Tribal Early 20th Century Handmade Persian Gabbeh Accent Rug

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Tribal Early 20th Century Handmade Persian Gabbeh Accent Rug

About the Item

An antique Persian Gabbeh tribal accent rug handmade during the early 20th century. Measures: 4' 8" x 6' 4" Tribal rugs are those woven by tribes. What could be simpler? Which tribes, where? Are the tribes currently or recently seasonally nomadic, or are they settled and has this impacted on their weaving? What is the ethnography of the tribes? What kind of rugs do they make? What are their designs? Who does the actual work? Most tribes live in black goat-hair tents except for the Turkmen who reside in round felt yurts. There are tribes that you have never heard of, that don’t make rugs, or whose rugs are not available in commerce. Types of tribal rugs each have an internal coherence of style and technique. For example, the southwestern Persian Turkic Qashghai tribe shows a higher knot count, a short pile, an interest in urban patterns, a broad palette, and a format range including scatters, long rugs, and saddlebags. The Moroccan Atlas Mountains Berber tribes, for example, the Beni Ouarain, feature long piles, coarse knot counts, simple designs and restricted palettes, and often larger sizes. But both are equally tribal. The Kurdish tribes of eastern Turkey (Yuruks) weave scatters and long rugs, and colorful, long, two-piece kilims. The pile rugs have geometric patterns, symmetric knots, medium weaves, and all-wool construction. The reds are often from cochineal rather than madder. These tribes operate from Diyarbekir in the extreme southeast to Kars in the northeast and populate the area east of Sivas. They are semi-nomadic, in villages and in the countryside. A few are seasonally nomadic. The numerous tribes of the Caucasus have long been settled in villages. The groups once were nomadic, but wave after wave of invaders have quickly settled down and we call their rugs village pieces rather than tribal products. For example, the Kazak area weavers, mostly Armenian, have been there for centuries and cannot be called tribal anymore. Only in the very southeast, the surviving Moghan Shah Savan (“Lovers of the Shah”) Turkic tribes can truly be said to weave tribal rugs. These groups are ethnically identical to their Persian comperes across the border. One test of tribalism is the proliferation of saddlebags and other nomadic woven paraphernalia. Caucasian Soumak saddlebags are relatively rarer than are Persian Shah saddlebags, box bags, and other woven objects, but still indicate a once more mobile population. The Persian Moghan Shah Savan tribes were settled only recently and their woven artifacts are still on the market. As they were nomadic, they made few or fewer pile carpets. The recent proliferation of Shah Savan attributions to Northwest Persian geometric long rugs is erroneous. East of Azerbaijan are the Turkmens, primarily from Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Afghanistan, with some in Persia, weaving what are considered to be the best nomadic tribal carpets and rugs, with ’guls (flowers)’ emblematic of each tribe, excellent quality wool, red grounds, and a wide range of bags, trappings, tent bands and various household weavings for their felt tents. They are woven on ground looms. The populous and important Tekke tribe weaves some of the best carpets in seven feet by ten size and these have been prized as library carpets per excellence. These tribes are still nomadic, following the seasons and avoiding the inhospitable Central Asian deserts. They include the Tekke, Yomud, Ersari, Saryk, Salor and lesser groups. Kurdish tribes (“Kordi”, Kurd Quchan) inhabit northeast Persia and are more settled and weave large scatters on wool with Turkmen, Turkish and Kurdish elements. They were transferred from the northwest of Iran to combat the marauding Turkmen centuries ago. South of them, in Khorassan and Sistan, and across the border into Afghanistan, are the various nomadic Balouch tribes. Almost all their rugs are scatters and various types of bag faces, with wool foundations, geometric patterns, a penchant for dark blues and wine reds, natural camel hair grounds, and numerous prayer designs. A few larger antique tent carpets can be found. The large contingent of Turkic Afshars resides in the Persian southeast in Kerman Province. They are still somewhat nomadic. They will weave anything, any format, design, colorway and palette, material, and technique. Symmetric knots, asymmetric knots, wool foundations, cotton foundations, botehs (paisleys), Herati design, Mina Khani pattern, scatter size, gallery carpets, saddlebags, whatever. But they don’t weave kilims. They borrow from everywhere and the very earliest extant Afshar rugs are a lot in common with nearby urban Kermans from the middle 19th century. These are both truly collectible and under-collected. Continuing around Persia, we find the Qashghai and Khamseh tribes in the southwestern Fars Province. The Qashqai are Turkic and many are still seasonally nomadic. Their sheep yield some of the best wool and the tribal women weave rugs for sale increasingly in urban qualities and patterns, Gabbeh (“unclipped”) scatters in simple geometries for both tent use and increasingly for sale, saddlebags and a variety of colorful, well-woven kilims. The more sedentary Khamseh composed of Persian Turkic and Arab groups, also weave geometric, colorful rustic rugs and bags, often borrowing motives from the Qashqai. The Lurs in Luristan farther northward continue the Fars tribal tradition with geometric, all wool pieces from large scatters to saddlebags. The largest Persian tribal group are the various Kurdish segments, in Kurdistan to the northwest, but really everywhere, weaving a vast variety of rugs, carpets, kilims, bag faces, saddle rugs, pictorials, and anything else. Some Kurds are settled, as around Sehna and Bidjar, and weave urban rugs, some very fine indeed, with medallion or allover patterns, on wool, silk or cotton foundations. The tribes have settled in various degrees, but the western Jaff and Sanjabi Kurds are still partially nomadic. Their characteristic repeating diamond pattern saddlebags are a collector mainstay. The Bakhtiari tribes of west-central Persia are known for their large, mixed technique saddlebags on wool foundations. The rugs erroneously called “Bakhtiari” are actually products of the village weavers of the Chahar Mahal district often working to the order of their Bakhtiari overlords. North of the Turkmens in Central Asia are the tribal, still partially nomadic Uzbeks, Kirghiz, Tajiks, Karakalpaks, and Kazakhs. These weave a variety of carpets often with borrowed Turkmen or Persian features. The Kirghiz adopt and adapt certain Chinese elements in their carpet design, while the Uzbeks lean on Ersari Turkmen elements. The Kazakhs weave the shaggiest, simplest, most direct of these non-Turkmens. Red, from brick to rust to rose is the major color. Tribal weavers borrow from urban sources yet transform the motives into their own. The boteh or cone is probably an urban Indian notion, but the Afshars have shaped it in a thousand ways: chunky and faceted, upright and neatly positioned in a textile pattern, packed closely or widely spaced. Although there are tribal groups in India, they are not rug makers. The Uighur weavers of Chinese Turkestan are all in cities and there is no tradition of tribal weaving there. There has always been a two-way flow of patterns from tribal weavers to urban designers and back again. Cut it off and the urbans become too precious and devoid of strength, and the tribalists lose a vast source of inspiration.

Dimensions:
Width: 56 in (142.24 cm)Length: 76 in (193.04 cm)
Style:
Tribal (In the Style Of)
Materials and Techniques:
Wool,Hand-Knotted
Place of Origin:
Iran
Period:
Early 20th Century
Date of Manufacture:
Early 20th Century
Condition:
Seller Location:
New York, NY
Reference Number:
Seller: 281571stDibs: LU882324126122