The main aim of this blog is to share the passion for carpet weaving arts around the world. The articles published in this blog have a very generic character with no claims to academic authority.
This is a tradition Khotan rug featuring the Chinese cornucoppia, the hallmark of Khotan rugs.
These two smaller rugs from 1930-40s show the design and motifs which arguably may have influneced the iconic Kazak design; the Tree of Life Kazak in the first instance, and tripple-medallion in the latter.
Home of many Turkic tribes, the Uygur Autonomous Region of Xinjiang is often referred to as East Turkestan. The area was once part of the Silk Road.
In the time of the Mogul Empire, the cities of Yarkand, and Kashgar were known for exceptional rugs, often in silk, with designs showing a unique fusion of both Persian and Chinese influence. Later, attractive rugs were also produced in the city of Khotan.
They were often sold at the bazaars in the oasis city of Samarkand in the steppes of present-day Uzbekistan and, therefore, they are often referred to as Samarkand rugs.
The ancient patters and designs of these once extravagant carpets have vanished under the strong influence of the communist China. The newer production is more commercial and reflecting current trends in home décor.
The older, turn of the 19th and 20th century rugs from East Turkestan are now found mainly in museums and private collections. They are rare and beautiful.
Below, some of the Khotan rugs in our humble collection:
Potr Wesolowski
While Hereke rugs are world renowned for opulent and luxyrious silk carpets, there exist almsot equally opulent and luxyrious Hereke carpets make in wool; wool on cotton to be exact.
The featured carpets is a rare wool-on-fine-cotton Hereke carpet in equally rare square format.
Square rugs do not appear on the market very often; they do not suit any traditional room design and therefore typically are made to order for specific clients.
The wool Hereke carpet in our collection is 200x200cm plus long fringes on either side. It is the finest quality rug in the classic wool Hereke knot-count of 6×6 knot per square centimetre.
This carpet features a traditional Ottoman pattern referred to as the Flowers of the Seven Mountains in midnight blue surrounded by
the classic Herati border in Burgundy red.
Piotr Wesolowski
Genje, one of the ancient cities of Azerbaijan, is located in north-west of the country. Documents dating as far back as 11th century, suggest Genje as being a famous center of production of silk, and silk carpets.
Antique Gendje rugs have wool foundation and long pile, and as most rugs from the Caucasus are hand-knotted in the Turkish or Symmetrical knot.
They are usually long and narrow displaying the distinctive feature pattern of many-colored diagonal stripes featuring small floral designs, sometimes alternating with rows of boteh motif.
The Genje boteh (Paisley) rugs are very popular among collectors, unlike many other rugs featuring the popular all-over design, Genje rugs present the boteh in the classic Genje diagonal stripe composition.
A floral motif called Boteh, which originated in the Sassanid Dynasty (200–650 AD) of Iran and later in the Safavid Dynasty (from 1501 to 1736), was a major textile pattern in Iran and Caucasus during the Qajar Dynasty.
Piotr Wesolowski
Caucasian rugs are undeniably the most popular among collectors
around the world.
Their charm rests in the spontaneous imagery, colour harmony, format and
relative affordability.
There is however another factor that determines their desirability: they are no
longer made.
When discussing Caucasian rugs, we refer to a specific period in history known as the Renaissance of the Caucasian rug industry, a period that lasted from the second half of the 19th through the first quarter of the 20th century.
‘Caucasian rugs are so interesting because so many designs were used in such a small geographic area over a relatively short period of time.’
(-) Tschebull
In their works, most scholars focus on the period 1880-1920 as a definite beginning and the end of the Caucasian cottage rug industry that produced some of the most remarkable works of village art in textile.
‘The universally accepted name of Caucasian rugsand carpets integrates pieces produced for the most part during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries …’ (-) David Tsitsishvili
There is howver little (confirmed) evidence of rug production in the Caucasus prior to 1880, and rugs made after 1920 are largely poor imitations of their splendid predecessors.
According to Kerimov, the prolonged period of warfare; the long Perso-Ottoman war and later the Russo-Persian war brough distraction and lasting penury to the region that crippled all economic activities.
For many years, the Caucasus was a remote, isolated mountain region cut off from the world.
Roads and eventually the Transcaucasia Railway were built in the Caucasus following the Russo-Persian treaty which guaranteed the Russian control of the Caucasus.
The Transcaucasian Railway (completed in 1870) connected the main ports of Baku (The Caspian Sea) and Batumi (the Black Sea) and opened the Caucasus to the world; goods, including rugs could have been now transported and exported worldwide.
According to Tschebull, this marks the beginning of the Renaissance of the Caucasian rug industry.
Kazaks, Shirvan, Kubas quickly caught the attention of home owners in Europe and the United States. The demand for these colorful, casual and inexpensive rugs grew steadily culminating perhaos at the turn of the 19th and the 20th cecntury.
Two decades later however it was all over.
Scholars point to three designs realated to a very old rug making tradition in the Caucasus; the so-called Eagle and Cloudband Kazaks (both actually Karabagh rugs) and Qasim Ushak rug .
The three are related to the very old Caucasian Dragon rugs feauturing motifs and dragon symbolism borrowed from Chinese mythologies.
The hugely popular Kazaks, Shirvans, and Kubas (refereed to in that period as Kabatan rugs) have no older predecessors; most artifcats in museums across Azeiberjan, Georgia and Aremania are marked as late 19th or early 20th cebtury,
Many motifs however which are dipalyed in their designs are featured in eralier textiles (e.g. scarves), ceramic tiles and other decoarive objets.
Some time ago, I posted a short article suggesting a strong Anatolian influence on the rug art in Morocco. While this influence is undeniable, it was not the Ottoman presence in Morocco that played part in the forming of the trend.
In fact, the Ottomans never reached the Kingdom of Morocco and their expansion stopped at Algeria.
This vicinity of the Ottomans and the trade with the Ottoman Algeria had no doubt a profound impact on the styles and designs of the Moroccan rug industry (municipal and rural), it was however, most likely the ancient connection of the Kingdom of Morocco with the Moorish Spain.
The architectural style, home décor and many cultural elements found in Morocco can be in fact traced back to the old Andalusia, part of the ancient Islamdom.
While this is a correction to my previous post, I am still convinced that it was the Anatolian influence that played a more important part on the formation of the carpet design in Morocco.
Most Rabat, Fez and Casablanca carpets bear a strong resemblance to Ottoman rugs from Anatolia; there are hardly any traces of Anatolian influence in Hispano-Moorish carpet design.
Furthermore, in term of technicality, the Moroccan city rugs are invariably executed in Ghiordes knot while the early Andalusian ones in the so-called Spanish knot.
Upon his return to Cairo with a degree from a French university, a young Egyptian architect Ramses Wisa Wassef saw his native country in a new light. He viewed children as the future of his nation.
In 1952, he decided to set-up a small weaving studio for the boys and girls of al Harania (near Giza) on the outskirts of the Egyptian capital.
In the Ramses Wissa Wassef Art Center, he allowed local children to develop weaving skills that would allow them to develp their full human potential.
“Human freedom never has as much meaning and value as when it allows the creative power of the child to come into action. All children are endowed with a creative power which includes an astonishing variety of potentialities. This power is necessary for the child to build up his own existence.” (-) R.W.W.
Children, some very very young, were encouraged to create works without preconceived ideas relying entirely on their imagination. They would be involved in all aspects of work at hand.
Natural dyes were obtained from plants grown and hand-picked in the centre’s very own garden,
Most of these children, adults by now, continue their art today. At the same centre. Their art is exhibited in museum and private collections around the world.
Their intricate kilims can be purchased in many shops, at auctions and online. The most precious and collectible ones however are those from the early 1950s: children’s kilims – colorful images of homes, mosques, people and animals sketched by unskilled hands against plain cotton yarn.
A.G.
Information for the visitors: Contack Mr. Ikram Nosshi, Director at Ramses Wissa Wassef Art Centre – Egypt E: inosshi@gmail.com T: +20122 312 1359. Art centre receive visitors daily from 10 am to 4 pm. Monday is a day off.
Archive (1961) photos by Peter Davis courtesy Ramses Wissa Wassef Centre
Berber rugs in ‘prayer design’ are not common. If found, they often appear very abstract and more than a glance may be required to find the typical elements characteristic to other, more traditional types of prayer rugs.
Below, is a Berber stylized rendition of a classic Ottoman prayer rug in the so-called ‘coupled column’ design as seen in the early 18th century Karapinar rug from Central Anatolia.
Upon a closer look, the old Bujaad rug with a range of bright (neon-like) colors bears features often found in Anatolian prayer rugs from the city of Melas in westren Turkey.
A colourful Bujaad rug below, feautures a mihrab, a traditional element of prayer design. It is howeber, as befits Berber art, preseneted amids other symbolic motifs and in a completely assymetric arrangement.
The heavy influence of the Ottomans in North Africa (e.g. neighboring Algeria) left a tangible mark in Morooco consisting mainly of luxury objects imported to the country for the wealthy Moroccan families. Those of course include opulent carpets.
Carpet works sprang out in Rabat, the country’s capital, manufacturing replicas of Anatolian designs; a tradition that remained unchanged till today.
Berbers were not spared from the Anatolian influence but they adopted it only in part enriching their own aesthetic styles that pre-date not only the Ottoman’s presence in North Africa but Islam itself.
Berber prayer rugs, as utilitarian mats designated for praying, are rarely found in the Atlas. However, elements alluding to Islamic traditions do appear in Berber art; more often than not, dissociated from their religious significance.
A.G.
It may seem ironic, but it turns out that the two most iconic and collectible Kazaks, are not Kazaks at all.
Back in the heyday of their popularity, the late 19th and very beginning of the 20th century, Caucasian rugs were only known by the names attributed to them by the rug merchants: Kazaks, Shirvan, and Kabistan rugs in reference those from Kuba (Karaghasly, Konakend Baku).
Much later, when the shaggy and once inexpensive rugs began to undergo an aesthetic metamorphosis revealing unique colour intensities, rich and complex patterns, scholars cut into the chase and joined the growing number of collectors.
The Caucasian rugs were then categorized forming several schools (or groups): Kazak, Karabagh, Shirvan, Genje, Kuba and Baku or Absheron school.
It became evident at that point that the two most famous Kazaks, the Eagle and the Cloudband Kazaks, are not Kazaks at all. Owing to their provenance as well as their technical structure, these two rugs are unequivocally members of the Karabagh school of the Caucasian rugs, and therefore are Karabaghs and not Kazaks.
A.G.
Kazak Rugs
In the attempt to define a Kazak rug, many collectors focus on geography. Kazak rayon however is but one administrative part of present-day Azejberjan; it shares history and ethnicity with the entire Caucasus.
The Caucasus is ethnically complex; its history witnessed great many migrations; Turkic tribes moving West, Georgians and Armenians moving East.
Owing to this peculiarity of the region, most scholars, view Kazak as a Caucasian rug originating from villages within Kazak and the surroundings parts of the country (Akstafa, Shulaver and Tovuz) and some territories abroad (Borchalou in Georgia, Fachralo and Lake Sewan in Armenia).
The Lake Sewan district includes such Kazak works as Lori Pambak, Lombala, Yeravan and of course Lake Sewan (often referred to as) Shield Kazaks.
Antique rugs from these areas are collectively referred to as the Kazak school.
All these rugs may feature different weaving techniques or materials, they share several patterns and colours leaving, for the most, a large margin for unpredictability and creative whimsicality more or less typical to their geography and ethnicity.
A.G.
