|
This apparently unused bedding bag or mafrash1
is typical of those thought to have been woven by nomads in Qarabagh.
These people, known variously as Terekemeh or Elat2,
were active as late as 1976, as evidenced by photos from that time
in a private Baku collection showing applique felt decorated
ahlachik (nomad yurts).
It is probable that considerably more sumakh bags were woven by
Transcaucasian nomads than is popularly thought, in part based on
the 12,000-piece collection of Azeri bags and other textiles
preserved in the Baku Carpet Museum.
This mafrash has all the original goathair “handles” sewn onto the
edges of the bag. For exhibition purposes, it is shown upside down.
In use, it would have rested on its striped underside at the back
of, or along the interior sides of, an ahlachik or kume3,
filled during the day with folded bedding and serving as a back
rest. During migrations,
pairs of mafrash would have been strapped onto
camels, one on each side. In transit, the bedding would have
been covered with a jajim (cover cloth) to keep out dust, held in
place by the heavy braided black and ivory wool cord seen lying on
top of the inverted mafrash in the image. To hold the jajim in
place, the cord would have been looped back and forth between the
goathair handles and tied securely. These cords almost never survive
attached to mafrash in Western collections, but there are several
such in the Carpet Museum in Baku, in the Republic of Azerbaijan.
Qarabagh mafrash are heavier and a bit less delicate in design than
those from neighboring Iranian Azarbayjan, and they use cotton more
often than ivory wool for white sumakh patterning.
RET
1) Mafrash (a Farsi
word) are also referred to as farmesh, the Turki term used by the
anthropologist Richard Tapper, who has years of fieldwork experience
among the Azarbayjani nomads.
2) From conversations
in Baku with Dr. Kubra Aliyeva, of the Azerbaijan National Academy
of Sciences, Institute of Architecture and Art, in May, 2003.
3) Ahlachik are round, cold weather-resistant, felt-covered, dome-shaped
dwellings used by nomads in the Transcaucasus and northern
Azarbayjan, while kume are smaller, less complex and oblong.
|
){kind=link}