what? where?

Do any of our readers recognise the subject of this carpet?

Sydney Harbour Bridge in Mashhad

Readers will remember our previous speculations about the identity of the many arched bridge war rugs. We wondered how rug makers might find images of Sydney harbour… well here I am in a take-away outside the Mashhad bus station. If here, why not just across the border?

Helicopters and other images in Afghanistan and Iraq

While we’re on the theme of helicopters (see below, or type “helicopter” into the search bar), Max Allen points us to this example – a helicopter appearing on a military patch. This is a UK/Australian/Dutch coalition Medevac patch made in Afghanistan.

Patches are of interest to the RoW project in the sense that all imagery which finds its way into the public domain (logos, postage stamps, posters, television, videos etc.) has the potential to be appropriated by rug-designers. And this is especially relevant with respect to images of militaria and other images which carry specific ideological messages.

As Max comments, military personnel sew embroidered patches on the shoulders of their uniforms to identify the unit to which they belong. The patches range from simple to elaborate, sometimes incorporating recognizable imagery and writing; until recently, official U.S. patches were colourful but are now only in in the dull browns and greens of camouflage.

In addition to the official unit patches, there are so-called “Friday patches” which military personnel wear on their off-duty clothing. Early in the various Gulf Wars these unofficial American patches were often stunningly vulgar (as in the final example below). They are not produced anymore.

Both kinds show weaponry drawn in an outline style and using isometric perspective that has been copied on (or from) the war rugs. This aircraft carrier appears in the Twin Towers rugs:

Here are some other examples from Max’s collection…

“Mystery” solved: call to prayer

This is not a “war rug”, but given our interest in contemporaneous innovation in Afghan carpets of other subjects, this caught our eye some time ago. In an earlier post, we speculated about the meaning of the cloud of text motif in this image. At 5.15am on my second morning in Istanbul, I awoke to the dawn call to prayer, and this image came to mind. Perhaps the seemingly random “texts” which fill the background of other rugs is explained by this example? If so, it’s an eloquent visual metaphor…

If we had audio, you could see what I’m hearing, over the Golden Horn…

Artist profile of Michgan Hozain from ‘Weavings of War’

In the catalogue to the exhibition curated by Ariel Zeitlin Cooke “Weavings of War: Fabrics of Memory” (written with Marsha MacDowell and available here) is referenced an artist profile of Michgan Hozain, a woman of Hazara origin who teaches weaving and monitors rug quality at a not-for-profit women’s centre in Kabul. The profile is drawn from video interviews conducted by artist and Professor Michael Schnorr in Afghanistan in early 2004.

Caption: “Like most Afghan weavers, Michgan has a loom at home where she can attend to her son and other domestic duties while she weaves. Photo by Michael Schnorr.”

This account confirms that many men learnt weaving in refugee camps. Michgan’s husband, Merza, had been a weaver before he lived in a Peshawar camp, where (suggests Ariel) it may be that Merza learnt the Turkmen-style knot technique he subsequently taught Michgan. The profile continues:

Some weavers of Afghan war rugs, including Michgan’s own aunts, seem to be expressing in their work their own memories of war and will tell you the exact incidents they are depicting: “This is when the mosque in my village was destroyed.” Michgan, however, says she weaves her war rugs “because they will sell”. When she had been weaving for a few years, her family discovered that war rugs would fetch more money in the marketplace, and so her husband designed a few for them to make, with excellent results: “We sold the [war] rugs in the bazaar to the people, commanders, for example, who were coming from foreign coutnries at that time.” she recalls. The centre where Michgan works keeps a similar focus on profits: they churn out a certain number of war rugs every year, buying them from the women who participate on a commissioned or semi-comissioned basis. Merza continues to weave alongside his wife but says he is trying to find more lucrative work.”

Caption: “Rug. Michgan Hozain (Hazara), Afghanistan, 2004, Wool and cotton, 16 x 27 inches. Collection of City Lore. Photo by Martha Cooper. “9/11″ rugs appeared a few months after the World Trade Center was destroyed in 2001. Some Americans have speculated that Afghan weavers were rejoicing at the disaster but Hozain says she weaves them for sale because she finds a market for them.”

“Neither Hozain wants their son to learn to weave:”We want him to go to school and live a better life than us,” says Michgan. In fact, she informs us, “Whenever somebody comes to visit the carpets in our home or our centre we explain to them ‘Send your daughters to be educated [to do something] besides carpet-weaving.’ It is our message to them.”

We thank Ariel Zeitlin Cooke for her permission to reproduce this material.

Update on attribution of ‘Anti-Soviet Socialist Realist” rug

Archives from the Ella Naef collection in Los Angeles reveal that in 1999 Palmer E. Rabey was able to acquire a version of this rug from a refugee camp near Peshawar, and the attribution is that it was made by Turkmen people. However the date and the question of the authorship of the design (and caption) remain unresolved. See the previous post on this topic.

An update …

We’ve uncovered some more images – and perhaps the original model – for the “Mother Afghanistan” rug exhibited by former US Army Ordnance Officer Tatiana Divens in 1993.

More details are in the original post, “Anti-Soviet Socialist Realism”.

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?

Could this be the mystery bridge?

The following photograph is by Mikhail Evstafiev, a Moscow State University Masters of Journalism graduate who served as a volunteer soldier in Afghanistan for two years in the late 1980s. He became a photographer, editor and painter after the war, and has worked for the Reuters News Agency since 1996 as a photographer and editor.

The image is from the book Afghanistan: Lifting the Veil by the Staff of the Reuters, and is captioned:

Soviet troops cross over a bridge from Afghanistan into the town of Termez, USSR, during the last day of the withdrawal of soviet forces from Afghanistan, February 15, 1989. The armoured personnel carrier flies the forces’ colours. The withdrawiang soldiers were given a warm welcome by family members and military and local officials.

Is this a Sydney Harbour Bridge “war rug”?

Previous posts have speculated about the subject matter of these mystery bridge war rugs. This example is the closest we’ve yet seen to fitting the actual appearance of the “coathanger”, as it’s known locally. It is large, of floppy construction, and appears to use contemporary synthetic dyes – see for example the cerulean blue sky. Like the others, there are elements of flat weave, and generous borders, suggesting a common origin. If we follow the conventional wisdom that images are more abstracted through the process of copying, perhaps this is the earliest of the three? Can any readers shed light on the origin of this image? See details below, and photographs, to see why we find this attribution so persuasive…