goat’s hair selvedge theory

One of the folk tales which is told by dealers as a means to identify an “authentic” Baluch carpet – which since 1980 is a questionable concept anyway – is that a coarse goat’s hair selvedge is said to prevent scorpions from wandering onto a carpet. Well, maybe, but it also works for snakes! Here’s a photograph from a 1994 issue of Hali where herpetologist and Baluch authority Jerry Anderson proves his theory! But did anyone ask: what’s to stop them creeping and crawling on to the carpet from the fringe ends? I’m sure the dealer would have an answer… Read the whole Tom Cole interview on his site here…

HALI: We have heard that during the recent troubles the Baluch peoples in northern Afghanistan were either killed or driven out by the local population, who resented them. Who are they? JA: They are a mixture of Baluch and Arabs, and also Lokharis, who do not weave piled rugs but instead make those dark, dark kilims which often have tufts of wool inserted on the flatweave, and are woven in two pieces and joined in the centre. There are also Brahuis in that area who are called Baluch. There is a book written by a Russian that tells of the whole distribution of the Brahuis in Khorasan, Transcaspia, the Bukhara area and the Mazar-i-Sharif area. So many different peoples are called Baluch, or call themselves Baluch. In Farsi, the word means beggar. It also has the sense of nakedness, a person living in a tent and clothed in rags. Now the word -luch means a parasitic type of person. Ba means ‘from’ or ‘of’, so the name Baluch has bad connotations in Farsi… [The] Sistani tribal lifestyle was essentially intact until about 1980, nomads moving around in the same locales as they had for centuries. But then the Sarbandi and many other Sistanis were displaced during the Islamic Revolution.

“Victory” rug with a twist

Here’s a rug from Kevin Sudeith’s collection (see warrug.com) which is a ‘victory’ rug with a twist. I confess I didn’t look at it very closely the first time around. It follows the (very) familiar format of the ‘Victory over the Soviets’ carpets which first appeared in the early 90s and which depicts the Soviet forces heading home along the highway that leads from the Salang Pass, across the “Friendship Bridge”, through Termez, and home…

But what is the 2002 date doing there? As Kevin notes, when you translate the text in Farsi you will find that what normally reads: “The Soviet forces are exiting Afghanistan” reads “The al-Qaeda forces are exiting Afghanistan”. This shows how quickly antecedent designs and motifs of tourist art can be recycled to catch a potential market, that is, the new population of ISAF and NATO forces which began to arrive in Afghanistan from 2002 onwards.

Kevin has many variants of this style on his site, which are worth careful examination to see these kinds of variations. For example, some include the dates of both the Saur revolution and the Iran-Iraq war, plus texts which (optimistically) read “international terrorists got wiped off [overthrown] from entire Afghanistan”.

a post-postmodern map of the world

Here’s an example of a “map of the world” rug where there’s no argument about the date! Except maybe it’s a little too prominent! See our earlier controversy about the attribution of dates to war rugs. In the 1980s and 90s many of the most interesting war rugs (and map rugs) were imported to London by the late Reuben and his son Yuda Ambalo. By Yuda’s account this example was the only map-of-the-world rug they actually commissioned (it’s huge, 3m x 5m) and when it arrived in London it was a great disappointment. Understandably. Beautifully made, but aesthetically morbid. The text in Farsi reads: “ordered by Ambalo, London, 1996″.

Bagram Bazaar

Bagram Air Base is a former Soviet airbase about 50 km north of Kabul. It is home to US and other Allied Military personnel and civilians and has also been used as the major prison facility for people detained by the US Military.

This site features the following photos and description:

The weekly bazaar at Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan. Local Afghan merchants gather just outside the base to sell everything from clothes to trinkets to guns to the large multinational military population stationed there. The bazaar, which brings a touch of Afghan culture to the military members, also brings a significant amount of money to the local economy.

War rugs on sale in Chicken Street, Kabul

Nasser Palangi is an Iranian artist who lives in Canberra. Recently returned from travelling, he’s shared these images taken in September 2006 on Kabul’s famous “Chicken Street” – our thanks to Nasser for allowing us to post them here.

War rugs for sale on Chicken Street; these depict the defeat of the Soviet army.

A pictorial/map rug hanging outside a Chicken Street shop.

A small boy lounges beneath a “September 11″ rug at a Chicken Street shopfront.

Turkmen rug dealers among treasures

This photograph, taken in 1989 by Chris Walter, is published in Oriental Rugs Today by Emmett Eiland, 2003, Berkeley Hills Books, Berkeley (p. 68). The caption reads: “Turkmen rug dealers and friends in Islamabad, Pakistan, 1989.”

But look closely at the details:

Especially the detail of the small rugs on the floor which depict a pistol and some unidentifiable text. But look on the wall in the background, and scroll down to compare with our previous post!

The detail of the hanging rug (behind, that is, the bag hanging in front, and the rolled rug in the foreground) seems to reveal the eccentric map-like mehrab and the particular gul we find in the Leyli and Majnun rugs in the previous post! And is that a bridge in the landscape behind? Are we seeing things?

Portrait rug 9: Kenan Evren

thanks to warrug.com

Kenan Evren was the President of Turkey from 1982 – 1989.

Kevin Sudeith’s new publication

Kevin is going to print with Pictorial War Rugs: Volume 1 (due October 15) and invites orders on his site. Await a review when I get my hands on a copy!

More on the Realist War Rug…

Josephine Jasperse has send more images of details of this fine silk rug from her collection, including this photograph of the reverse side.

She interprets it as showing the destruction of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Kabul, in 1989.

Kevin Sudeith has done some more research and suggests the architectural structure on the right side of Josephine’s rug is the Royal Palace in Kabul, as seen here.

Kevin refers us to this quote from Gordon Sharpless’ account in Tales of Asia:

We continued to Darulaman. This area was designed in 1923 by King Amanullah with the intention to have it the seat of the nation’s government. Included is (was) a large palace that must have been something to behold prior to the war. It is now almost completely destroyed. It is possible to walk around inside, but do so carefully. It’s pure rubble. Across the street from the palace is the still-closed Kabul Museum… heavily destroyed, apparently there is little left to put on display anyway.

Kevin adds that the arch on the left side of the field is the Pargham Lake Arch.

Here are some more details of the vignettes in the border areas:

Kevin further suggests the flag held by the horseman on the bottom left is a Taliban flag – see this image from Wikipedia – but I’m not so sure the image is clear enough to draw this conclusion.

Is there enough evidence to attribute a political position to this image? In a recent email, Kevin continues:

The Soviet tanks and the Royal Palace burning together suggests a pro-taliban political message… [however the use of] figuration is very anti-taliban-esque, so perhaps [this is] a Pakistani or Persian production?

We will need to see more examples of this genre to draw further conclusions.

From our outsider vantage point, this rug further complicates our questions about the design process – of both this rug, and by implication, the more traditional forms of the “war rug”. The Realist rug suggests the cartoon owes a lot to photographic sources, but that remains to be seen.

In general, we ask: who is the author? What is the design process? How are the original cartoons drawn up? Are rugs copied from one to the other? If rugs are copied pixel-by-pixel from the backs of other rugs, this would explain how frequently texts and even the map of Aghanistan appears in mirror-image on the front of the rug – which is not a problem for traditional imagery which uses bilateral symmetry in one or both axes.

The other significant question raised by the Realist Rug is the question of style. if it weren’t so overtly anti-Soviet, you would assume the artist/designer was trained in Moscow (or elsewhere in the former Soviet Union) in the style of Soviet Socialist Realism. All of the pictorial devices suggest someone trained within the Western/Soviet tradition – or at least someone visually adept and aware of the inheritance of the nineteenth century schools of Romanticism and Realism. Add to this the structures and devices of collage and montage, and only the material qualities of the rug identify it with the cultural context of Afghanistan and its neighbours. I’m thinking out loud here – but that’s the nature of the blog – and this rug raises exciting questions which take us outside of the ethnographic character of orthodox discussions of rug styles and attribution.

More details of the central parts of this rug may be found at this earlier post.

Comments please…

The Mosque in Herat

This cityscape rug is another sent by Kevin Sudeith of warrug.com showing the mosque in Herat. He bought this from the private collection of an Afghan carpet dealer.

Kevin refers this image to these two examples on his site for comparison, even though this example has an degree of simplification and stylisation which is quite engaging…

I’ll be loading some further examples of this image in the next days.