Guide to Caucasian Rugs

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The Caucasian rug At one time it was assumed that all of the Caucasian rugs were woven by "Tribal" or "Nomadic" weavers that if one bought a Lezgi Star Rug it was woven by a Lezgi weaver. Some even saw Schurmann's classic book Caucasian Carpets as a guide to the tribes of the Caucasus. Then a reversal came and it was suggested that virtually all Caucasian rugs were commercial and the patterns came from Russian Government (first Czarist then Communist) Kustar pattern books.

Guide to Caucasian Rugs

I take a stand somewhere between the two points. I suggest that the various people of the Caucasus wove distinctive patterns and structures prior to the Russian colonization of the Caucasus but that as Czarist control solidified they sought to stimulate carpet exports to pay for their occupation so that after the 1860s we see an increase in the commercialization of the Caucasian rugs and a decrease in the cultural relevance.

In the 1820s the Czarist Russians divided Trans-Caucasia. into the Russian provinces of Baku, Derbent, Sheki, Karabagh, Shirvan, Talysh, and Kuba. Riad: Caucasus.

Sunburst Zejwa Rug

The Russians divided the region in the manner that was easiest for them to administrate and it did not necessarily follow an ethnographic approach in the division.

The Czarist Russians began to solidify their hold as early as 1805 - 1820 but they did not truly control the region for many years. With the capture of the great rebel religious leader Shamyl in 1859 and the end of the rebellion in 1864 did Czarist control truly solidify regional control. In 1865 to eliminate risk of future rebellion the Russians forced 1,2 million Caucasians to move to Turkey.

A Kazak long rug lot 85 Shulaver?

At one point I suspected that areas such as Nagorno-Karabahk which were historically Moslem were depopulated and then repopulated with Armenians. As Christians the Armenians had an easier time with the Christian Russians. Lately I have come to realize that in the Caucasus' control focused on people rather than strict geographic boundaries. So with the Church and nobility to control the Armenians and Moslem rulers and Governors over the Moslem it was possible for two people to share some measure of independent rule in the same area in the same time. This tends to run counter to the European practice.

To confuse the matter even more I suggest that many of the best rugs attributed to 4th quarter 19th century are actually 1st or even second quarter 20th century. A constant problem is that Rug Collecting is more about money and ego then it is a science. My hope is that by opening my notes, thoughts, and theories I may help to stimulate others to take this subject further than I can.

Karabagh Corridor Carpet

Los Angeles Times, May 17, 1998 [for personal use only] Trouble Is Looming for a Centuries-Old Trade
Caucasus: Regional stability, mass production and modern life are ruining business for merchants of hand-woven carpets.
By VANORA BENNETT, Times Staff Writer

DERBENT, Russia -Under the fortress walls, the merchants of this honey-colored stone city at the crossroads of three empires are doing what their ancestors have done for 800 years: laying out hand-woven carpets for sale.
During centuries of conflict under Persian, Turkish and Russian empires, rug salesmen here traditionally have done lucrative business by buying family carpets from refugees on the run from warfare across the Caucasus Mountains and along the shores of the Caspian Sea. No more.

Something disastrous has started to happen to the region's hand-made carpet trade in the last two years: Peace keeps breaking out. "Look at it now," says woebegone trader Magomed Magomedov, forlornly gesturing around. Just a dozen carpets are pinned up outside the north side of the long defensive wall that Derbent's onetime Persian masters built in the 6th century.

Half a dozen men, all as small and hunched in their flapping black clothes as Magomedov, all with the same mournful expression, are waiting for buyers. "There's almost nothing left of our trade," Magomedov says. "Modern life is killing off the hand-made carpet business."
The region's carpet-making legacy from the great carpet cultures of Persia and Turkey was institutionalized under Soviet rule. Factories mass-produced carpets with approximately traditional designs, although village women went on weaving their own--and also continued the practice, frowned on by Communist Party bosses, of giving dowries of carpets at marriage.

The huge Derbent market spread across town every weekend. But the bonanza years for carpet dealers were right after the Soviet Union collapsed. The lands around Russia's southern border, a tinderbox of Christian and Muslim ethnic groups with long memories for old feuds, went up in flames.

In the five years after the 1991 Soviet collapse, there were conflicts between Armenians and Azerbaijanis, Georgians and Abkhazian separatists, and Russians and Chechen separatists. In the early 1990s, more than a million people fled shattered villages and towns, taking with them only their bedding and carpets. With no money and no homes, the dispossessed were desperate to sell even such treasured symbols of stability and collective history as the carpets to buy food.

But now stability is returning to the region. The wars have stopped or been suspended. The refugees have sold their rugs, and many have found new homes and jobs; so have many of the traders from those days. The only carpets being made by hand and sold in Derbent are those of women here in the multiethnic republic of Dagestan.

But this domestic weaving was never intended as a money-making business and is done more for private, family purposes. Magomedov's wife, Asli, is one of the weavers. She has just dismantled the huge loom that stood all winter in front of the family television set. She, her 22-year-old daughter, Zulekha, and her two 20-year-old daughters-in-law, Gyulhara and Vilayad, worked for six months on the huge blue-and-red oblong carpet that now lies on the floor.

She's planning to start weaving again in the fall. Some of the Magomedovs' carpets are dowry offerings from the family's two new daughters-in-law. A betrothed woman's family still must provide at least one big carpet, a flat-weave rug, a runner and half a dozen cushions. Her mother and sisters can help her weave them, but the designs should be her own.

Traditional Caucasus carpets differ in design from region to region, village to village. They include both Persian motifs--intricate floral patterns--and wilder, brighter, coarser Turkish-influenced designs, with jagged flame-like shapes.

But some of the modern carpets, cushions, runners and wall hangings that decorate houses here have designs that draw as much from Western pop culture as Eastern tradition. Snoopys and Snow Whites crop up, along with compositions of pink-faced children and baskets of puppies.

Asli, who was laid off from her job at the near-bankrupt Soviet-era carpet factory a few years ago, loves weaving. She collects templates--patterns of tiny crosses on squared paper--just as some Western women collect knitting patterns. She studies them in her free moments, contemplating her next adventure in quiet creativity.

But, she complains, her work doesn't bring in much money. The most she can expect her husband to get for this winter's rug, measuring 6 feet by 10 feet, is $600.
"Four of us worked on it for six months," she laments. "And that means we only earned $25 a month each. A pittance."

The worst blow of all to the trade is the flippancy with which post-Soviet Dagestanis have begun to treat their traditions. Although it's still considered crucial to transfer carpets from family to family at marriage, her husband says, it's no longer a matter of pride to give the most beautiful and costly weaving possible.

And Russia's opening of its borders means that there's new competition in the rug business from an unexpected quarter: the West.

Inside Derbent's city walls, just yards from the deserted handmade carpet market, an altogether more flourishing trade is now going on in cheap Belgian or Belarussian carpets made with synthetic fibers.

These crackling, brownish rugs, with large swirly patterns, stand rolled up against walls, or are displayed on clotheslines or cars. Surly traders with none of the traditional carpet salesman's patter say they buy them from four or five big warehouses in Moscow and bring them down to the south for sale.

They cost only one-fifth as much as hand-woven rugs. "So what do people do before a wedding?" Magomedov asks with a mixture of indignation and resignation. "They know they've got to give carpets. But they couldn't care less what kind. So they get the cheapest possible Belgian thing and palm it off on their new family.

For people like that, respect for tradition is becoming no more than a formality."

Johnson's Russia List

Where do we get the names of these rugs?

Courtsy of skinnerinc.com Sale 2136 Lot 23

1750-1813 Khanate period. Azerbaijan is divided and rule by khans in different regions of the country. There were following khanates: Yerevan,Karabagh, Nakhichevan, Ganja, Shemakha, Sheki, Baku, Guba, Derbent, Salian sultanate, Javad khanate, Talysh. In the southern Azerbaijan: Tebriz, Urmiye, Ardebil Khoi, Karadagh, Serab, Maraga and Maku khanates. The Karabagh khanate also inluded Varand, Khachen, Gulistan, Dizak and Jeraberd melikdoms, the remnants of Albanian nobility". Chronology of Azerbaijan History and neighboring regions (Zaur Rzakhanov)

Saliani Prayer Rug
Southeast Caucasus, last quarter 19th century, hooked diamond medallion flanked by two palmettes and numerous small octagons in midnight and navy blue, ivory, gold, aubergine, and blue-green on the red field, ivory "wine glass" border, (small rewoven areas and other small repairs, end fraying), 5 ft. by 3 ft. 6 in. Estimate $2,500-3,500

Where do we get the names of these rugs?

Other Rug Notes

Classical Floral Carpets

Shirvan

Miscellaneous Caucasian Rugs

Rug factory in Erivan 1917 - 1918

Marasali Rugs

Index