Textile catch-up

I've been picking and choosing textile presentations this week, and here's what I think is the best of the current offerings. Blessedly the sound quality was good and the presenter experienced.

The terminology was pretty specialized, but I did my humble best. Here's what the Haaji Baba Rug Club just put up online.

Michael Franzes, a dry, erudite old Brit, took us through the highly selective Orient Stars  collection of Anatolian wool rugs from 400 BCE to about 1000 CE. They've established these ages by carbon dating.

One interesting point: some rugs with very similar motifs and general design have been dated as much as 300 years apart. Before carbon dating I wonder if they'd have been thought to be similar in age.

There were animal and bird motifs, my favorite being this chicken

And bactrian camels. Notice the wool riding boots, with chicken motifs.  I'll bet the boots were felted for weatherproofing and long wear

This map shows the passage of rugs trading back and forward over the region of the Silk Road. It's been a commercial highway for many centuries.

There was some discussion of the significance of the symbols and he tactfully said it continues to be a matter of conjecture. Rather than saying I dunno really, don't ask me, I only work here.

It's interesting, once you've seen these rugs, to see them depicted in Renaissance paintings, in the homes of wealthy patrons of the arts. 

Another art related point I liked was the motif of an animal head crossing into the space of a border, seen in rugs also in ancient mosaics. See this next image. This is a trusty design feature, which I like to use to this day, to break the distance between viewer and design.

And I really love this design and plan to swipe it at some point.

It's a skirt, with the stylized antler motif seen in that region's designs.

So there you have a brief hurtle through a long and significant period, of sophisticated design using comparatively simple tools and dyes. 

There was little in the way of technical material information or kinds of skills, aside from saying they're knotted  rather than woven rugs.  

The emphasis on this sort of program by collectors  is the history and provenance of the works in the collection, so they pay less attention to the dyes used to achieve the range of colors, or the fibers and how they're spun. Maybe that's another matter for continuing conjecture!