A Postage Stamp Commemorates Isfahan As 'The City Of Polish Children'

WARSAW, September 26, 2008 -- Isfahan is best known for its architecture. It is so beautiful, Iranians say, that to visit the city is to see “half the world.”

And, Isfahan is famous for its carpets in classical Persian court styles.

But in Poland, the city is known for still something else. It is “Isfahan - the city of Polish children.”

This summer the Polish postal service issued a stamp that explains why.

The stamp shows a small boy dressed in a cadet’s uniform. Draped behind him is an Isfahan carpet emblazoned with the Polish eagle. And next to him is the city’s nickname in Polish: “Isfahan - Miasto Dzieci Polskich.”

The stamp commemorates two things: a huge tragedy in Poland’s history, and how Iran helped rescue some of the victims. But to understand the whole story – which today is largely forgotten outside Poland – one must go back to the very start of World War II.

In 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union attacked Poland and divided it between them. Both the Nazis and Soviets sent huge numbers of Poland’s elite to prisons and labor camps. But the Soviets went a step further. They deported some 1.5 million Polish citizens to distant points in Siberia and Central Asia.

The deportations of military families, police, doctors, teachers, and anyone else suspected of patriotic feelings were intended to simplify the Polish territory’s incorporation into the Soviet Union. It also provided more laborers for the Soviet Union's collective farms as Moscow prepared for an inevitable war with Germany.

The horror of this time is vividly told in the accounts of the deportees. Families were packed into boxcars in Poland and confined in them for six weeks as the trains rolled east, for example, to Kazakhstan. Anyone who tried to escape was shot.

Then, after forcibly settling all these families and, in the meantime, executing some 20,000 Polish officers held in prison camps, the Soviet leaders suddenly changed their strategy. As the war began with Germany in the summer of 1941, they decided to raise an army instead from among the thousands of still interned Polish soldiers. And to improve the mood, they granted an “amnesty” to all Polish deportees.

The result was one of the epic journeys of World War II.

The new Polish army, under an agreement between Moscow and the exiled Polish government in London, was to be sent to the North African front to fight alongside the British. So the Army assembled just north of the border with Iran, on the road to the Middle East. And it was there, at bases in Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, that tens of thousands of deported Polish families headed in hopes of rejoining the soldiers.

But for the families to succeed, they first had to escape the farms they had been assigned to (and many local bosses refused to release them), have money to buy train tickets, and travel for months from Siberia to the south under appalling conditions.

Maria van der Linden, a survivor who was then a child, describes the trip this way in her book 'An Unforgettable Journey,' published in New Zealand:

"We had to change trains frequently, because of the varying width of rail tracks In the USSR. At every railway station we faced long queues for tickets, where numerous waiting families slept on bare floors. Conditions were filthy. People were infested with hair and body lice. There were no proper washing facilities at the stations and toilets were seldom cleaned. Infections spread like wildfire among the waiting travelers. Some people were too ill and exhausted to continue their journey and many passengers died as they waited to purchase their train tickets for the next stage of their trip."

Another child at the time, Zdzislawa Wasylkowska, recalls her journey south like this:

"We had to beg for bread of steal whenever we could. There were no washing facilities. There were lice everywhere and so many dead children. I saw many people thrown from the train. It took us another month to get to Jalalabad, close to the Afghanistan border, but they did not want to take us. We moved on to Guzar where my mother and sister became sick with typhus."

Parents unable to go farther gave their children to others who could. And as the journey went on, the number of orphans multiplied, to the point that the Polish army reception centers had to set up special orphanages to accommodate them all.

The Polish army, known as Anders’ Army for its commander General W. Anders, crossed into Iran by ship across the Caspian or by road from Turkmenistan at the end of 1942. The exodus numbered 115,000 – that is, 45,000 soldiers, 37,000 civilian adults, and 18,000 children. Just after they crossed, the Soviet government closed the border again, preventing any more of the some 1 million Polish citizens still in the USSR from leaving.

For those Poles who reached Iran, after thousands died along the way, the emotions were overwhelming. Another survivor, Helena Woloch, recalls:

"Exhausted by hard labour, disease and starvation - barely recognizable as human beings - we disembarked at the port of Pahlavi (now Bandar-e Anzali). There, we knelt down together in our thousands along the sandy shoreline to kiss the soil of Persia. We had escaped Siberia, and were free at last. We had reached our longed-for Promised Land."

Ironically, the Poles had reached a country that itself had been occupied in late 1941 by Russia and Britain. They allies did so to secure the oil fields and keep Iran open as a supply route to the Soviet army. Reza Shah Pahlavi, who had earlier brought Iran closer to Germany, was in exile in South Africa and his son was on the throne in his place.

However, if Iranians resented the Russian and the British presence, they were sympathetic to the Polish refugees and welcomed them.

Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi opened his private pool to the orphans. Polish soldiers saluted Persian officers when they passed in the street. And, over time, all the orphans were relocated to Isfahan along with many Polish families because the beauty of the city was thought to be conducive to their physical and mental health.

After the Polish Army left for the Middle East, the families and children stayed on. From 1942 to 1945, there were 2,590 Polish children in Isfahan below the age of seven, living in what became a lively community which was very interested in Iranian culture.

During this time, Polish academicians in Isfahan began an Institute of Iranian Studies. And the carpet in the background of the commemorative postage stamp was woven by Polish girls in the Isfahan school of weaving.

At the end of the war, the refugees went on to Britain or to British colonies, or to the United States and Australia. But, due to a final twist of fate, none returned to Poland. That was because the Allied leaders had agreed at a meeting in Tehran in 1943 to put Poland in the Soviet Union’s orbit. It remained there until 1989.

The Polish postage stamp issued this June recalls all this history. One of the orphans, Przemek Stojakowski, is the boy on the postage stamp. On the First Day Cover that accompanies the stamp, the names of just a few of the hundreds of other orphaned children are also printed.

The stamp helps to explain several other things, too, including why Dariusz remains a popular name today for Polish boys and how the word “kish-mesh” (Persian for raisins) came into the Polish language.

But perhaps most of all, the stamp is a reminder of a universal truth. That is, the world has a long history of tragedies. But it has just as long a memory for acts of kindness.

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Related Links:

Iran and the Polish Exodus from Russia 1942, by Ryszard Antolak

An Unforgettable Journey, by Maria van der Linden

Wikipedia: Anders’ Army

Polish deportees in the Soviet Union, by Michael Hope

The Polish Deportees of World War II: Recollections of Removal to the Soviet Union and Dispersal, edited by Tadeusz Piotrowski

The Institute of National Remembrance, Warsaw

In Harry Potter's World, The Carpet Is A Harshang Bidjar

LONDON, September 12, 2008 -- Is a Bidjar Harshang-patterned carpet quietly becoming the most popular rug of the next generation?

It’s possible – if you think that being visibly featured in Harry Potter films is likely to impact future rug buyers’ tastes. That is, ‘future’ in the sense of today’s children growing up to be tomorrow’s rug lovers.

But before going further, it may be necessary to explain a little about Harry Potter’s world.

Harry, the boy magician, goes to Hogwarts, a school of magic. The school is modeled very much on the great British universities such as Oxford, so Harry lives in a 'House,' or dormitory, with a common room where the resident students can gather informally anytime of day.

Harry’s ‘House’ is 'Gryffindor' and the floor of the Gryffindor common room is covered by a giant Bidjar with a Harshang pattern on a brilliant blue background.

Here, Harry (right) and his two close-friends Ron (center) and Hermione (left) meet in the common room in a scene from one of the seven Harry Potter films.

The carpet shows up in most film scenes of the Gryffindor common room and, along with tapestries on the walls, gives the room a very magical, wizard-like feel. The non-figurative Harshang design, which conjures up zodiac-like images of crabs and bursting suns, is perfect for the role. (It also goes well with the wallpaper, which reproduces 'The Lady and The Unicorn' tapestries from the Cluny Museum of Medieval Art in Paris.)

Is it entirely an accident that a Bidjar Harshang almost identical to the one shown below was chosen by the set designers?

Maybe not. More than a few Europeans and Americans who are now deep into adulthood have memories of oriental carpets in university rooms. And a generation earlier, rugs were far common.

Bidjars are the natural choice for such high-wear settings. Produced in and around the northwestern Iran town of the same name, they are the most strongly made and indestructible carpets of all.

Their nickname, after all, is the 'Iron Rugs' of Persia. They are so densely woven and stiff that they cannot even be folded for transportation. Instead, they have to be rolled up.

Below is a photo of the library room in Eliot House at Harvard University. On the floor – again -- a Bidjar Harshang. Only this time the carpet has a red background.

Seeing an oriental carpet in a university common room may not just be nostalgic for lots of adults who watch Harry Potter with their children.

It also is a reminder of the huge export industry which once thrived in northwestern Iran producing room-sized rugs of all types for wealthy Western institutions and homes.

The peak was at the turn-of-the-last-century, when an oriental rug on the floor was the symbol of both a wide view of the world and of a certain standing.

The story of this export industry is well illustrated by the success of Ziegler & Company. The Anglo-British firm based in Manchester, England, was among the first to realize that the West’s ‘Gilded Age’ needed giant rugs that complemented Western room decors of the time.

Arto Keshishian, writing in the magazine Antiques and Fine Arts, gives the background in his article ‘Ziegler and Their Carpets.’ He notes that by the 1850’s Europe’s cyclical interest in the orient was on the upswing again and department stores began stocking up on the existing village and workshop carpets available in Iran.

But, he writes, "unfortunately, the carpets were generally either too long or too narrow for the rooms of the new English homes, because the imported carpets were designed in a traditional format to fit urban, Persian rooms."

The Ziegler Company saw an opportunity. At the time, it was selling printed cottons produced by the Manchester mills to customers in Iran and Turkey. But it changed direction, set up its own looms in northwestern Iran around the town of Sultanabad (now Arak) and began supplying hand-woven carpets to the British market instead.

Ziegler and Company revolutionized oriental carpet production by enlarging the sizes and simplifying the patterns. The company’s artists introduced more space between traditional Persian design elements to achieve, in Keshishian’s words, “an airy visual effect.”

At the same time, “fewer color combinations were used, resulting in a simpler balance and harmony; the color green was liberally incorporated, perhaps to echo the English fondness for the countryside.”

Ziegler did not produce Bidjars and its designs, as shown here, look nothing like the carpet spread across Harry Potter’s floor.

But the principles Ziegler exemplified offer some time-tested guidelines as to how carpet producers respond to changes in the market and supply what each new generation wants.

Will the next generation surprise its parents by switching back from the abstract, tribal carpet designs popular today to the lush feel of turn-of-the-last century Bidjars and Zieglers? Only the next generation can answer and, at the moment, its members are still window-shopping – or should we say movie-shopping – the options.

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Related Links:

Barry O’Connell’s Carpet Guide: Bijar Rugs

O’Connell Notes: Bidjar Rugs and Carpets

'Ziegler and Their Carpets' by Arto Keshishian

Brussels Celebrates Savonnerie Carpets With 700,000 Begonias

BRUSSELS, August 29, 2008 – Every summer, Brussels weaves a giant carpet of begonia blooms that covers almost the entire Grande Place.

The flower carpet does not last long: just three days and four nights. And the amount of work is immense, with hundreds of volunteers arranging some 700,000 begonias (knot count of 300 flowers per square meter) into a meticulously planned pattern.

Still, Brussels considers the effort worthwhile.

The annual event, which began in 1971, reminds the world that Belgium is the world’s biggest producer of begonias -- exporting about 48 million bulbs a year.

Plus, the flower carpet reminds everyone that Belgium also is one of the world’s largest makers and exporters of carpets -- machine-made.

This year, the floral design (above) honored France’s Savonnerie carpets. Doing so, it recalled the days when European weavers first “Occidentalized” oriental rugs on a commercial scale, setting the stage for today’s immensely successful Western rug industry.

Savonnerie carpets were first produced in the early 1600s and combined Eastern pile-rug weaving with French Baroque designs. The success of the patterns – whose motifs include flower bouquets, fleur-de-lys, fruits, and acanthus leaves – was so great that it swung European taste away from oriental rugs for two centuries.

Here is a Baroque carpet in the kind of typical French interior design that defined Western standards of elegance at the time.

Just how Europe developed its own handwoven carpet industry is a fascinating story with two parts.

The first is the deliberate effort by French kings to monopolize the luxury carpet market in Europe, which was previously supplied from the East.

The second is the coincidence of this effort with a sudden feeling of Western cultural superiority as Europe’s kingdoms first became world powers.

Some steps along the way:

* King Henri IV (1533 – 1610) decides to revive France’s luxury goods industry, which was decimated in France’s wars of religion. He provides leading artisans, including weavers, with workshops in the Louvre.

** Weaving master Pierre DuPont establishes the style that will become famous as “Savonnerie.” The name is taken from the Paris soap factory which becomes the location of a major carpet workshop in 1644.

*** European forces defeat the Ottoman army besieging Vienna in 1683. The victory convinces High Renaissance Europe of its cultural supremacy over its Eastern rivals.

**** King Louis XIV bans the import of oriental carpets into France, protecting French production and ending the huge outflow of revenues to buy luxury goods from the East.

Europe’s handwoven carpets had many variations, including Savonnerie and Aubusson in France and, later, Axminster and Wilton in Britain.

Here is a 19th century Aubusson carpet from France. The carpet is available to collectors from the Nazmiyal Collection in New York.

Such carpets were commissioned only by courts and by the very wealthy. Their patterns proved adaptable enough to be a centerpiece of furnishing from the Baroque and Neoclassical periods into the Napoleonic era.

It was Napoleon, in fact, who gave the Savonnerie factory its last great royal support. Beginning in 1805, he commissioned carpets in the Empire style that defined his age.

The Savonnerie’s story finally ends in 1825 when the manufactory was incorporated with another weaving workshop, the Gobelins, which was famous for tapestries. By this time, the passion for European handwoven carpets had faded under a new set of social circumstances.

Among them was colonialism. As Europeans expanded across the globe, they came again into direct contact with oriental artwork and renewed their interest in it. By the mid-1850’s imports of oriental rugs were booming, along with Orientalism in general.

But perhaps still more fateful for the European hand-knotted carpet industry was the invention of the steam-powered loom in 1785. Carpet producers quickly discovered they could earn much more with mass production for the expanding middle class than they could with artisinal production for just the very rich. Within 50 years, the great names in European handwoven rugs disappeared or became associated with machine-made carpets instead.

Today, one can still buy Savonnerie carpets but they are reproductions hand-made in China. And one can still buy Axminister carpets, but they are machine-made in England (as pictured here).

Does all this make Brussels' Savonnerie flower carpet a bittersweet souvenir of Europe’s rug-making industry?

Champions of hand-knotted carpets might say ‘yes’ if it reminds them too much of a glorious past gone forever.

But one can also argue that history must take its course and that the way Savonnerie carpets evolved into today’s multi-billion dollar machine-made carpet industry is as amazing as any other aspect of the rug trade.

If so, the Savonnerie which bloomed in Brussels' Grande Place this year from August 15 to 17 is a perfect symbol for Europe’s carpet world.



Related Links:

YouTube: Brussels Flower Carpet 2008 - Savonnerie

Brussels Flower Carpet: official website

Wikipedia: Savonnerie

Early Axminster Carpets, by Brenda Rose

Renaissance Carpets and Tapestries Company

Every Era Sees Oriental Rugs It's Own Way

PRAGUE, August 15, 2008 -- Oriental carpets have caught the eye of Western writers ever since they began trickling into Europe in the 13th century or earlier.

But how Western writers look at these exotic creations has changed dramatically over the years.

In the early days, carpets were symbols of impossible luxury and power. They helped seal alliances between the Ottoman court and European kings, and ambassadors carefully recorded their acceptance and delivery.

Just what potent symbols these objects of art could be is apparent in this brief description of the victorious Sultan Suleyman II summoning the Hungarian king John to him immediately after the battle of Mohacs in 1526:

“Along the short mile the King traversed to go to the Emperor, Turkish and various fine carpets were laid on the earth as far as the tent of the Emperor.”

The words belong to the Hungarian royal chaplain George Szerémy, who was there. The picture of Sultan Suleyman II above is from an Ottoman court miniature.

Over time, carpets as trappings of royal command found their way (in reduced versions) into more and more Western households. First nobility, then merchants and then, with the industrial age, the ever more comfortable middle class bought eastern rugs. So many, in fact, that by the mid-1800s, the way carpets were displayed in Western homes could be an issue of public debate.

Edgar Allen Poe is best remembered today as an American pioneer of the Romanticist Horror genre. But he was also a well-known literary and, sometimes, social critic who contributed an essay entitled 'The Philosophy of Furniture' to Burton's Gentleman's Magazine in 1840:

“Carpets are better understood of late than of ancient days, but we still very frequently err in their patterns and colours. A carpet is the soul of the apartment. From it are deduced not only the hues but the forms of all objects incumbent. A judge at common law may be an ordinary man; a good judge of a carpet must be a genius. Yet I have heard fellows discourse of carpets with the visage of a sheep in reverie — "d'un mouton qui rêve" — who should not and who could not be entrusted with the management of their own moustachios."

Poe goes on to accuse the main commercial carpet centers of his day of violating all public standards of good taste. "Brussels is the preterpluperfect tense of fashion" in Western rugs, he claims, and "Turkey is taste in its dying agonies" for Eastern ones.

What does Poe like? Well, colors that are not too lively. "A carpet should not be bedizzened out like a Riccaree Indian — all red chalk, yellow ochre, and cock's feathers," he says, apparently having seen something like that on someone's floor. As for patterns, only non-figurative and preferably Arabesque. "Distinct grounds and vivid circular figures, of no meaning," are his maxim.

If Poe seems surprisingly argumentative about carpets, he is only a little ahead of his time. By the end of the 1800s, passions rose still higher.

Britain's The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs offers this view of carpet collecting in a 1903 commentary:

“There are, I must suppose, but few hobbies that claim so absorbing a devotion as does the pursuit of the oriental carpet. Every hobby, no doubt demands a good deal from its victims, but the exactions of most of them are tempered with mercy: thus the collector of old furniture does not necessarily cut himself adrift from pictures, nor does the lover of old arms from bric-a-brac; but the oriental carpet is inexorable and remorseless, and the true carpet lover gives himself to carpets and to carpets only. They are his pictures, his furniture, his bric-a-brac, his all. True, the field of the oriental carpet seeker is an immensely wide one. His horizon extends from Morocco to China, and the period during which the objects of his affections have existed, and existed as they do today, dates back to the days of the Pharaohs; in the palaces of ancient Egypt they were employed as decorations and the priests at Heliopolis used them at religious ceremonies.”

Whether these notes about the ancient Egyptians are well-researched, we can't say. But just a few years later, the same magazine makes it clear that a real connoisseur should and can get to a museum or bookstore to learn more about rugs:

"Not very long ago oriental carpets were bought only as house decorations. It is not much more than a decade since our museums accorded them notice on their own account. Today, however, we have turned over a new leaf. Bode, who may in one word be called the magnet of modern art dealing, has devoted intense labour to carpets and filled with them two rooms in the Kaiser-Friedrich Museum at Berlin. Since the transition of our interest in this species of art from art-craft to the actual art museums, the carpet has become a distinguished gentleman in the salons of science. I know of at least half a dozen books already written or in the press which will go into the new problem. The first of these works – a standard work in compass and contents – lies before me: F.R. Martin’s 'History of Oriental Carpets before 1800.'

The article, which appeared in 1908 translated from German, is signed Professor Josef Strzygowski. Pictured here is the Central Asian collection of the Russian pavillion at the 1900 Paris Exhibition, an event that greatly increased Western interest in the rugs of Turkestan.

Today, good taste, a collector's passion, and scholarly interest are all part of our outlook on oriental carpets. And there is still a sense of medieval awe that overwhelms anyone standing before a masterwork of the Mamluke, Ottoman, Safavid, or Mughal courts.

But contemporary writers also express something new, and that is anxiety - with a capital "A" - about something no previous generation had to think about. The anxiety is that today the chance of finding any new, as yet undiscovered, weaving cultures is nil and that, meanwhile, all the known weaving cultures are rapidly modernizing.

This gives rise to worries that come in both mild and potent varieties. The mild version is that carpet collecting has now reached a dead end and the thrill of new discoveries must give way to recycling what we have. The potent version is fear that the growing globalization of the carpet market will eventually drive many weaving cultures to extinction.

Here is the abstract of a scholarly paper presented in 1999 by anthropologist Tom O'Neill of Canada's University of Western Ontario. It describes how classical Tibetan weaving (below left) has turned into modern Tibetan-refugee weaving (below right) in Nepal:

"The popularity of the Tibeto-Nepalese carpet in the European hand-knotted carpet market created a modern industry in peri-urban Kathmandu, Nepal, that established the Tibetan refugee population there as well as a new class of Nepalese entrepreneur. This paper employs Igor Kopytoff's (1986) perspective on the social life of things and Keith Hart's (1982) definition of commoditization to argue that the short career of the Tibeto-Nepalese carpet as an export commodity has been one of increasing homogenization that has transformed the materials, weaving techniques, and meanings of the carpet.Easy access to the lucrative 'middle' markets of Europe has meant that Tibeto-Nepalese carpets are now standardized to compete with other categories of floor coverings, and that the unique hand-knotted quality desired by connoisseurs and collectors is slowly being eliminated."

The article is entitled 'The Lives of the Tibeto-Nepalese Carpet' and appears in the Journal of Material Culture, 1999.

How will writers of future eras view the art of oriental carpets? As the 21st century only just begins, it is far too early to guess. But if the past is any guide, the subject will remain as full of surprises tomorrow as it is today, or was yesterday.

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Related Links:

Edgar Allen Poe: The Philosophy of Furniture

The Burlington Magazine: On Carpets

The Burlington Magazine: Oriental Carpets

Tom O’Neill: The Lives of the Tibeto-Nepalese Carpet

In Afghanistan's Turkmen Rug Belt, It's Globalization vs. Tradition

ANDKHOY, Afghanistan; August 1, 2008 -- Twice a week the men whose wives and daughters weave the traditional red rugs of Central Asia come to this town in northern Afghanistan to sell their work.

The carpet bazaar is a rectangular courtyard with a two-floor gallery of traders’ stalls on every side, and the men approach it with trepidation.

Many of the men have dropped in as onlookers on the previous market day to learn what they can about the going prices. Now, accompanied by friends for support, they file into the courtyard and squat around its perimeter with their bundled rugs.

When the traders walk by to inspect what they have, the bargaining begins. First, the carpet is spread face-down on the dusty ground. The uncut top is of no interest; it is only the back the trader wants to see.

He inspects for knot density and evenness of weave. He folds the edges to see if they meet in the middle. And he looks for evenness of tension by carefully measuring the length and width at various points. And all the time he is checking for flaws.

Then he makes an offer: $75. The seller, who wants $120 won’t hear of it. Slowly the offer creeps up to $85 and onlookers begin to exhort the seller to agree. The trader tries to grab the seller’s hand and pump it to show there is a deal. A third person joins the negotiations, probably an agent of the trader, and pretends to be a fair-minded broker.

But still the seller refuses until, finally, the meeting breaks up. No deal.

The seller will test several more traders before he chooses between accepting what seems to be today’s price or coming back another day. He knows that on Mondays and Thursdays, so long as this is Andkhoy, the traders will be here.

Andkhoy’s bazaar is described in fascinating detail in a report prepared for the World Bank. The authors, Adam Pain and Moharram Ali of the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit surveyed the town’s carpet business over the years 2001 to 2003.

Their work offers a look into a world of sellers and buyers that few Westerners ever see as the famous red rugs of Afghanistan begin their journey to the outside world.

The men who come to the market are heads of Turkmen households that produce carpets on an independent basis. These families have the financial means to purchase wool on credit and usually have at least one other source of income such as land or livestock. They are the most successful producers because when they sell their carpet, they keep the full selling price.

How much can these independent weavers earn? The profit depends a great deal on the quality of wool they are able to buy.

If they weave with low-quality wool from Pakistan, Pain and Ali calculate (in 2003) that they will earn about $25 per square meter from a traditional red rug that sells in the United Kingdom for $250 per square meter.

But if they weave what is known locally as a ‘Biljeek,’ that is a rug woven with finer wool imported from Belgium, they can earn $58 dollars per square meter on a red rug that sells retail for $429 per square meter.

Pain and Ali estimate that about 10 to 20 percent of the weavers in the Andkhoy area are independent. The rest work under entirely different arrangements and, in fact, never come to the bazaar to sell at all. Instead, they work under profit sharing or wage-labor contracts.

A minority of the profit-sharing weavers --like the independents -- still produce the Turkmens' traditional repeating ‘gul’ designs or more recent varities of red rugs such as Khal Muhammadi or Mauri. Exporters’ agents provide them the wool and the dimensions and the weavers get 50 percent of the rug’s local market value.

But today the majority of local weavers (the researchers estimate 50 to 70 percent) work under labor contracts and produce carpets that have no local roots at all. Agents give them some $35 per square meter (for a carpet that retails for $549 per square meter) and wool from the Mideast to produce Chobis that have a modified Indo-Persian design.

The Chobis -- which ironically use natural dyes while the ‘traditional’ local designs use chemical dyes - strongly resemble the commercially successful Zieglers produced in northern Persia by Western firms in the early 1900s.

Pain and Ali say that Chobi production, which originated in the Afghan refugee camps around Peshawar, came to Andkhoy as the refugees – both Turkmens and Uzbeks -- returned home.

The contract-labor terms pay as well or better than profit sharing and minimize the weavers’ risk. That makes it attractive to poor weavers even though the agents commonly reduce the final wage payment if they find the slightest flaws.

Now, as carpet production in northern Afghanistan keeps expanding, the number of contracted weavers keeps growing.

Pain and Ali note that there are clear economic benefits as the contract weaving joins sharecropping and agricultural labor as the mainstays of people too poor to own land or livestock.

But the authors also sound a warning.

They observe that the happiest position for artisans is when retail customers recognize their work as the expression of a unique artistic heritage and willingly pay more for it than they do for generic goods.

However, if generic weavings become what Afghanistan is best known for, they say, "there is little hope at present that Afghanistan’s carpets will be able to achieve that position."

(Photos of Andkhoy market from: Alti Bolaq)

(Photos of Turkmen Ersari carpets from: Carpet Collection)

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Related Links:

Understanding Markets in Afghanistan: A case study of carpets and the Andkhoy carpet market, by Adam Pain and Moharram Ali

From Andkhoy to Jeddah

Habibullah Kerimi Making a Life and Rugs in Exile

Barry O’Connell: Turkmen Rugs - Guide To Ersari Rugs and Carpets

Barry O’Connell: Guide to Turkmen Rugs and Carpets, Turkoman Rugs

Barry O’Connell: Guide to Rugs and Carpets of Afghanistan

Emmett Eiland: Afghan Rugs and Carpets - Rugs from Afghanistan

Tribal Rugs: How The 1960s Changed The West’s Taste In Oriental Carpets

PRAGUE, July 18, 2008 – In the mid-1960s and into the mid-1970s, hundreds of thousands of young Europeans and Americans traveled East – to Morocco and Turkey or, much farther, to Iran, Afghanistan, India, and Nepal.

To the East, as in this verse from ‘Marrakesh Express:”

“Take the train from Casablanca going south
Blowing smoke rings from the corners of my mouth
Colored cottons hang in the air
Charming cobras in the square
Striped djellebas we can wear at home …”

The sudden longing for places with strong colors, tribal designs, and mysticism had an enormous influence on Western taste in oriental carpets. But before considering how much, it is time for the story of ‘Mercedes’ Werner.

Werner, his first name, is a retired German antiques dealer who divides his time today between Wurzburg and Prague. But even a few minutes after meeting him, it becomes clear he considers his spiritual home to be Turkey.

It began in the 1960’s, when he flew to Istanbul for a short vacation. He fell in love with the city and quickly realized he would need a car if he wanted to explore the country. So he flew back to Wurzburg for his old Mercedes and then began regularly driving 20 to 24 hours non-stop from Germany to Turkey.

To pay for his trips, he carried back Turkish rugs, artifacts and, because it was so easy to give the Turkish border guards 5 DM, even antiquities. But the story he likes to tell most is not business related. It is about a roadside village near Lake Van, which had nothing to offer except scenery.

Werner stopped so often at this village that he became very attached to it. He exchanged stories with the people at his favorite restaurant, became friends with the owner, and learned all about the local music. Then, for many years, he stopped going there as business took him elsewhere.

One day, when he was already middle-aged, Werner was home watching a documentary about eastern Turkey. Suddenly he heard the same village music he knew so well and there on the screen was the restaurant owner being asked if tourists ever came to such a remote area.

“No,” said the restaurant owner, “they only go to the seaside resorts.” And he added, “It’s not like 30 years ago when people came here just to see our mountains and learn about how we live.”

“What kind of people were those?” the interviewer asked in surprise.

“Well, like Mercedes Werner,” the restaurant owner said.

Werner says that when heard that he broke down in tears. He didn't know he had this affectionate nickname. And he had not realized how much his visits had been something extraordinary not only for himself but for his friends. The next year he returned to the village and revived what he now sees as a very important part of his life.

Interestingly, there were lots of Werners who came out of the adventures of the 1960s and 70s. Dennis Dodds, the head of the ICOC (International Conference on Carpets), says many current rug dealers got their start just that way. The rugs they discovered on their travels did much to shift their generation’s taste toward village and tribal designs and away from the elaborate city rugs favored by their parents.

In Istanbul, the travelers – including Dodds – gathered at the Pudding Shop, where they exchanged information and contacts for trips across Turkey and on to India. The café’s owner was said to be so helpful that he once gave a chair to a customer to sit on for the journey to Kathmandu. That was when all the usual seats in the minibus were full.

Dodds says that because the travelers were on a low budget and keen to get in touch with nature and natural lifestyles, they were attracted by affordable village and tribal pieces rather than by Ottoman, Safavid, or Mughal-derived designs. The geometric patterns of the rugs they brought home to Europe and America fit nicely with the 1960s fashion of Op Art and they soon became the new market standard.

What weavings most owe their success to these years? Probably kilims. They suddenly became hugely popular, in part because they are so boldly graphic – offering just colors and patterns. By contrast, pile carpets add a third dimension - texture - which diminishes the clarity of the design.

The 1960s and 70s are long gone, along with long hair and long, strange trips. But it is interesting to realize that the aesthetic tastes the travelers helped set for rugs are still very current, and probably will remain so until the next great shift in Western pop culture.

(Kilims pictured here are from: Turkish Culture)

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Related Links

Barry O’Connell: Turkish Rugs and Carpets

Barry O’Connell: Guide To Turkish Rug and Carpet Books

The Pudding Shop

Wikipedia: The Asia Overland Hippie Trail

Touring The Hippie Trail Today

YouTube: Afghanistan On The Hippie Trail 1967

YouTube: London To Kathmandu Overland

YouTube: Les Annees Hippies au Maroc (Part 1)

YouTube: Les Annees Hippies au Maroc (Part 2)

Turkish Prayer Rugs And The Gates Of Eternity

ISTANBUL, July 4, 2008 -- Is eternity something artists should illustrate as a physical thing? Or should artists represent it as something abstract and supernatural?

It is a question that every religion approaches differently and on which philosophers disagree.

But it is interesting that Turkish prayer carpets offer both possibilities: realistic and abstract. And perhaps that is one reason for their great appeal.

Turkish prayer carpets became widely familiar in Europe and America during the late 19th century, when Western tourists began traveling to Istanbul in large numbers by the Orient Express and by ship. The travelers helped popularize the rugs as symbols of the exotic and spiritual East at a time when Orientalism was at its height.

As a result, production boomed in towns like Ghiordes, Ladik, and Melas (Milas), and their typical designs became household names in the Western market.

The Anatolian town and village weavers, who adapted and simplified the designs of earlier Ottomon court prayer rugs, were not trying to show what heaven looks like. The purpose of all prayer rugs is only to mark out a space for prayer that is secluded from the mundane.

This is in line with the injunction in the Koran to "pray in a clean place". The first mosque is traditionally said to have been a space drawn in the sand by the Prophet Mohammed, who said "take off your shoes when you enter here. This is holy ground."

But because the weavers had to fill the space set aside for prayer, they had to address an art problem that is shared by all cultures. That is, how to best symbolize the eternal.

The designers of Ghiordes and Konya opted for solid architecture. They depicted the central feature of all prayer rugs – the arch – as resting upon columns. The arch itself symbolizes the focal point in a real mosque, which is the mihrab, or ornamental niche, that marks the wall facing Mecca.

This carpet above is a 19th century piece from Konya in central Anatolia.

But weaving natural-looking “gates to eternity ” -- as some Western experts like to describe prayer rugs -- is just one possibility.

By contrast, the rugs of several of the other great traditional prayer rug centers of Turkey – Kula, Ladik, Melas, and Mudjur -- took an abstract approach.

In these rugs, the mihrab is still the defining feature. But the field of the rug is fluid and appears to change with each glance. Instead of a sense of certainty, it offers the mystery of a curtain which one day may be drawn aside.

The rug shown here is from Ladik, a town in central Anatolia not far from Konya.

Both the realistic and the abstract designs were widely collected in the West. But partly due to export pressure to adapt to Western tastes, the quality of the patterns began to decline with time. They became more and more decorative and less and less certain of their identity.

Some experts say the export pressure was so great it caused workshops to reverse the way the rugs were woven. Instead of starting at the bottom and weaving toward the mihrab, some weavers started at the top. That way, the pile would catch the light best when hung on a wall.

Other experts disagree. They say that individual weavers may have started at the top when they were uncertain of their stocks of dyed wool. Since the mihrab is considered the most important element in any prayer rug, they may have wanted to be sure of completing it first before running out of preferred colors.

Whatever the case, it is certain that by the middle of the 20th century, Turkish prayer rugs had lost favor – both in the West and at home.

In the West, fashions changed and collectors began looking for bolder village and tribal weavings free of – among other things – Western influence. Today, in real terms, the cost of a Ghiordes or Ladik in the West is said to be less than it was at the height of the rugs’ popularity at the turn-of-the-last century.

In Turkey, the end of the Ottomon Empire and the rise of the secular republic equally reduced the prayer rugs’ value as weavings.

Townspeople who once commissioned expensive pieces for the Haj or for their homes, and later bequeathed them to the local mosque, gave up those customs as the population shifted to major cities. Prayer rugs became plainer and simpler, as shown by this recently made Ladik.

But all that may just make the great 19th century prayer rugs of Turkey more interesting for those who still want to collect them. Not only do they offer a creative vision of the spiritual world, they also offer a reminder of how much our own aesthetic world keeps eternally changing.

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Related Links:

Spongobongo: A Guide to Turkish Prayer Rugs

Spongobongo: Notes on Ghiordes Rugs and Carpets

Spongobongo: Guide to Konya Rugs

Spongobong: Guide to Ladik Prayer Rugs

Spongobongo: Guide to Melas Rugs

Old Turkish Carpets: Prayer Carpets

What Do You Mean, “It’s A Prayer Rug?”

New England Rug Society: Prayer Rugs and Related Textiles

Wikipedia: Mihrab