fifteenth century design in a nineteenth century rug

Fifteenth Century Design in a Nineteenth Century RugAuthor(s): Amos B. ThacherSource: The Art Bulletin, Vol. 21, No. 4 (Dec., 1939), pp. 397-401Published by: College Art AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3046669 .

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NOTES AND REVIEWS

FIFTEENTH CENTURY DESIGN IN A NINETEENTH CENTURY RUG

BY AMOS B. THACHER1

Figure I shows a Kazak rug (5'Io"X4'2") woven prob- ably in the third quarter of the nineteenth century. The pattern, executed in the vividly virile colors characteristic of this group of rugs, is simplicity itself, but holds, never- theless, much interest for the student of design.

Most Caucasian patterns may be traced back through the "Kuba" group to the "Dragon Carpets" or their Persian contemporaries. The parentage of design in this Kazak rug, however, goes back by an entirely different line to the early rugs of Asia Minor. One of the earliest of these rugs still in existence, the "Dragon and Phoenix" rug of the Staatliche Museen, Berlin (Fig. 2), generally thought to have been woven in Asia Minor about 1400, has a field divided into rectangles in a manner very similar to the field of this rug. There is the same triangulation of the corners of the rectangles to form octagons, the same fond- ness for latch-hooks. The Marby rug in the National Historical Museum, Stockholm, is of the same class.2 A similar division of the field appears in a rug depicted in Domenico di Bartolo's fresco (Spedale, Siena) of the Mar- riage of the Foundlings (I44o-I444).3 The same type of field pattern is shown on a rug in Niccol6 di Buonaccorso's Sposalizio (National Gallery, London, c. 1380), and in the Berlin Madonna no. o072 (c. 1375) in the style of Lippo Memmi.' All of these rugs mentioned for comparison show within the octagons grotesque animal forms, possibly of Mongol derivation, but the rug of Hans Memling's Vir- gin and Child formerly in the Austrian Imperial Palace in Vienna has a field similarly divided into rectangles modi- fied into octagons containing motives almost identical with those in the rug under discussion (Fig. 3).

The rugs thus far cited all belong to the Seljuq period, a time when rectilinear geometry was in high favor. The rise of the Ottoman dynasty, with its conquests of Cairo and Tabriz, brought about a more sophisticated style in Turkish court circles through the adoption, first, of Cairene mosaic motives and, second, of Persian floral forms. Division of the field into rectangles was retained for a time in some of the so-called Cairene rugs (Fig. 4), but the combination was not very happy and, with the com- ing of Persian weavers from Tabriz, soon disappeared in favor of the wholly Persian schemes of the so-called Court Manufactory type. That is, the type disappeared in court circles. The humbler nomads of Asia Minor, true to the conservatism of their caste, retained and embellished the

design (Fig. 5), and from these early examples sprang a host of so-called Bergamas which employed a pattern derived from the old rectangle type. Perhaps the most dis- tinguished kind is that exemplified in Figure 6. While this diversification was taking place there remained somewhere in Asia Minor peasants sufficiently faithful to tradition to keep the primitive form alive, as witness the little rug in the Ballard Collection (Fig. 7) the field of which differs in no important respect from the model used by Hans Memling. I can find no record of other nineteenth century Anatolian rugs employing this design, but its use in Kazak rugs is common. It appears also in other Caucasian weaves.

There is another seemingly unrelated group of rugs in which the same design elements have been preserved to the present day-the nomadic rugs of Central Asia. Rectangu- lation of the field is a cardinal element of Tekke rugs, as is the use of octagons. Latch-hooked diamonds are a favorite motive of the Yomuds, and stepped diamonds are popular in the border stripes of all the Turkoman tribes. The kinship between the rugs of Turkestan and Asia Minor is perhaps much closer than a cursory comparison of the two groups would indicate. This kinship is easily explained by the fact that the Seljuq Turks who built the foundation of the Anatolian peasant rug art that we know came from Merv, where they, or their cousins, were the forebears of the present-day Turkomans of Central Asia.

The weavers of the rugs we call Kazak are a nomadic people who roam over the hills and mountains of Erivan, a district situated roughly at the junction of Caucasia, Asia Minor, and the Persian province of Azerbaijan. They must come into contact with the Turkish peasants of east- ern Asia Minor, hence could have acquired this pattern from them and passed it on to the other Causasian peoples. However, that is mere conjecture, and a quite different explanation is equally tenable. The Kazaks are an offshoot of the great Kirghiz horde which roams over northern Turkestan and up into the Russian steppes. The Kirghiz of the steppes also weave rugs, and the similarity of pattern between their rugs and the rug under discussion is too obvious to be explained as a coincidence. Bogoliouboff published a Kirghiz rug (Fig. 8) in the field of which are octagons differing from those of the Kazak only in that their diagonal sides are stepped rather than latch-hooked. The octagons contain the same sort of latch-hooked diamonds, and the main border is almost identical. Moreover, the Kirghiz frequently divided the field of their rugs into rectangles (Fig. 9). Both Bogoliouboff and Grote-Hasen- balg state that the Kirghiz learned the art of weaving from the Turkomans a very long time ago and have no patterns of their own. Hence it is quite credible that the pattern we are discussing was taken over by the Kirghiz from Turkomans and carried by the Kazak-Kirghiz to their present home, and there executed in new colors borrowed from their neighbors of Asia Minor. In either event it appears that a rug pattern used by the Seljuq Turks over nine hundred years ago has survived in the peasant art of Anatolian Turks, Kazaks, Turkomans, and Kirghiz, with the inescapable inference that the original pattern was developed among the hordes of Central Asia.

I. A paper read before the Hajji Baba Club. 2. Lamm, C. J., The Marby Rug, in Svenska Orientsiillskapets

Arsbok, 1937. Also published in Sarre and Trenkwald, Altor- ientalischer Teppiche, II, pl. 2.

3. For this and the following two Italian paintings see Bode and Kiihnel, Antique Rugs from the Near East, New York, 1922, figs. 64-66.

4. There are other versions of this composition in the collection of Lord Lee of Fareham and in that of Professor Paul Clemen of Bonn. Lippo Memmi's original seems to be lost.



FIG. I--Garden City, Collection of A. B. Thacher: 19th Century Kazak Rug

FIG. 2-Berlin, Staatliche Museen: "Dragon and Phoenix" Rug



FIG. 3-Vienna, Imperial Palace (formerly) Virgin and Child, by Memling

FIG. 4-Berlin, Staatliche Museen: So-Called Cairene Rug

FIG. 5-Berlin, Staatliche Museen: Anatolian Rug with Geometrical Pattern



FIG. 6-Eighteenth or Early Nineteenth Century A7natolian Rug

FIG. 7-New York, Metropolitan Museum: Nineteenth Century Anatolian Rug



FIG. 8-Kirghiz Rug FIG. 9-Kirghiz Rug



fifteenth century design in a nineteenth century rug

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