N.B. Ambassador William "Bill" Eagleton died on January 27, 2011. He was a genuinely nice person and had an amazing intellect. I first met him at a "Rug Morning" at the Textile Museum in Washington DC. I identified a picture of a building on a rug as the Presidential palace in Kabul. I was please when a couple agreed but commented that the weaver had reversed the image. That was how I met the Eagleton's.
RugNotes: Saturday, April 30, 2005: "Saturday, April 30, 2005
Kurdish Carpet and Kelim by William Eagleton
Kurdish Carpet and Kelim: "Kurdish Carpets and Kelims
By Eagleton
The following is an introduction to Kurdish Rugs and Kelims, by William Eagleton. For the complete article see the main reference at the end.
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Kurdish rugs are usually woven on a relatively narrow loom of three to four feet long, and they are often twice as long as they are wide. Runners are popular, not for use in hallways but to provide sitting space along the walls in Kurdish village houses. Kurdish rugs often have only one or two borders, rather than the more standard three corders of Persian and Turkish rugs. The flat-wowen Kurdish kelims are also usually produced on narrow looms, sometimes in two matching halves that can be sewn toigether to produce a single design in a more nearly square format.
Kurdish rugs usually have two or more wefts between rows of symmetric knots, althoughh two of the best-knwn Kurdish products on the market , the Sennes and Bijars, have their own special structures. The most authentic Kurdish weave gives pile rugs a flat back on which the design is easily seen, and with each knot showing clearly as two square nodes. Kurdish rugs, whether from Anatolia or Iran, are often distinguished by their multi-cloured side selvedges. In Iran these usually form colour bands, six or more inches in length, while in anatolia different-coloured wools often alternate to form a herringbone side finish. The end finishes of Kurdish tribal and nomadic pieces are easy to distinguish since they consist of a cross braid made up of the excess warp length. From this cross braid extend round or flat plaits. Each plait groups together several inches of warp to lengthen the fringe another six inches or so. This produces the `wild, barbaric' appearance of Kurdish rugs noted in the early rug books.
DESIGN AND COLOUR
The designs of Kurdish tribal and village rugs, like those elsewhere in the Middle East, are often derived from elaborately drawn urban products, even though the connection is initially not at all obvious. It is, of course, the imagination and spontaneity of Kurdish women weavers that over years and centuries have transformed these sophisticated drawings into the crude geometric medallions and other figures found in Kurdish weavings we know today. In addition to this borrowing from the past, there are some designs that appear to be part of a non-urban tradition. On the whole, the flat-woven kelims probably display the most authentic Kurdish designs, since they have normallly been made for local use with few urban influences. For Kurdish designs in rugs, we can cite the eightpointed star and other octagonal forms as being the most typical. Besides these, there are latchhooks and geometric devices, `turtles', birds, and familiar objects such as combs and talismanic-shaped jewellery. There are laso crude animal and human forms, and along the edges reciprocal `running dog' outer borders. Kurdish women weavers like to fill empty spaces in the fields of the rugs using many small flowers and geometric shapes. This produces a cluttered and deconstructed appearance which can be attractive or not, depending on how space and colour are combined, and how they suit the eye. Older Kurdish rugs have strong natural dyes that improve with age. Red and blue are the dominant clours, the former normally coming from the madder root, while in the Malatya and Gaziantep regions in Turkey cochineal dyes from insects were used until the 1920s to produce deep reds with a bluish cast. More recently, however, Kurdish weavers, like others in the Middle East, have taken to the easily applied, cheap and inferior chemical dyes that are often resistent neither to light nor to water. Kurdish women are particularly attracted to the bright pinks and oranges, which they fortunately use in small quantities, and which sometimes fade to more pleasing hues.
CLASSIFICATION BY REGION
Kurdish weaving can most conveniently be classified by describing characteristics within each political init. In Iran, Kurdish rug production is devided between Iranian Kurdistan in the north-west and a large enclave to the east in Khorasan neart Quchan. The women of Quchan broght their rug-weaving tradition from central Anatolia and the Caucasus in the seventeeth and eighteenth centuries and combined it with the local weaving tradition of the Turkomans and Bauch. In Western Iranian Kurdistaan, two notable rug types developed during the nineteeth century, namely the Sennes and the Bijars - two very different weaves, both of which were apparently made for an urban elite. The Sennes, woven in the town now called Sanandaj, are a fine, but light, construction, wile the Bijars only a short distance to the east are notably heavy and tightly woven. The third area in Iranian Kurdistan well known to rug scholars is Sauj Bulaq, now Mahabad. The nineteenth-century rugs attributed to Sauj Bulaq were probably woven in nearby tribal areaas. Over the years the weaving traditions in the region have changed, causing confusion regarding the proper description of these rugs as to structure and design. Those of the ninteenth century were noted for their lustrous wool and deep colours, aand fields full of every type of Kurdish device within an overall design derived from classical carpets. The Sennes also borrowed from urban designs with central medallions or overall Herati patterns.
In addition to these weel-known Iranian Kurdish rugs, there is a wide variety of other Kurdish tribal weavings, from the far north down the mountains to Kermanshah. Near Kermanshah the small pile bags of the Jaf and Sanjabi tribes dominate. Nearer Hamadan the sedentary Kolya'i tribe produced a larege volume of inexpensive rugs for the export market. Further north the tribes have produces a great variety of rugs, bags and kelims. There is obviously more work to be done in classifying Iranian tribal weavings. The Anatolian Kurdish weaving area can be devided into three geographical areas: west of Lake Van, north of Lake Van, and the area south of the lake in the Hakkari mountains. The Kurdis rugs from the west have for years been mislabelled as Yuruks even thouggh the Yuruks are a nomadic Turkish people, most of whom are located west of the Kurds. These rugs usually take the names of the principal markets such as Sivas, Malatya, Gaziantep, Adiyaman, Diyarbakir and Cihanbeyli near Konya. In addition to the pile rugs there are many well-known kelims woven in these areas, especially Malayta, Gaziantep and Sivas.
The Anatolian Kurdish rugs of the nineteeth and early twentieth centuries from the area west of Lake Van are tightly woven by the comparison with other village and nomadic products. Their shapes and structures resemble other Anatolian rugs of the period, though their dyes tend to be darker and richer than those of their neighbours. Although Kurdish rugs normally have wefts, as well as warps and pile, made up of two strands of spun wool, the Kurdish rugs west of Lake Van usually have sigle-ply wefts.
North of Lake Van are the woven products of Erzurum, Kars and Kagizman where some design characteristics are similar to those of `Caucasian ' rugs across the border in Armenia and Georgia. At times, it is difficult to distinguish the Kurdish rugs of Kars from the Turkish Terekeme, though the latter are somewhat more even in weave and Caucasian in design. The predominace of brown sheep north of Lake Van lends asombre tone to some of the colours and produces brown end finishes which help us identify these rugs.
South of Lake Van are found the rugs and Kelims of the large Hartushi and Herki tribes. Of the kelims, the best knwn are the nearly square Van kelims, woven in two sections by the Hartushi women. At the present time many of their villages have been abondoned for security reasons, but the women are still weaving kelims for the tourist market in Van or elsewhere. Only recently have large numbers of the thick and primitive Hartushi rugs come onto the market, many of them too heavy for the international rug market given their low price. Other rugs of a smaller format are wowen by the nomadic Herki tribe which is located in Turkey, Irn and Iraq. This mountainous area south of the lake is the Kurdish heartland where some of the most authentic weaving is still being done, though unfortunately not with natural dyes.
The Kurdish rugs and kelims of Iraq are entirely of tribal origin and few of them have found their way onto the international market. The weaving areas in Iraqi Kurdistan fall into three distinct regions: the Erbil plain, with Persian influences brought over by the Dizayi aghas in the eighteenth century, the area north-east of Erbil, centered on the Herki, Surchi and Keylani tribes, and the area north of Mosoul, where Kelims predominate.
In Syria, there is minor production, mostly of kelims related to those woven by the Kurds north of the border in Turkey. The term `Aleppo Kelim' is often used for products made before Word War I, many of which were woven in areas whic are now part of Turkey, stretching as far north-west as Gaziantep.
The Kurds of Caucasus are known to have been prolific weavers. The major problem here is that, with a few exceptions, we are not certain which of the Caucasian rugs were woven by Kurds and which by Azeri Turks or Armenians. There is a tendency to assign some of the more dense, shaggy and primitive pieces to Kurdish weavers.
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Reference:
Eagleton, William. Kurdish Rugs and Kelims: An Introduction, in Kreyenbroek, P. and Allison, C. (eds) Kurdish Culture and Identity, Zed Books Ltd, London, 1996, pp. 156-161.
For further Information read:
Eagleton, William, An Introduction to Kurdish Rugs and other Weavings, Buckhurst Hill, 1988.
William Eagleton has been US Ambassador in Syria, and is now Deputy Commissioner General of UNWRA in Vienna, currently seving as Special Coordinator for Sarajevo. He combines an interest in the political and in the artistic aspects of the Middle East, being the author of books on modern Kurdish history and on carpets (from the original source).""
Oriental Rug Cleaning in the State College and Williamsport Pa
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