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If you were in Washington in October 1980, and
you noticed an inordinate number of glassy-eyed lost souls mumbling
to themselves about Z-spun and S-spun, and if the guy in the room
next to you at the Sheraton had a dozen Yomud chuvals tacked up on
his wall, and if even the winos down by Union Station were stopping
you and asking, "Hey buddy, ya got any Arabatchis?" then you know
what it's like to be in the throes of Turkomania. And yet by
November, it seemed like Turkomans had gone belly-up on the Potomac
(and everywhere else). What happened?
One possibility is that truly maniacal
Turkomania had peaked a year earlier - at least it had in
California, according to my friend and interpreter of things
Californian, Russ Rosen. Which makes sense, when you think about
California: one year it's Pet Rocks, the next year Tekke Torbas. In
other words, as Michael David noted in a past issue of
Oriental Rug Review, rugs are as subject to fads and fad
psychology as any other field of antiques.
But this still doesn't explain why prices and
interest in Turkoman weaving has fallen so drastically.
My pet theory - and I say this with some trepidation -
is that in their heart of hearts, most Turkomaniacs realize that
Turkoman stuff is BORING, I mean, how many million chuvals did the
Yomuds weave anyway? Did they have an assembly line going in
Tashkent? Were they importing them from Taiwan?
I happily admit that some (usually very early)
Turkoman weaving can be exquisite, but like the good girl in the
nursery rhyme, when it's good it's very good, and when it's bad it's
horrid. And there just isn't enough really old, really splendid
Turkoman stuff to go around. So, too often, what we end up talking
about and dealing in are boring Yomud chuvals and boring Tekke main
carpets.
Speaking of boredom, I should make mention of
that triumph of humorlessness, that veritable monument to how-many-khaliks-can-dance-on-the-head-of-a-pin
scholarship, Turkoman Studies. What I want to know is has anyone
-besides the editors - read Turkoman Studies cover to cover?
(Actually, I did hear of someone who had finished the book. He's
still in a coma.) One of the problems with the book, and with much
of the literature on Turkoman weaving in general, is an excess of
High Seriousness, or H-S. One of the
tell-tale symptoms of H-S is the dominance of technical analysis
over aesthetics. A related, but independent symptom, is when
considerations of rarity dominate considerations of beauty - and the
field of Turkoman Studies is nothing if not esoteric. One example
that comes to mind is work of the infamous Arabatchi. If you look in
HALI, Vol. 2, No. 4, p. 350, you'll see a couple of these goodies,
and read a glowing description of their charms (and of course, their
rarity). What you won't read, but what you can plainly see for
yourself, are two ugly step sisters, rugs so schlocky even Sears and
Roebuck wouldn't dare sell them. In fact, maybe Arabatchi work is
so hard to find because it's so ugly - the Arabatchi in a fit of
embarrassment over the uniform ugliness of the wool and the drawing
and the color of their various chuvals and torbas may have gathered
them into heaps and set them ablaze, hoping, like the villagers at
the end of Frankenstein, that through fire they had cleansed the
cosmos of ugliness and moral depravity. But no! . . . Somehow, a
few of their wretched artifacts escaped, and like the monster rising
from the rubble of the Baron's castle, their ugliness has once again
been loosed on the world.
You can see further evidence of the rarity
factor in Turkomania in the prices some Yomud weavings bring. The
Yomuds, of course, made main carpets and mafrashes and chuvals (Boy,
did they make chuvals!) like the other Turkoman tribes, but they
also wove fun little paraphernalia as well - gun covers, Bokche
bags, hearth rugs, pot holders, place mats, toilet seat covers,
shower curtains, etc. - that command, solely on the basis of their
scarcity, huge prices. All of which looks more like hype than
anything else. (The whole issue of rarity,
I think, is also what's behind the big drop in prices paid for
Chaudor work: Chaudor weaving is not as rare as previously thought.
Or rather, Chaudor may still be as scarce, but Arabatchi and Imreli
work is perceived as scarcer, and hence more desirable, and has
pushed Chaudor work out of the limelight.)
So perhaps what is going on is a retrenching of
opinion about the pursuit of the esoteric
(what's rare aint necessarily beautiful), and a greater selectivity
on the part of Collectors (Turkomanics
being a notoriously fussy – one might even say Anal Retentive –
lot).
But wait!!! I have it on the highest authority
that yet another previously unknown group of Turkoman weavings has
been discovered. Unfortunately, neither the technical analysis nor
the tribal attribution has been completed, and consequently, they
are known only as X-Group. This much, however, is known: the
dominant color of the field is a deep day-glo purple, and the Major
gul bears a striking resemblance to a honey dew melon. In short,
X-Group weaving promises to exceed Arabatchi work in both rarity
and hideousness, an exciting prospect for the true Turkoman
collector, which, if it works out, means we'll have Turkomania -
and Turkomaniacs - back with us any day now.
LK | |
