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It is curious that other
yurt-using nomads to the west of the area where the Yomud live – the
semi-arid eastern shore of the Caspian Sea, down into eastern Iran -
did not employ strut covers. One implication is that the covers were
not so much functional as decorative and ceremonial. Even more
curious, among the Turkmen, the Yomud group was by far the greatest
weavers of ok bash.
Although this particular ok bash has as its main ornamentation the
usual toothed zig zag design, it is executed in a particularly rich
color palette. Counterintuitively, the design runs around the piece;
the warps run in the same direction. The same design, also woven across
the warp, was used in sumakh on small single Afshar bags, which
should not be a surprise, since the Afshar were a Turkmen tribe a
millennium ago.
As part of the design running across this ok bash's warp is a series
of narrow "tuning fork" borders, which were probably
structure-driven in their original slit-tapestry form. They are
still very commonly used in slit-tapestry, a weft-faced flatweave,
and can be found in many types of kilims.
Parenthetically, it should be said that many very basic weaves in
the area under discussion are "warp-faced", including ubiquitous
covers called "jajim", and all manner of pack and tent bands.
In the Metropolitan Museum of Art's exhibition "Art Of The
First Cities",
recently taken down, there was a silver "proto-Elamite" kneeling
bull (Met's catalogue # 66.173), which the curator catalogued as
dating to about 3000 BC. The bull is wearing a "sarong" with
diagonal rows of carved "tuning fork" designs, probably running
across the warp.
Dr. Elizabeth Barber writes that weaving techniques and styles
remained pretty much separated until about 1500 BC1, so
one possibility, based on the silver bull's sarong, is that the
"tuning fork" slit tapestry design may have developed in
Mesopotamia.
In private correspondence, Dr. Barber suggests that, based on "the
evidence we have, which is pretty slim,....FACED weaves began in
Mesopotamia and/or the Levant after the development of woolly sheep
(ca. 4000 BC). Weft-faced weave then led eventually to tapestry
weave in this same general area--the first slim indications being
that the horrendously expensive cloths for which Ebla was
"world"-famous in the mid-3rd millennium were tapestry. Your
observation [about the proto- Elamite silver bull's clothing]
suggests that the first tapestry might have been even a bit earlier
and a bit farther EAST."
This "tuning fork" motif seems like such a simple design as to have
had many possible, independent derivations. But one conclusion could
be that slit-tapestry weaving, and by association, the "tuning fork"
border are quite early and found their way east from Mesopotamia
into Turkmen weaving. Surely other weaving designs and techniques
moved in the same direction.
RET
1)Barber, E., Women's Work, The First 20,000
Years, New York, 1994, p 259
Published in Dodds, D. R. and Eiland, M. L. Jr. (eds.),
Oriental Rugs from Atlantic Collections, Philadelphia, 1996,
Plate 251 |
