Stories
Why is your rug so intriguing?
Persian art tends to de-realise, so the metaphor follows a descending gradation: human is compared to animal, animal to flower, flower to gemstone. This progression may seem to go from the animate to the inanimate, but the Persian is indifferent to this, as she is content with the interplay of shapes and colours. Persian art does not try to re-live emotion, it takes memory as memory, works with dreams, shades, ghosts, patterns and colours. The aim is to leave imagery behind, as it is lifeless and idolises a point in time. Better to go beyond, and reveal the beating heart of the life that moves amongst us all like a magic lantern in a shadow play. This comfort with explosion to the infinite completely up-ends the western stasis of solid unity, the known object.
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SOFREH of the Zagros
QASHGAI SOFREH Handmade in Southern Persia 100% Handspun Sheep Wool Zagros Mountain Area "SOFREH" is one of the most important and frequently used textiles of a nomadic family, the Sofreh is used in the making and storing and serving of bread, the square size of the Soffre is important as it has to be used from all sides and it cant be too large as you don't want anyone to walk on it. The Soffre is a flatweave and always has a plain centre or very simple centre as it is more practical for making bread and easy to clean. This is perfect for the nuclear family but one finds long narrow Sofreh among various nomadic tribes to suit the enlarged families of the nomadic tribal culture. Brothers remain “at home” so when they marry (often more than once) and have children the family they require ever larger Sofreh. The weave of the Sofreh is very dense and tight, you could imagine in a nomadic tent there would be no tables or even wood so the Sofreh is used as both. Fabric is mostly Sheep wool but Goat and horse hair is also used. Click on any Sofreh to see the Collection!
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Rice with Crust - Persian Tahdig
Two cups of long grain rice. Thoroughly wash rice and soak for an hour Boil for 5 minutes in salted water then rinse in cold water and drain in a fine sieve You've already made a third of a cup of saffron water and melted a big knob of ghee in generous amount of olive oil. Third of a cup. Put a third of oils and saffron water in heated pan and mix Tip rice into pan. This conical sieve gives the right cone shape of rice. Gently pat down rice keeping a rise in the middle. Poke a few holes in the rice, cover on low/medium heat for 5 mins Pour remaining oil and saffron water round the edge With a tea towel covered lid put on a very low flame for one hour. take saucepan off and put it into shallow cold water for a minute or two. Quickly turn out on a board or unbreakable plate and there is your Tahdig. Delicious crust and the rice almost flows, perfectly cooked, no sticky starch.
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BAGHALI PILAU
Persians love fresh herbs. Even the most bitter herbs are handled with aplomb, so the final result is perfectly balanced. For example, this is a simple rice dish with a whole cup of finely chopped dill. 2 cups basmati-style rice. Cook as usual. 1 cup steamed broad beans. Fresh or frozen not the brown dried type. 1 cup dill, finely chopped. pinch saffron salt and pepper to taste.
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The Afghan Dish
THE AFGHAN DISH 2 large Eggplant 1 large green Capsicum 2 medium brown Onions 1 cup Passata sauce 2 cloves of garlic 1 cup Greek Yogurt 1tsp Chilli pwd Olive Oil Salt Tbsp fresh Corriander 1/ Cut Eggplant into circles and sprinkle with salt, put in a colander & leave for 30mins or more. 2/ Put Yogurt in a piece of chux in a strainer & put in fridge for a couple of hours, its to get some of the liquid out, it makes a creamier yogurt. 3/ Slice Onion & Capsicum. 4/ Rise salt from Eggplant and then fry Eggplant until cooked on both sides, it will take a lot of oil. 5/ Fry Onion. 6/ Layer veges as you would Lasagne in a large pan or frypan with lid In order of :- *Eggplant *Capsicum *Onion *Sprinkle of half the Chilli pwd *Half Passata sauce Then repeat finishing with and Eggplant layer. 7/ Cook on a very low heat for 30 mins or until capsicum is soft, if it drys out you may need to add a little water. 8/ Get strained Yogurt & mix with crushed garlic & salt. 9/ When veges are cooled a little cover with Yogurt mix and sprinkle with coriander. Eat hot or cold with rice or fresh bread. Enjoy!
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DYES - The Tale
Alchemy was the dyers’ magic prior to our modern knowledge of chemistry. "Today a turquoise from your plain wool, tomorrow pure gold from your old coppers." Englishman Richard Hakluyt belonged to a "Middle Temple" and sent a dyer to Persia in 1579AD with the written instructions..."In Persia you will find carpets of coarse thrummed wool, the best in the world, and excellently coloured: those towns you must repair to, and you must use means to learn all the order of dyeing those thrums, which are so dyed as neither rain, wine nor vinegar can stain." The MysteryThe vast and glorious kaleidoscope of colour found in oriental carpets came from dyeing traditions now mostly lost, like the nomadic horsemen themselves, cultural victims of the Industrial Revolution and 20th century imperatives. The trail of evidence has been picked up in various areas and disciplines. The CluesThe published work of Bruggerman and Boehmer identifies dye flora growing today in West Asia and then matches constituents to the colouring compounds in old rugs. Exact recipes, however are more difficult. Scouring old Persian texts has been an interesting if sometimes puzzling source, coming up with descriptions like this:- "Rose Colour: Take ratanjot, a thought of cochineal, madder or Lac colour a very little, add cinnabar and water and soak for 12 hours. Add the wool and steep for 36 hours, boil for 3 hours, then bathe in alum and wash well. Afterwards dry in the shade." Extenuating CircumstancesLike the colour of wine, regional variations occur even within the same recipes. But each village area and especially each tribe had their own palette. This greatly assists tapetologists detect the origins of particular carpets but does not help to find and reproduce particular dye recipes. Compounding this was the secrecy that protected the dyers guild. Weird and wonderful ingredients and transmutation processes were included to obscure the important steps and preserve the dyers’ standing as a magician in the community. The Dyes - Traditional Organic Reds were produced from the roots of the madder bush but a skilled dyer could conjure shades ranging from pale orange to deep purple with the same root. Blues are vat fermented and came mostly from indigo tinctoria although the Afshar and Belouch preferred the Anil and linifolia varieties. Yoghurt and pomegranate produces a bright orange regarded as the true Afghan colour by Afghans themselves but labelled synthetic by dilettantes. With every Mohan, Lal and Baksheesh entering the noble and historic carpet trade misinformation abounds! Both the leaves but especially the sour inedible pith and skin of the pomegranate could produce red through yellow hues by the judicious application of mordants and astringents such as alum, yoghurt, wild citrus, walnut galls, potash and rusted iron water. The mordant was used to fix the colour as well as to change the hue. For instance the West Persia wild delphinium produces yellow with alum and green with copper sulphate. Most greens, however, were double dyed yellow with blue and most yellows show safflower predominant. The beautiful shades once produced by these dyers were always a complex mixture of plants and minerals. The Dyes - Imported - A Feminist View The dye, cochineal, a native of Guatemala, became popular in Europe during the English Georgian period and was imported in vast quantities into Turkey then Persia and later via Russia and India. This bullish trade died overnight, eclipsed by the discovery in Germany of aniline dyes - red, blue, brown and black at first and others later. By the 1870’s these inferior dyes were widespread, appearing in rugs from even the remotest communities like the nomadic Tibetans. Azo dyes were the second generation of imported synthetic dyes, and were, unfortunately, light fast. Bright apricot and orange colours were most popular with the weavers. The advent of synthetic dyes in the East was coupled with advances in weaving technology in Europe (invention of the jacquard loom etc.). Almost overnight tens of thousands of shawl and brocade cloth weavers and fabric printers, all traditional male occupations, became redundant. At the same time the carpet weavers, mostly women, at home, were released from the tyranny of the dyers, and, a more titanic change could not have been forecast - women could use the dyes themselves! Many took on the role of principle breadwinner in many households. This improvement in status continued throughout most of the 20th century. The emergent wealthy Trans-Atlantic middle classes had already deemed oriental carpets the height of fashion. There was public brawling at Liberties’ carpet openings and shady types profiteering among the Virginian plantations. Carpet making revenue in the east rose accordingly.
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The Oriental Rug - A Brief History
Circa 8,000 BCE First domestication of the sheep in Luristan SW Persia Off-loom textiles such as felt, knitting, and macrame. 7,000 year old jars of wine found in the Zagros Mountains. Early loom technology. By Circa 5000 BCE Wool was being dyed and woven. Circa 3,000 to 500 BCE. Elam. The first great Persian Empire. The first writing, pre-dating the Mesopotamian. They refined the art of spinning, dyeing, and weaving to an extent unsurpassed to this day. 500BCE to present day. Central Asian nomadic tribes also developed the art of the rug to equal the cities. 7th – 10th Century AD - Advent of Islam facilitated urban expansion. Women as the newly exclusive housekeepers and home-weavers became the de facto custodians of tribal lore expressed via the designs they wove. 16th – 17thCentury - Rise of Europe The Renaissance was matched by a concomitant flowering in Central and Near Asia with a new emphasis on powerful and wealthy sedentary city-states and kingdoms: The Ottomans in Turkey and the Safavids in Persia, the Central Asian dynasties in Herat and Samarkand, and their cousins in India, the Moghuls. This is the period of the advent of the realistic floral rug. Cartoons, or graph paper blueprints, began to be drawn first, moving creative intent from the weaver to the designer. Whole teams of artisans became involved. As with European Renaissance painting, the first fashionable decorative carpets were made in ateliers under the name of a great designer. Traditional home-based weaving continued. The first large-scale rug exports to a broader Europe are reflected in paintings of the period. Circa 1720’s – Destruction of Urban Weaves Persian royalty and their cities were destroyed by Afghan, Belouch, Afshar and Turkoman nomadic tribes. Tribes and villages continue their home-based weaving unabated. The Ottoman workshops produced great numbers of rugs. Kurdish khans keep the fine workshop tradition alive and the culture flowers sans Persian hegemony. Late 19th Century Revival The rise of western economic power following the industrial revolution causes a massive upswing in demand for the oriental carpet. The first western run manufactories were set up to supply the increasing demand. This new demand primarily came from the nouveau rich and was exclusively for the floral, Imperial style of court weaving. The floral carpets of the Safavid workshops were copied ad infinitum. The modern floral style Persian rug was born and has since become known as ‘revival weaving’. Meanwhile the traditional feminine home-based weaving art with the meaningful apotropaic and shamanistic symbols begins to decline with the advent of the cash rug economy, synthetic dyes, and machine spun worsted yarns. 20th Century - Decline in Quality - Increase in Quantity Oriental Carpets reflect the momentous changes of the last 100 years. The discovery of synthetic dyes was a by-product of the research into radium and they spread just as virulently through eastern carpets. Increasingly, the traditional symbiotic relationship of weaver to wool producer and dyer became undermined by a new commercial imperative. The importance of Mid-East oil brought western economic politics into the equation. By the end of the First World War the degeneration was in full swing. The weak Persian Government tried to halt the degeneration and took extreme counter-measures, such as, proclaiming the death penalty for using inferior dyes. Tribes living in or around sensitive oil producing areas were forcibly settled. The chivalrous age of cavalry became obsolescent as lines of oil-powered, lethal armoured tanks choked the migration routes. Motorised ground and air transport and international politics turned even the most far-flung reaches of desert and mountainside into the pawns of questionable international interests. Virtually the whole of Central and Western Asia was carved up to suit European equations. The demand for rugs increased steadily and the only consideration of worth also became a European equation: construction. The noble traditional aesthetics reduced to simple technique, with the number of knots-per-square-inch the new benchmark. The beauty of the antique rug, with its glorious, naturally harmonious colours and spontaneously poetic designs, became a thing of the past. This new world order of anonymous mass production and multinational finance saw looms set up in poor countries outside traditional rug making lands. The reasoning was if the construction was the prime benchmark, then anyone could do it. 21st Century Revival By the last years of the 20th century, the end of 5000 years of great domestic weaving was being confidently predicted. The denouement to this sad tale, is however, surprisingly wonderful and hinges on a newfound self- discovery and pride in tradition. Changes have taken place in the last 20 years which show that all is not lost. The future looks brighter than ever, especially for the weavers, shepherds, and dyers returning to the traditional relationships. For instance, the weavers weave at home. They weave in their own time around the household tasks, having and feeding babies and being the glue that holds large families together. The weavers are related by extended family to the sheep growers, the spinners, the loom makers and the dyers. In this way carpet making takes on a soul and everyone has a meaningful part to play, in what is essentially a value added home industry. This is the traditional co-operative way those glowing antique carpets were made before the deleterious effects of 20th century modernisation. For instance Afghan Turkomans’ were still weaving traditional designs and still owned grazing land that produced some of the most lustrous wool in the world but their dyeing had degenerated. So they were ready for a change. This return to hand-spinning and hand-dyeing wool shorn from sheep belonging to weavers’ relatives, and dyed with plants growing locally; that had died out during the 20th.century; is now the accepted benchmark. Antique and art connoisseurs reject all other contemporary carpets, which supports further re-generation of tradition. A by-product of this demand ensures the future in the west of specialist antique rug dealers because the very nature of the trade, the personal scale, denies access to chain store “sales” operators. Of course, the very word Asia is synonymous with cheap copies. The future? Comparisons have been made with other tribal people like the Australian Central Desert painters: tribal people finding their voice after a century or more of colonisation and stunning the art world. As the Californian architect Chris Alexander said at an earlier stage of this revival, it is, “a foreshadowing of 21st century art”.
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A Dyers Tour
A short flight out of Istanbul found us braving a series of bracing frosty mornings in the villages of mountainous western Anatolia. A picturesque setting worthy of a travel brochure with whitewashed buildings and sinuous cobblestone alleyways. Vegetable dye guru Harald Boehmer was taking a knot of keen international ruggies through his beloved traditional weaving area. We saw the plump and hard working village women in action lighting fires and boiling dyestuffs in great cauldrons while the men smoked and looked on: Madder for reds and purples, camomile for yellows and indigo for blues and so on. A quiet revolution is underway as age-old traditions reassert themselves. Younger women can now choose to remain in their ancestral villages rather than joining the urban poor in the cities. The international oriental carpet buyer is becoming more discerning, demanding natural dyes and genuine traditional weaving. This means the traditions established thousands of years ago continue to develop. After years of exhaustive research Bruggerman and Boehmer published their findings on the dyes in antique carpets in 1980 and went to work right away with Josephine Powell and others, reinforcing natural dyestuff methods in traditional villages. Most of these villages had slowly embraced a range of chrome and acid dyes peddled by European fertilizer firms, in the process losing their famous individually hued palette. But now no longer uncomfortably straddling the first and third worlds, these villagers are now self sufficient and quite well off, with a pride and cultural self-confidence that sets them apart from the tourist meccas of the nearby Mediterranean coast. Harald Boehmer also published the indispensable “KOEKBOYA - Natural Dyes and Textiles. A colour journey from Turkey to India and beyond.” He has since passed away. Thanks for everything, Harald. Back in “The City” as Istanbul is often referred to we knew that Josephine Powell had died before the ICOC and so made a beeline for the exhibition of her exemplary collection of naturally dyed flat-woven rugs called Kelims, which was especially warmly welcomed by attendant ruggies. The most stunning exhibition in Istanbul, however, was one of the most important collections of the carpets in the world, the Seljuk and early Ottoman Carpets in the state museums. Also very popular was the Yastiks - the jewel-like bolsters of traditional village households. A visit to the Topkapi Palace of the Sultans left us wondering, “why?” “With so much wealth and this is all you could do?” Like the story of the Texan boasting to the Afghan, “we have the biggest, the best etc. etc.” The Afghani replied, “yes but what have you done with it?” Now the Afghans are making some of the best carpets of the last 100 years with the knowledge of natural dyestuffs first disseminated by Harald Boehmer. There are now sophisticated natural dye-works in Shiraz, southern Persia where the tribal women can take their hand spun lambswool and for a small barter get their choice of colours, naturally dyed. It certainly beats going to the alchemist, a shark who could give you any mix of cancerous substances and wool destroying stearates, all ready to fade and run as soon as you breathe on them. Back to the International Dealers Fair to dodge European Armani suited, black stockinged salespeople, over-aggrandising quite respectable carpets that for the most part are perfectly capable of speaking for themselves. When the carpet is good the sales pitch is redundant. Both the “cold stare down the nose” and the “wall of words” were too noisy for us and belonged with the garish synthetic dyes endemic to the Grand Bazaar. One thing everyone agreed upon was the Turks really know how to eat and the mantra “fresh is best” sees a wonderful regard for the natural flavours of foodstuffs. One wonders at the synchronicity, the simpatico with the desire for natural colours by these wonderful people. Thanks Istanbul, thanks villagers, thanks Harald Boehmer, thanks Turkey!
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COLOUR - Contemporary
Sonia Delaunay, who has my vote for most influential artist of the 20th Century, wrote, "we are only at the beginning of the study of these new colour relationships, still full of mysteries to unravel, which are at the base of a modern vision.....there is no going back". Her Zen-like "simultaneous contrast" is a good definition of the tribal rugs we all love and, coincidentally, a harmonic of Alois Tiegl's "Law of Infinite Relationships" referring to Islamic Art in general. I have spent some years collecting and refining a range of modern carpets that reflect my earliest inspirations: Sonia Delaunay: Mark Rothko: Michael Johnson. For me the wheel has come full circle, a dream come true. The weavers call this "colour pleasure" and it is second nature, as they have been immersed in weaving colour for generations. With a freedom to create as close or distant from the original images as they please wonderful things happen. Design was never an end in itself rather a way to divide and place the colours. Henri Matisse said, at the end of his life, "Revelation thus came to me from the Orient". Commenting on their knowledge of the new colour theories, Matisse's friend Paul Signac wrote, "The worst oriental weaver knows as much about them".
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