at images.) For my own part, though I am as opinionated as anyone about whether a particular color is OK, I find that the computer screen is a great leveler of the finer distinctions that have to be made (fictitious as they may ultimately be). Reds, of course, are the chief problem area. Often I find myself making the call not so much on the merits of the color as I am looking at it, but on the probabilities of it in the context in which I find it. To state it differently, I try to see the rug on the screen in terms of whether I have seen the "same" rug before, so to speak, and to recall what that rug was like. It has been a hit or miss strategy. And, of course, for the piece that approaches uniqueness, it doesn't work so well.

You described yourself as adventurous, and of course, we've seen the evidence of your ongoing terror campaign against all the little shops and out of the way cubbyholes of esoteric merchandise. But as to searching for good stuff online, do you find the same problems about it that I do, or are your skills and systems up to the challenge? How often do you get burned? Curious minds want to know.

Rich Larkin

Steve Price

Hi Rich

That question is unanswerable. Better to ask of any ruggie who uses George O'Bannon's experienced eye test (that's nearly everyone), How often do you know you've gotten burned?

Regards

Steve Price

Rich Larkin

Hi Steve,

Good point. But I would say George's motto comes under the Pierre Theory (i. e., we don't really know what we're looking at anyway). My formulation of the question comes under The Well Educated Ruggie Postulate, Larkin Variation (i. e., we may think we know what we're looking at, but online, we don't even know that).

Rich Larkin

Joel Greifinger

Hi Steve,

If you don't know, and no one else believes you have, have you?

Joel Greifinger

Steve Price

Hi Joel

Someone who's been fooled hasn't been burned until he finds out that he was fooled. But the truth is independent of anyone's opinion of it.

If I say something and my wife doesn't hear me say it, am I still wrong?


Regards

Steve Price

Pierre Galafassi

Hi Dave,

I forgot to mention in my (already too long-) previous post that towards the end of salon 129 (archives), I tried to give a more exhaustive list of shades, sometimes met on rugs, which cannot by any means be made with the usual natural dyes.

I also mentioned there that some shades easily feasible with some standard natural dyes would look rather « synthetical» to many ruggies. To mention just two of them here: a lemon yellow (trace of copper salt in alum mordant with several yellow dye plants) or a bright red (cochineal on tin salt mordanted wool, with no alum).

Then, as we all know, over time, white wool slowly turns more yellowish or ivory. On dyed wool this has the consequence of making the shades on old rugs a trifle duller, mellower. Recently ( natural-) dyed white wool might seem quite «synthetical» in some cases.

Thus, I do not deny your claim that experience allows to identify synthetical dyes on rugs in a (more or less) reasonable number of cases, provided one handles the rug itself and does not look at a mere picture or a pc screen. (As stated by the Larkin Variation of the WER Postulate).
For example a friend of mine, who has spent three decades producing natural-dyed rugs, would make good calls in a very high percentage of cases when meeting an unknown rug, simply because his brain spontaneously divides the world in
a) shades he can make with natural dyes (which can be natural or synthetic of course)
and
b) shades he does not know how to achieve with natural dyes (which, given his vast experience, are nearly sure to be «synthetical»).

Best regards
Pierre

David R E Hunt

Hi Pierre

Precisely my sentiments,although I won't pretends to even begin to accurately estimate what percentage of
synthetic colors are visually discernable from a photograph, but I think a valid argument can be made that the
percentage is more than a limited few.

Your excellent chronology with it's attendant dates suggests some ways in which one might divine the nature of a dye
be it natural or otherwise. As Rich has so eloquently stated

"Often I find myself making the call not so much on the merits of the color as I am looking at it, but on the
probabilities of it in the context in which I find it"

and this is precisely one of the techniques which I utilize when sizing up a color.


Hi Rich

I agree, context is everything in regard to color. Size,format,material s,drawing,are all indicators
which can come into play when sizing up the colors in a weaving.I evaluate in regard to the
specifics of the class to which the piece belongs.

I have met with success in regard to the internet and it's a great resource for rugs and rug info IMHO.
I have gotten burned over the net, unfortunately, but I think it more attributable to a bit of
impulsiveness and operating outside of my comfort zone than anything else.




Hi Steve

How very true. Who's to know?...



Dave

James Blanchard

Hi Dave,

I tend to agree with you. Though I still feel very much a novice in assessing rugs, I do tend to place rugs into broad age categories based largely on design and drawing. I don't pretend that I can assess a rug into 10 year age brackets, but for some weaving groups I like to think that I can tell one that is late (i.e. well into the synthetic dye era) from one that is quite old (more likely to be in the pre-synthetic dye period). For the later rugs, I sort of assume that most of the dyes could be synthetic and then judge the rug by other criteria (aesthetics, unusual, etc.). I try to avoid harsh synthetic dyes, but I won't turn down a rug that has other wonderful qualities if the synthetic dyes don't spoil the overall gestalt of the rug.

Older rugs pose a more difficult task, because many rugs seem to reside by usual dating conventions in the dye "twilight zone" of the latter quarter of the 19th century. Consider how many rugs are attributed to "late 19th century". For these, I still admit that I can't always tell a synthetic from a natural red, and Pierre's comment that "bleeding reds" is not an entirely reliable indicator adds further difficulty.

I have become content with this uncertain state of affairs, and much prefer it to an approach of being "not always right, but never in doubt".

There are some rugs where usual dating conventions seem to put them firmly into the "pre-synthetic" sort of era, and I would say that among these it seems uncommon to find one with an obviously "suspicious" colour. For this class, from several of the main weaving groups, I expect that you could get a reasonable consensus from experienced rug folks that the rug is unlikely to have a synthetic colour simply from a black and white photograph (setting aside the issue of forgery, of course).


James

Joel Greifinger

Hi James,

To bring this back to the particulars of the thread, would you say that this holds true for "Baluch" pieces where, at least in many cases, the use of synthetics came about by and large considerably later than in most other 'tribal' and village weaving? When you say "the synthetic era", are you referring to the initial introduction of synthetic dyes in the 1860's or their widespread use by the specific weaving group you are assessing? If the former, there are very few "Baluch" rugs that are widely agreed to fit the "pre-synthetic" criterion.

When it comes to the "Baluch" rugs, aren't we facing an even more prolonged "twilight zone"?

Joel Greifinger

Rich Larkin

Hi Pierre,

First, the important point:

Your posts are not too long! I believe I can speak on behalf of Turkotek Nation on that issue.

Now for the babble. You said:

I take it you are referring to the "modern" range of synthetic colors popularly called "chrome dyes" that are reputed to perform well all around. If so, it is surprising to me that such dyes cover 90% of the market. My sense of the market for new moderately priced rugs over the past forty years or so is that most rugs feature at least some harsh, garish colors, many of which fade to light. This is especially true of Persian rugs, I thought, excepting the high end production (Isfahan, Nain, best Tabriz, etc.). I thought a cheap red was the mainstay of middle range quality, such as Hamadan area villages, etc. Am I right? And are those chrome dyes?

You added:

Are those the dyes that have been offending me?

It is extremely informative and such a pleasure to read your excellent posts.

Rich Larkin

Pierre Galafassi

Hi Rich,

My guesstimate of the market share of 1/1 Chrome complex dyes (90% plus) for dyeing wool for carpets has probably been roughly correct for the industrial-scale dye-houses worldwide and for the middle- to upper qualities of rugs, post World War II.

However, to be frank, the market information, not only in Asia, is far from being an exact science and getting worse lately:
- Even larger industrial dye-houses are fighting on an increasingly competitive market and might often be tempted to use more (cheaper) "acid" dyes than they care to tell their suppliers of 1/1 chrome dyes or their customers.
- We should remember as well that, in this carpet market, there is an exceptionally large unchartered territory of small artisanal- and tribal dyers, who generally buy their dyes on the local bazaar, in which every kind of dyes, even very old and cheap ones, manufactured by local micro-plants, can still be bought.
These "acid" dyes (early ones and modern ones) are in part very bright and can indeed lead to shrieking shades if applied by tasteless dyers (or by dyers who just love very bright shades, which is their perfect right after all).
Best regards
Pierre

James Blanchard

Yes, certainly. The Baluch seem to have a prolonged "twilight zone", with lots of wonderful and charming rugs coming later, often with great-looking colours. I would add that we should probably draw some distinction between different Baluch weaving groups. The "Persian" Baluch might have had synthetic dyes earlier, and that seems to comport with my experience. Afghan Baluch seemed to have a longer time period with good dyes, but that is rather subjective. Then we have the "Seistan" Baluch. They have an entirely different palette, and they seem to have had many "good dye" rugs during the "twilight zone".

James

David R E Hunt

Hi James

I like this expression "Twilight Zone" (loved the TV show too), so apropos
in regard to the dyes of the last quarter of the 19th century. Seems so
much was happening, and changing during this time frame, and a lot of the
rugs that are deemed collectible and/or on the market as such were made during this period.

I suspect, as a general rule that rugs produced during the twilight zone
will contain at least some synthetic dyes and as long as they aren't
disagreeable in appearence I won't loose any sleep over them.
Turkmen weavings are especially suspect in this regard IMHO.

Hi Joel

The Baluch may well present a different picture and a prolonged Twilight Zone
if you will, but do they? Baluch weaving has not been extensively studied or
tested, it is my impression, and it seems improbable that so many examples
proceed from the "end of the 19th century". In short I suspect much Baluch
dating to be problematic. And of the colors, to be honest a lot of them are so bad
that it seems improbable that any chemist would set out to make a color so ugly.
Could these colors be poorly applied synthetics,as opposed to the weak natural
dyes they are assumed to be?

One should always be on the lookout for exceptionally old examples of any of
our collectible weavings, yet it is my understanding that beauty is the primary
criteria by which Baluch weaving are apraised, and in turn that age is not so much
regarded as a function of beauty in Baluch weaving, as with the Turkmen rugs.

Dave

Joel Greifinger

Hi Dave,

If I understand your gist, you're saying that we don't believe that older pieces are generally more beautiful when it comes to Baluch, as opposed to Turkmen weavings. Wouldn't this mean that, in the Baluch case, 'beauty is not so regarded as a function of age' and not the other way round. Or are you saying that our overall tendency to regard what we appraise as more beautiful to therefore be older, is more pronounced when it comes to Turkmen pieces than Baluch?

Perhaps I've misunderstood your intent and you don't mean either.

Joel

Rich Larkin

Hi Folks,

A few random and disjointed observations in this interesting discussion.

• I recall having once seen an old Kurdish type of rug dated 1869 that featured the spare use of a medium purple color (at the roots, grayish white at the tips) that I considered to be one of the earliest synthetics. It was wool on wool, a repeating design (probably rudimentary boteh on deep blue), very long and shaggy pile, and trying for but not achieving rectangularity. It had slightly unusual (compared with workshop weaving) end and selvage finishes, though I don't recall the particulars. It was the kind that often got called "Mosul" in the market. In short, it seemed like the work of rustic mountain Kurds. I found it amazing that the synthetic dye had reached the weavers of that kind of rug so early. Of course, one must be as wary of woven dates as anything else, but I didn't doubt the age.

• One has the impression that since the "boom" in Middle Eastern rug production since the third quarter of the nineteenth century, a number of weaving groups that have been lumped in with the Baluch people have either commenced weaving in significant volume, or have greatly increased their production. Similarly, true Baluch people who did not do much weaving up to a point may have taken it up, or increased their output. Much of the production, probably more than we care to acknowledge, was frankly commercial. Not that there's anything wrong with that. In any case, I think we have to always bear in mind that the "Baluch" label covers a multitude of ...sins?...virtues?. ..(take your pick). If it's true that the number of weavers and weaving groups increased over the late 19th and early 20th centuries, variations in the surviving products may reflect those circumstances, rather than changes in weaving practices within groups over the same span.

• Is our sense of the integrity of color in some old Baluch type rugs possibly based on post weaving treatment of the rugs, rather than (or as well as) the dyes themselves. Many of the early authors mentioned that the chemical treatment of Baluch rugs in particular in the early 20th century was rampant. I have my own notions about what thiose rugs look like today (we have to make the call!), but who's to say?

• The broad question, what did Baluch weaving in general look like before XXXX (pick your date), is exceedingly interesting in my opinion. We have a much better idea of the progression of Turkoman weaving over a few recent centuries, or we think we do. Not so for the Baluch, as has been pointed out. I think the occasionally encountered opinion that the Baluch as rug weavers were nothing more than agressive copyists is inaccurate and unfair to them.

Rich Larkin

David R E Hunt

Hi Joel

Turkmen carpets are easy. Weavings made post 1880 invariably contain
synthetics and were produced under Russian occupation.Turkmen rugs made
pre 1880 in theory contain all natural dyes and are authentic ethnographic
objects. Old Turkmen rugs are also rare and exceedingly valuable
when combined with artistic merit, and as such highly esteemed.

The Baluch are a mixed bag. A good percentage of "Baluch" weavings
aren't even made by Baluch, but by other groups of people. And how do you date them?
Because they "look" old? Better does equal older, generally, in regard to craftmanship,
but the weaving output is so variable and misunderstood that it's hard to read a lot of these.
They are either obviously(?) much older or much younger,with this rather large expanse of
Twilight Zone sandwiched between the two. And this assertion which states that "beauty is the primary
criteria by which Baluch weaving are apraised" is a paraphrase of Eiland and Eiland, or similar author.

Dave

James Blanchard

Hi all,

Like others seem to indicate, I take a different approach to assessing "Baluch" type weavings. There is such variation that one can find very respectable pieces that are probably from well into the 20th century, and synthetic dyes is less of a barrier to finding a "good" piece.

Here is an example of a Baluch saddle that belongs to my daughter (old-timers here will have seen it before). The point of showing it is that I believe that it has synthetic dye in the reds, and I have no idea how old it might be, but wouldn't be surprised if it was made well into the 20th century. But for me, it is a wonderful weaving in the "Baluch tradition". I would point out that Diehr illustrated a similar piece (in "Thirty Dusty Dozen", I think), and noted that it also had a synthetic red. In any case, I haven't seen an older or better example than these two, synthetic dye or not.

James

Patrick Weiler

I recently came across a tempting mina-khani Baluch with nice asymmetric white flowers and in very good, old condition. It had an extremely few knots of fuchsine which had faded on the front, maybe four in the entire rug, but I wouldn't have even checked closely enough to find the fuchsine knots if it hadn't been for the few yellow knots which seemed just a tad bit bright to be natural. It was as though the weaver had secured a limited supply of those new, bright colors and sprinkled them sparingly, one knot at a time, throughout the weaving. The beginning of the Twighlight Zone.
It was priced at a point that if it had all natural dyes it would have been OK, but those few synthetic dyes put it over the top of the range for a newer piece with synthetic dyes.
Here is what could be categorized as a Baluch weaving. It has a single motif in the center which I think is cochineal:

Or, it could be a synthetic dye. The rest of the riot of colors come across as natural. The Memling-gul design is typically Baluch, but the abstract rendition and the arbitrary placement of the colors is unusual. The field color is part blue and part maroon which has eroded more than the blue.
It could be assigned to a more rural and/or inexperienced weaver who picked up a small amount of cochineal-dyed wool that would sparkle more in a small bag than as just a few knots in a larger piece.
Patrick Weiler

James Blanchard

Hi Patrick,

A few points. If that Mina Khani was fabulous in all other respects, I'm not sure I would have been deterred by a few knots with fuchsine. It could still be of a respectable age (i.e. 19th century) for such a rug.

Is it possible that the few bits of fuchsine and yellow could have been added after the rug was woven originally?

I guess that my overarching point is that for Baluch weavings I tend to give a bit more latitude on the issue of dyes, partly because I am less inclined to rely solely on age as a criterion for a desirable "Baluch" weaving.

James

Chuck Wagner

Hi all,

Here's a relative of the saddle cover - best guess is that this is Jamshidi, and this one also has a synthetic component to the red-orange (and, it's another that old-timers may recognize):



Regards
Chuck Wagner

Patrick Weiler

James,

Yes, that rug is most likely late 19th century. I was tempted to buy it, but the price and the dyes tipped the scales to Do Not Buy.
If I can figure out how to send a cell phone picture to my desktop, I will post a couple of photos. The other aspect of the rug was that it has a maroon field instead of the more desirable blue. The synthetic dyes were original. I can think of no reason someone would have added synthetic dyes in a dozen knots to an otherwise intact, older, naturally-dyed rug. Unless an earlier Class of Collectors (is that an oxymoron?) desired some evidence of modernity.....


Patrick Weiler

James Blanchard

Thanks Chuck,

That is an interesting rug, with familiar design but a somewhat different aesthetic than many "Baluch" (at least to my eyes).

Here is another prayer rug that seems a bit closer to me. I think that this is Taimani, and I would not be surprised if it was made after mid-20th century. But it retains a charm. It has a purple shade outside the mihrab, which is actually okay for me.

Patrick, I'd be interested to see a picture of the Mina Khani, especially now that you've tantalized us with tales of a maroon ground. I suppose that if a rug hung around a family for a generation after it was made, someone could find some nice new synthetically dyed wool and put a few knots into the old rug. I doubt that Baluch weavers in those times saw anything wrong with adding synthetically dyed wool to a rug.

James

Joel Greifinger

Hi Patrick,

That's quite a cute bag. Is it chanteh-sized? Or, was it once one of the faces of a small double khorjin?

Are the line of knots radiating left and right from the center of the Memling gul the same color as the central motif? That motif seems like cochineal from here. Given that all the rest of the dyes come across as natural, is there anything up-close that would lead you to suspect otherwise for that one?

And while we're playing twenty-questions, what's the foundation made of?

Joel Greifinger

Patrick Weiler

The bag is 15" (40cm) wide by 13" (33cm) tall. The picture is upside down, with the "tree" in the center actually pointing down. The foundation is light wool warp with 2 shots of unpacked, loose dark brown weft. The knots are asymmetric, open left. It may have been one half of a small khorjin.
The wool is really soft and the various 8-or-so colors have eroded to different levels. There is a dark red, brick red, bright/cochineal red, maroon, dark and light blues, dark and light green, yellow and black-brown.
The only knots with the bright/cochineal red are in that central tree.
As for the Baluch I didn't buy, this close-up shows what appear to be all good dyes.

The full view shows abrash in the borders and at either side of the latchook medallions in the bottom border, several of the six-sided cartouches have lemon-yellow centers. The fuchsine only shows up in the center knot of a few of the secondary motifs. Both flatwoven end panels are still there, 6 inches long or so. I had taken these pictures before finding the faded dye.



I took the pix on my cell phone and did not feel a compulsion to take more after finding that questionable dye. I must admit that I have many weavings with synthetic dyes, but in this case, the purchase wasn't justified because the price was low enough if they were all apparently good dyes, but too high (for me) without them.

Patrick Weiler

Joel Greifinger

Hi all,

In his preface to the 1996 Treasured Baluch Pieces from Private Collections, Frank M. Diehr reviewed the landscape of Baluch rugs that were firmly attributable to the 19th century, either through museum accession dates, publication date or the less reliable inwoven dates on rugs. Most of the published examples are taken from the rug literature at the beginning of the 20th century, on the assumption that some of the pictured Baluch rugs were already at least a few decades old at the time of publication. In an archived Turkotek discussion in 2006, he supplemented his findings: http://www.turkotek.com/misc_00061/dating.htm
All in all, while there are some wonderful examples of a wide variety of types of weavings on the 'Baluch' spectrum, it leaves us with an extremely small data base from which to try to extract patterns of structure, design, palette, dye usage or other criteria for attributing other 'Baluch' rugs to the 19th century with much justified confidence.

In light of this, our tendency (i.e. Rugdom's) to make such attributions is fairly striking. Starting from the turn of the discussion of this thread into the extended 'Baluch' "Twilight Zone" (neither demonstrably mid-19th nor clearly mid-20th), I did a quick survey of the dating of 'Baluch' published pieces in the 'modern' publications I had handy. These included seven that were specifically devoted to 'Baluch' products and four more general surveys and exhibition catalogs. The earliest is Black and Loveless, Rugs of the Wandering Baluchi (1976) and the most recent, Wisdom's Baluch Tribal Weavings (2008) . I unfortunately didn't have access to the three other recent 'Baluch' volumes by Besim, Sorgato and Powischer.

Given the overall lack of established criteria for dating "Twilight Zone" 'Baluch' rugs, the picture is at least a bit disconcerting. Excluding the attributions in the Black and Loveless book (which I'll come back to), of the 320 'Baluch' pieces that are given dates, 290 are assigned to the 19th century. The dating ranges from the famously early and precise attributions by Azadi to the more common divisions between "mid-19th", "late-19th" and the less committal "19th century". These last three are often used in the same volume without any differentiating criteria for which one has been assigned. In the most recent publication, Wisdom dates all 65 of the pieces in his published collection to some time in the 19th century. So, even though we have only a tiny data base of 'Baluch' rugs firmly attributable to the 19th century, we have over 90% of these published examples placed into that category.

The exception is the earliest among this group of publications. Of the 42 pieces pictured in Black and Loveless, only 16 (38%) are dated to the 19th century. Of the remaining 26, two fall outside the "Twilight Zone" as clearly mid-20th century. But, aside from its conservatism, what I find most interesting about their age attributions is what appears to be their criteria for dating. Of the 16 rugs that they attribute to the 19th century, only one has the presence of an early synthetic dye. Of the 26 assigned to the 20th century, only four don't contain colors that are described as fading (e.g. "tip-fade", "faded purple", "orange-red fading to pink-red") In other words, in the absence of other dating criteria, it appears that the presence of dyes that have faded in one way or another is the chief criterion used for placing 'Baluch' rugs on the 20th century side of the divide. Given both the presence of early synthetic dyes in presumptively 19th century 'Baluch' rugs and our uncertainty about which groups of 'Baluch' weavers had access to and were using what sorts of dyes when, this strategy may very well err in assigning rugs made in the 19th century dates in the 20th on the basis of another ungrounded assumption. The bigger point is that, like the later volumes that prefer placing their pieces further back, these are also provided with little explicit rationale aside from the overall impression of the rug. Frank Diehr (whose Three Dusty Dozen admirably avoids such dating) quotes Jon Thompson to the effect that, when it comes to the question of a rug's age, we can "rest content...that there is only one person that really understands these difficult questions, namely himself." I don't think the problem is primarily our immodest individual belief in certainty, but rather that the sources for the perpetuation of these norms (published catalogs, auction houses, etc,) don't articulate the criteria for making these impressionistic age judgments. And, despite their limited warrant, such judgments seem to fulfill a need in the 'Baluch' collector community, as well.

Now, nothing on this theme of how little we actually know and how freely we overreach what we do is news to faithful Turkotek readers. This diatribe is the product of how long it takes for me to have some stuff actually "sink-in". I've been aware from the start that we know little about the 'by whom', 'where', and, of course, 'when' of so-called Baluch weavings. I guess now and again I'm struck by how little.

To bring this back to cases, here's a balisht that sold at yesterday's Skinner auction as "Baluch Late-19th Century" It has lovely wool, two lovely blues and two cartouches in the border with 'S' motifs that have faded to a silver gray, presumably from an early, fugitive synthetic dye. Are there any 'markers' about this piece that would help us to place it more specifically within the 70 or so year (1875-1935?) 'Baluch' "Twilight Zone"?



Joel Greifinger

Steve Price

Hey!

That balischt looks an awful lot like one I've had for many years. The photo is pretty awful, but good enough to see the family resemblance.



I sure hope the one at Skinners brought some serious bucks.

Regards

Steve Price

Frank Martin Diehr

Joel, Steve,

I too have one of those balishts, very close to the Skinner example. I know of a few more of them, and there is, of course, the one in Boucher's collection. The one I have (a devil to photograph, I'm afraid) I'd date to ca. 1900 (i.e. ca. 1890 - 1910), same goes for the Skinner piece, but don't ask me why.
I have written on the dating game, as Turkotekkies know, and have grown tired of trying to explain the gut feeling that it is to me, and the commercial implications that dating has when market values come into play.
However, I will drop in again when I have had a chance to get that balisht out, and perhaps we could start a thread on those.

Kind regards
Frank

__________________
This is just an uneducated guess!

James Blanchard

Hi Frank and all,

I would be very interested to see a thread on Baluch balishts.

James

Steve Price

Hi JAmes

I agree. We did do one on certain aspects of the balischt type in this thread, about 10+ years ago. Here is a link to it.

Regards

Steve Price

Joel Greifinger

Hi Steve,

Sorry to dash your hopes for property values in this particular balisht neighborhood but not so much. I think the probability that the two 'S's in the border are an early synthetic dye led the collectors to steer clear, even though the piece suggests 'good (or, at least, good enough) age'.

On the other hand, the low selling price was how I end up being its owner.

Joel Greifinger

Joel Greifinger

Earlier in the thread, Rich Larkin recounted a story of finding a dated 1869 rustic, Kurdish rug with what appeared a faded, early synthetic dye, commenting, For many weaving groups, the presence of a fugitive dye presumed to be an early synthetic provides evidence that the item is a 'late' example. An interesting wrinkle in the case of weavings from the Baluch "Twilight Zone" is the attempt to have it serve an opposite purpose.

This is a picture of a familiar device from an example of the most recognizable type of Baluch bag.



On this particular bag, the very experienced Baluch dealer describing the piece points to this "fuchsine squiggle" and a few other small touches of early synthetic dye as analogous to the use of silk. Because of its presumably scant availability to Baluch weavers at the time and its sparing use and combined with the "quality" of the other colors in the piece, he places the bag in the 1850-1875 (!) period.

So, back to my new balisht: it combines nice, saturated colors with its very own aniline squiggles:



I wonder if that means it has cleared the hurdle of the "Early Baluch Aniline Age Test"?

At any rate, I tried to get a better picture of the balisht. Due to low contrast and very glossy wool, these are "a devil to photograph" as Frank rightly bemoaned.



Joel Greifinger

Joel Greifinger

For all of the reasons already cited, there is widespread agreement on the greater than usual uncertainty in dating 'Baluch' weavings. In the face of this, rug book authors, dealers, auction houses and 'rank and file ruggies' nonetheless continue to describe any 'Baluch' piece at least partially by attributing an approximate age. So, for example, the balisht I recently got at Skinner was auctioned as "Late-19th Century", the bag face in the previous post offered as "Third Quarter-19th Century" and the various age-related comments on the rug with which I began this thread. It seems that, whether the purposes are commercial or largely evaluative, we seem unwilling to foreswear these age attributions even in the face of the acknowledged impediments to confidence of accuracy. Why?

In searching around the archived discussions about this (and while checking in on two balishts posted by Patrick Weiler in a salon back in 2000), I came across an illuminating comment by Steve Price. I figure it's worth a reprise:


Joel Greifinger

James Blanchard

Hi Joel,

Thanks for citing that useful advice from Steve. As I noted earlier, I agree with those who tend to focus more on aesthetics and individuality when assessing Baluch type weavings than for many other weaving groups. This is probably useful because it seems that accurate dating of Baluch pieces is still an elusive goal.

James

Joel Greifinger

Hi James and all,

Here are three 'prayer rugs' that share design features with the rug I posted to begin the thread. Two have already appeared, the third was sold very recently. Putting aside questions of age or specific attribution, how do they rank on the aesthetic criteria you value?

In no particular order, they are:

#1



#2



#3





Joel Greifinger

Paul Smith

Hi Joel--

Color- and drawing-wise I like these in the order you posted them; that is, I like the first one best, the second one, second-best...except (and this is a big issue in my eyes)...I find this design feature where the minor borders stop at the bottom for an elem of sorts to be weird. It grates on me like a cut-and-shut job. The fact that two of these do this makes it look like an intentional design feature, and I have seen it before, on a Baluch prayer rug I was otherwise tempted to purchase. But I find it visually off-putting, as it seems to clash intensely with the impression of depth I would get from those pieces if the ivory minor borders were to entirely frame the field. So, taking that into account, my preference is for #3.

Paul

James Blanchard

Hi Joel,

Based on the pictures, here is my order of preference in terms of aesthetic appeal... #3, #1, #2. My main caveat is that it is hard to appreciate the colours. I have some concern that #3 might be a bit weak in that area, which might demote its ranking.

James

Dinie Gootjes

Hi Joel,

I like them in the order you put them up for colour (as far as I can see) and drawing. The third one is missing an element of liveliness the other two have with the different types of shrubs. That slight stiffness is more important to me than the discontinued border of the other two. The elems are kind of interesting and unusual, but I agree with Paul that in the whole of the rug they are not pleasing. The first one also gets points for the use of ivory and beige (?) in the field and main border.

Dinie

Rich Larkin

Hi Joel,

For me, the final verdict on the relative merits of the three pieces must rest on factors that can't be assessed from the screen: viz., quality of materials, texture, and how the color impresses on direct observation. My experience is that Baluch rugs more than most are ultimately elusive on film. In truth, it can be said that judging them on the screen is one thing, in person another.

Going with what we have, the first one stands by itself and looks like a fundamentally finer piece. The other two are more directly comparable as to scale of design. I like the sharper contrast of the light red-dark red play between the field/spandrels and the border of #3, taking it from the macro perspective. Again, all this might change once I had them in hand.

I agree that #s 1 and 2 give the impression of having suffered a truncation on account of the cutoff. The lack of flatwoven aprons on #2 furthers this impression, and their presence complete on #3 helps that one a lot.

Regarding that abrupt approach to the bottom, I offer the following illustration from the 5th edition of The Practical Book of Oriental Rugs by G. Griffin Lewis (1920).





He called it "Shiraz Prayer Rug," and that may well be what it is, but I've always thought it was intriguingly suggestive of the Dokhtor-i-Ghazi line of Baluch prayer rugs. In particular, the shrubs in his look like slightly older, or at least more elaborate versions of the shrubs on the typical D-i-Gh; and the barred line separating the field from the spandrel area is also used on them. It is as though Lewis's rug is an early version of the other, or that the two descended from a common ancestor. One can conceive that the divider line lost a few spikes and bumps over the eons coming down the D-i-Gh line.

If Lewis's rug was in fact Baluch-esque, it could explain a minor tradition among those weavers as regards cutting off end borders. I wonder what the starting end of Lewis's rug was. Joel, forgive me if you've already mentioned this, but what was the starting end of your Timuri rug?

Not intending to hijack the thread.

Rich Larkin

Joel Greifinger

Hi Rich,

It was woven from the bottom, of course.

If you look at the direction I posted the rug ("flower heads" pointing up), the starting end is at the bottom of the picture.

Joel

Joel Greifinger

Hi Rich,

I take it that the reason you asked about the direction that my rug was woven was to possibly extrapolate to the Lewis prayer rug and the other two I posted that are "missing" the bottom border. Was cutting off the end border a "minor tradition" among some particular group of 'Baluch' weavers? Was this intentional and not the product of expediency, as Paul's report of yet another similar rug seems to indicate?

Lewis's characterization of his as "Shiraz" is accompanied by comments on both the fact that prayer rugs from that area are "exceedingly rare" and that the missing lower borders is an "unusual feature". Given the range of their shared design features, the extreme rarity of South Persian prayer rugs certainly bolsters the plausibility of the rug actually being an earlier D-i-Gh version.

In the HALI description of the Grogan rug (#1), they also point to this as "the distinguishing feature" of the rug, creating an 'elem' that they find aesthetically pleasing. In our very small sample, there is some clear dissent from this positive appraisal of its contribution to the overall impact of the design in these pieces. Do folks find the lack of lower borders without the addition of the 'elem' in the Lewis piece more or less 'off-putting'?

The other thing I noticed when I went back to the HALI description of the Grogan rug was this assertion that also extends to my rug and the others posted earlier:
Does anyone have a sense of what the basis might be for this apparent attribution?

Joel Greifinger

Rich Larkin

Hi Joel,

I wouldn't think Lewis's rug was a Dokhtor-i-Ghazi as such (whatever that means), but it looks like the kind of thing those weavers might have been looking at when they decided to weave them. The barred line that outlines the mihrab is usually relatively simple in the standard version, but here's one that has a little complexity in the form of a vertical spike on either side of the central niche.

http://www.turkotek.com/mini_salon_00019/ms19_t3.htm

It's not hard to see the rug Patrick shows us in the link (reporting on the Hajji Baba show, if I recollect) as reflecting a little more of the earlier paradigm in that respect. The rest of the link is worthwhile reading as well, and there is a reference to a comment that the shrubs are usually found on work from Afghanistan, and not from Northeastern Iran. In that regard, I wonder whether Lewis's rug (i. e., collection of Mrs. Willis Holden, Syracuse, New York) might be from a place like Herat. That venue has been reputed to have produced a number of ornate rugs back in the period before the commercial boom of the last half of the 19th century.

Rich Larkin

Joel Greifinger

Hi Rich,

Of course, there are shrubs and there are shrubs.

There seems to be fairly broad agreement in the published examples that rugs and bags with the characteristic 'Dokhter-i-Ghazi' shrub were made in Afghanistan (although the Hajji Baba example in your link is labeled "Prayer Rug, Baluch Iran or Afghanistan 19th Century").

However, when it comes to the other types of shrubs we've discussed in this thread (the sort on my formerly grimy Timuri and the shrub/boteh variants on the later-posted balishts), there doesn't seem to be similar agreement. In the former case, the HALI description I quoted (that the design is restricted to Baluch in Afghanistan) is the only presentation of this position I've been able to find. In terms of the balishts, Frank cited the most well-known, Boucher's piece (Pl. 43) that he attributed to Northeast Persia (southern Khorasan):



This can also be viewed, along with the other pieces in the Boucher collection, on the Indianapolis Museum of Art website:

http://www.imamuseum.org/art/collections/artwork/pillow-or-storage-bag-

Similarly, the one I have that I posted earlier was described by the Skinner auction catalogue as "Baluch Balischt, Northeast Persia, late 19th century."

On the other shrub front, (and recycling another "thread" from earlier in the thread) I noticed that in the description of this prayer rug, Craycraft wrote that "the plum tones may be cochineal."



Joel