Dear Ron,
Thank you for the article on my last exhibit, "The Painted Carpet," in the last issue of Oriental Rug Review. The term trompe l'oeil, which had been used in the press release (not ORR's) to describe my painting, was well intended but the term deceives more than the eye. The intent of trompe l'oeil technique in still-life painting is to create the illiusion of reality by means of carefully rendered surfaces such as wood, stone, feathers, fur, etc. This carries over into decorative techniques such as wood graining (faux bois) and marbleizing (faux marbre). The technique itself in this type of painting becomes the subject. Any effects which may convey heightened realism in my painting are incidental to my intent.
The appeal of a beautiful rug for me is the color, graphic quality, and magnetic force. The weaver conveys this with fiber as the medium.
My intention, then, is not to trick the viewer into believing that the image before him is a construction of warp, weft, and wool but to translate the aesthetic content of the weaving into another language, thereby reaching a wider audience
Thomas Stocker
Haverhill, New Hampshire
P.S. Enclosed are two slides of my latest and another recent painting. The former, a prayer kilim, is from the Orient Stars collection, and the pile carpet is from the Chris Alexander collection. Both are drawn to the original size with some "restoration" of ragged edges and holes. My admiration goes to those other artists whose work is much more demanding: the weavers and restorers of textiles and rugs.
Dear Sirs,
On page 44 of your April/May issue, in the feature "Collectors Corner," you show a Gabbeh which looks very familiar to me. It was published in my Gabbeh book, #27, written by Tanavoli and Amanolahi, in 1990.
I purchased it around 1980 from a dealer in Basel (Ruedi Graf) and sold it to an Austrian collector in 1992.
Please don't bother to write. I just wanted to draw your attention to this fact.
Georges D. Bornet
Baar, Switzerland
P.S. The carpet is made by the Qashga'i (not Squashqa'i)!
Dear Sir,
The August/September issue of ORR contains several articles in which the idea of "invisible restoration" is held up as the only desirable option for those who want to go beyond conservation. No mention is made of another option that I find more appealing in many cases, namely "visible restoration." I am referring to work that matches the original approximately, but can be spotted immediately by anybody. In this way, one has a rug that is usable on the floor or elsewhere, without looking like a worn out rag. At the same time one avoids an ethical problem, and one can tell at a glance what is original and what isn't -- an advantage as far as I am concerned. Of course, care must be exerted to make the restorations look tasteful in respect to their surroundings. Basically, they should look as though they were patches of abrash.
Yonathan Bard
Newton, Massachusetts
Dear Ron,
If some synthetic dye was introduced in 1875 and we feel confident that its use was discontinued by 1900, we will attribute any rug with that dye in it to between 1875 and 1900. This is the case with the fugitive fuchsins, dyes that fade upon exposure to light. The most common of these in Caucasian weavings is a violet to red-violet dye that fades, ultimately becoming very pale gray. In pile weavings it can be seen as areas of pale violet to gray that are much darker beneath the tips of the pile. In flatweaves, the face will be faded while the reverse side will usually still be intensely colored. Fuchsin was synthesized before 1860, but wasn't commercially available to Caucasian weavers until around 1875-1880. Its use is believed to have been completely discontinued by 1900, probably because of the instability of the colors. Indeed, one authority, justifiably highly respected for his knowledge and scholarship, recently reflected the general state of confidence that we have in the accuracy of those dates with the following comments upon a Caucasian rug (emphasis added):
"The dyes used in this piece include a fugitive fuchsine, which would date the rug quite precisely to the last quarter of the 19th century." Clearly, there are exceptions to the current notions that presence of a fugitive fuchsin dye places a piece firmly in the final quarter of the 19th century, that corrosive blacks or browns justify attribution to a time not later than 1910, and that virtually every piece produced in the 20th century includes some synthetic dyes. If we had more information about how frequently such exceptions occur, it would be possible to use statistical methods to estimate the dates of production of pieces with various dyes. To this end, I would like to assemble a database of pieces that include unambiguous, plausible dates woven into them.
I would be grateful to any readers with access to such a piece who will send me a brief description, the date that is inscribed, whether the palette includes a fugitive fuchsin, and if the browns or blacks are corroded. The information will be used to determine the range of dates within which each of the dyes in question was actually used and the changes in the frequency of their use with time. The results will be reported, of course. If information can be obtained on a sufficient number of pieces, I will do the analysis separately for different production centers. Kindly send the information to:
Steven Price
Box 980551
Richmond, VA 23298-0551