Posted by Marla Mallett on July 28, 1999 at 20:29:47:
In Reply to: Re: Unnecessary Hermeneutics? posted by Yon Bard on July 28, 1999 at 17:05:35:
: : Dear John,
: : How 'bout "Not many pile rugs for very long." Is that still more ambiguous--I hope!? Unlike Mike, I have not done field work in the Shahsevan areas, so don't have that concrete experience to correlate with conclusions that are based purely on looking at the rugs themselves. But when I see weaves that are unrefined, I can't help drawing inferences about how much of such weaving the folks have been doing or for how long they've been doing it. The paragraph in the book just above the one that you quoted, John, enumerates the great number of factors that have to be juggled to achieve a totally satisfactory "weave balance." And that varies, of course, from one weaving structure to another. Weavers who have been producing plain utilitarian sacks, warp-substitution jajims, and fancy soumak bags start from scratch when they shift to weaving pile rugs. If they produce just occasional examples, they are unlikely to resolve all of the problems quickly.
: : Marla
: Marla, nobody could accuse the Turkomans of not having a long weaving tradition, yet in almost any of their weaving categories you can find examples ranging from the most incompetent to the most refined. If we happened to look at a couple of the former instead of at the whole picture we might be led to very erroneous conclusions!
: Regards, Yon
Dear Yon,
I was referring to a community's characteristic weave balance, not to sloppy or incompetent examples. We were also talking about the presence or absence of signs of a distinctive weaving practice across a body of work--again, signs that would appear within both the best and worst examples.