Their book opens and closes with examples of ak yup, the charismatic white-ground tent bands with designs in partial or full knotted pile. Plate l is a member of a small group with full pile and is an excellent introduction to the maze of Turkmen design, Its ably photographed 32-foot length conveys the impact of Turkmen environmental art.
There follow four S-group pieces. Plate 2, a juval gul juval, despite its dark, smoky condition compares favorably to its close relation in Turkmen Plate 7 and shows us how that piece might have looked originally, The Cassin piece has been pulled tight and pounded down, and demonstrates an absolute mastery of the medium. Plate 3, in the same format, lacks this compression and comes across as weaker but still an outstanding example. One can see how the weaver had begun the first row of guls with the same awesome intent, only to loosen up subsequently. The S-group kejebe torba which follows maintains the same elevated level and is one of the most beautiful I have seen. A curious strip of what seems to be white cotton ornament runs along the top, and the weaving has been pulled very tight resulting in an elongated, elegant design.
A word about "completely depressed warps," as they are described here, might be in order. The knots do not lie on top of one another as popularly supposed but, like the warps, all at an angle of 45 degrees. What occurs is that the back of the knot sits almost directly under the front of the next. "Completely depressed warps" is therefore something of a misnomer; offset might be more accurate. The first weft then passes through the rug and lays flat. The second weft, usually described as wavy, is also drawn through with maximum momentum. However, in order to sit as firmly on top of the first weft as possible, it has to lie in a relaxed position around the warps, thus creating a solid and comfortable base for the next row of knots.
With their high seriousness, these S-group weavings transmit an intense psychological state of which stoicism, or indifference to suffering, is the hallmark. They serve to remind us that rug weaving at its truest is a visionary art. A turret-gul Salor juval rounds off this section, fragmented but superior. Cassin makes the interesting assertion that these pieces are relative late-comers and were never part of the original S-group repertory but a sort of swansong of the Salor tribe. This bears thinking about. Incidentally, looking at the Wher collection juval of the same type (Oriental Carpet and Textiles Studies I) I was struck by the reciprocal interplay within the turret guls; this is clearest to see, I think, due to the black-and-white illustration.
The S-gul pieces are the true phenotypes of their era. They show clearly the relation of the individual to a tradition- bound society. Likewise the small format torbas and juvals were the opportunity to try out new styles and combinations, and thus demonstrate the experimental side of Turkmen weaving.
The Cassin collection - Plates 1 to 20 - concerns itself stubbornly with exceptions to the rule with tribal runs, one- of-a-kinds, occasional belly-flops. The Saryk kejebe, an old and ugly piece, compares poorly to its Salor confreres. The early Chodor juval, Plate 10, is cut length-wise and resewn, reducing two rows of guls to mere puddles. (The technical description at this point is also incorrect, i.e. Chodor knotting is Persian open to the right, not the left.) The Arabatchi (?) juval of Plate 15 is too bland and not really worthy of inclusion. Meticulously worked pieces like the Tekke torba of Plate 8 with its strange, antlered chemches; the high-tech weaving of Plate 14, a Yomud mutant; Plate 17, a classy Yomud torba; and even a couple of freaks, happily being different in Plates 18 and 20, round out this section.
Twenty pieces from Peter Hoffmeister follow the 20 Cassin examples. Here the emphasis is on mainstream Turkmen weaving. The contrast works well. Hoffmeister concentrates on Ersari and Saryk ensis, a number of small Tekke and Yomud weavings, and six Ersari juvals. The standard is consistently high, although the besetting sin of this section is the excess of white paper, due to the captions for several pieces being printed on one page. Too much white paper was also the problem with Turkoman Carpets in Franconia, and I wish Herr Hoffmeister had written more detailed captions to his pieces.
His ideas on the shamanistic origins of the ensi remain constant. A design from a woman's sled (Yenisey Valley, Siberia) bears a startling resemblance to the recently illustrated felt asmalyk (Hali 37) and a Chinese "Soul Banner" from the Han period, representing the underworld and the living and the heavens above, claimed by Hoffmeister to be mirrored in the Turkmen ensis.
Theorizing aside, I feel the true worth of this collection lies in its selection of pieces on aesthetic merits. The best Ersari juvals have a joyful, celebratory mood to them, revelling in their own optical play. Take Plate 31, for instance, a sunbird/ikat design. Here two adjacent gul-like forms continuously overlap to achieve a subtle spatial disorientation through a trick peculiar to the Ersari: the absence of any clearly definable ground color. Jerome Straka has one of these, too, but I find the Hoffmeister piece more elegant. It is damaged. though, and comes off the worst for wear, a feature of these collections in general. A total of seven pieces have been cut and rejoined, including the sides of one Saryk ensi and the center of what must count as the world's first midget ensi (still one of my favorites, though). However, this is not the fault of the pieces themselves, when scoring on aesthetic counts.
Here I would like to voice a minor complaint. The weave descriptions are given as number of warps and wefts per inch, which I find an unnecessary complication, whereas it does give us the sett of the rugs, which no one I know has previously done. It makes knot count calculations a minor struggle each time: knots per square inch equal warp number divided by two and weft number minus one - easy, huh?
Hoffmeister's most serious carpet is his Ersari ensi, Plate 36. Stately and severe, everything fits without the least sign of stiffening of tne joints. Few other Ersari ensis can rank with it. They mostly suffer from being petit-bourgeois and suburban. As with the Salor pieces, age acts as a kind of fourth dimension.
The book closes with two more tent bands, knotted designs on a plainwoven white ground. I like the fearful symmetry of Plate 40, which when so photographed resembles nothing less than a carved totem pole. It's a clarifying note on which to end.
I do feel that Mr. Cassin's text might have taken a bit more editing or could have been more lucidly demonstrated in chart form. The continual lack of commas makes for difficult reading, or rather makes the text seem more difficult than it is. On the other hand, that obnoxious misuse of syntax, which can be traced back to Simon Crosby and which consists of stringing numerous small sentences together by the use of phoney commas, finds frequent use here. I feel it should be abandoned!
As a general introduction the text can be lain alongside H. Konig's survey in Central Asian Rugs and Azadi's introduction to his Turkoman Carpets to form a long historical runner unfolding up to the 19th century. Mercifully, Jack and Peter have spared us the importune of another revolutionary new gul theory. What we have here is the archaeology of rugs. They have come down to the bedrock of rug appreciation, in which Turkmen rugs form the top layer and beneath which lie numerous strata still waiting to be sifted and evaluated.
This is a book for every true Turkmen Liebhaber, a book to look at and enjoy. S-groupies will buy it for Plates 2-5, and it will send the informed reader scurrying off to the library in search of cross-references. Being light weight it will not hurt your shelves. Gone are the days when a book had to be as big as a Bogolubov to attain academic credibility. Good printing on excellent paper (though perhaps too much of that!) and a limited edition of 1,000 copies have conspired to keep costs up, but in five years it will surely be a collector's item. And where else have you lately seen 40 Turkmen pieces of such quality?
"It leads one to imagine that these shells have grown according to laws so simple, so much in harmony with their material, with their environment, and with all the forces internal and external to which they are exposed, that none is better than another and none fitter or less fit to survive. It invites one also to contemplate the possibility of the lines of possible variation being here so narrow and determinate that identical forms may have come independently into being again and again."
D'Arcy Thompson, On Growth and Form
Tent Band.Tent Bag by Jack Cassin and Peter Hoffmeister. Magna Mater Verlag, Coburg/Esbach sells for $75 and is distributed by Adraskand, Inc. in the United States and is available from specialty book dealers.
