Middle East, Carpet; Chuval or bag-face, wool and silk knotted pile on wool foundation, design of 3 guls on red ground, Salor Turkoman, Turkmenistan, 1800-1875

Bag Face, Turkoman, Salor; 19th century

WARP: grey wool; Z2S; 28 threads per inch (107 per dm); depressed

WEFT: brown wool; Z spun, unplied, 2 parallel threads per shoot; 2 shoots after each row of knots; 17 knots per inch (65 per dm).

PILE: wool and silk; 10 colours: red, light red, orange, dark green, dark blue, blue, dark purple/red, light purple silk, dark brown, white; asymmetrical knot open to the left and tied around 2 warp threads; 238 knots per sq. inch (3510 per sq. dm).

SIDE FINISH: one cord oversewn with (goat's?) hair dyed blue.

END FINISH: Lower: plain weave turned and stitched and then covered with a band of red woollen braid. Upper: cut

DESIGN: field: red ground with central band of three large hooked and stepped guls. Within each on a red ground there is a multi-coloured star within a horned cruciform. Similar upper and lower bands are partially evident. In two bands off-set to the guls are groups of nine small rectangles stepped diagonally in threes. They are outlined in dark blue and contain stars.
Main border: dark purple ground with a two-coloured flowerhead set in a small, horned cartouche. Each cartouche is separated by small, white, horned motif and four florettes between each pair.
Inner and outer borders: red ground with touching S-motifs in dark blue.
Lower band: immediately above plain weave, a band of reciprocal arrowheads in dark blue and red (the red ones containing two white dots).
Upper band: 15 "trees of life": four are dark green, the rest are blue.
Date catalogued: 4.10.94

Purchased from Vincent Robinson & Co., for £7.

cf: Elena Tzareva (1984) ill. 1. "Salor chuval, 18th century"
K. Gombos (1975) pp. 98, 101 "Szalor gol, Szalor ornamentikak"
A.A. Bogolyubov (ed. Thompson, 1973) ill. 6 "Antique Salor Chuval in wool and silk" and ill. 39 "Old Salor Chuval". Thompson queries both attributions.

Bags are important household articles for all nomadic people. They are used to transport possessions on pack animals when the community travels and are used for storage and decoration, and as something comfortable to lean against, when the community settles for a while and erects tents. The two sides of a bag, back and front, are called 'faces' and the one at the front is often decorated with knotted pile or with a woven design. This is the decorative pile face of a large storage bag probably made by the Salor people. Blue braid has been sewn along the lower edge to cover the raw edge - this is where the bag face was cut from the undecorated back panel. Small amounts of light purple silk have been used in the pile.

394-1880