In Part I of this interview, published in our February/March issue, America's most eminent rug scholar described his early life and explained how he became a student of rugs and translator of rug books. In Part II Ellis considers attributions, museum acquisitions, and the future of rug scholarship.

Is Everything Indian?

Ellis: You're forgetting our friend out in Berkeley. Murray (Eiland) put a number of rugs into India which I consider East Persian. I have been fishing for a number of years for the break point between the East Persian design characteristics of the late 16th century and the Indian designs of the 17th century which would be based on them. I found one rug, for instance, in Vienna on my last trip, in storage in the Vienna Museum, which I consider to be an East Persian rug which you would consider of the type which I have been categorizing for a number of years as Indian. But it has a different construction and differences in color. A certain amount of this is color. I expect good clear green and good clear yellow in East Persian rugs and not in Indian rugs. Maybe I am not right.

ORR: I am curious how you reached that assumption.

Ellis: It's a combination of the incidence of such colors with the incidence of certain weft treatments, for instance, woolen wefts. I expect to find woolen wefts in various East Persian rugs and I don't expect to find them in comparable rugs from India. The rugs from India I expect to have cotton wefts - strictly times three, originally of what I consider bleached cotton. Some of this is not quite easy to explain, I am sure.

ORR: Well, from the beginning have you always approached rugs by looking at the technical features as well as the colors and patterns, or did you start out with patterns and later the technical data?

Ellis: I started collecting the technical data really through Louisa Bellinger because she had been encouraged by Myers to immerse herself in the technical aspects and so she did. And this seemed to me to be a very valuable approach, and so I have maintained that ever since. This is the basic reason why I have spent as much time analyzing rugs all over the world as I have, because I think this is one of the most valid approaches; but this has to be taken together with design and color, and general effect, and other technical characteristics - end and side finishes - which do not still exist in many rugs in many Western collections but do in those in collections in the East. Those in the Istanbul museums will have side finishes, but those in Western museums don't have them because they were worn off and replaced with other finishes.

Thoughts on Museums

Ellis: This is a little bit hard to answer. I am not conscious of the degree to which my reputation gets me into places. I am conscious now when I go to a show or into a strange dealer's shop and the dealers recognize me - that is new to me. This is reputation, I suppose, but as for the museums I have found them in general to be most gracious around the world. Perhaps the least gracious have been the major museums in this country at times.

ORR: Why is it that rugs are so weak in the museums in this country?

Ellis: I think it is an attitude on the part of curators partly, and they are guided by policies of directors and boards. Who knows? But it may be that, basically, it has been decided that the public is not that interested in rugs. So, for a long period of time, for example in St. Louis, they have had a large collection and it has been in practically dead storage.

ORR: Is it also because most of our museums are built around painting and sculpture?

Ellis: Oh, sure. It depends on the type of museum. The museums in Europe that have rugs are not fine arts museums but applied arts museums, as in Vienna. But in Berlin it is different. Paris, the Louvre, has some but I think in recent years none are on display. The major collection is at the Musee des Arts Decoratifs, but in recent years that has been tied up because of insufficient guard service. Hard to see. It was a difficult situation.

ORR: Is it partly that European museums have acquired pieces whereas American museums have had the rugs given to them?

Ellis: Museums have acquired rugs under different circumstances during different time frames. I don't have enough information to comment sensibly. But at present you have some that continue to acquire rugs, such as The Textile Museum and the Met. The TM has been fortunate in having many rugs given to it in recent years. And you have Uncle Piggy's (McCoy Jones) rugs going to the De Young Museum in San Francisco which had sold off what few rug fragments it had a few years previously.

ORR: But there is also the recent example of the Baltimore Museum.

Ellis: Yes, they sold off the fragments and tried to get rid of the Vase carpet, and couldn't. Of course, the Walters has a few rugs, and there are a few others. I don't know what the situation is in Brooklyn. The hinge of that collection was Ernest Erickson's and I understood at one time that his rugs were going to Sweden; I haven't heard what's become of them. There was an unusual Dragon rug and Turkish prayer rugs.

ORR: Do you know the rugs in Tehran and Kuwait?

Ellis: I know the book of the Kuwait collection and have examined several of those rugs. I have also examined the rugs in the Tehran Carpet Museum. I don't think they have added anything of value since, nor do I know what the situation is now and whether the collection is intact or to what extent they are maintaining it.

ORR: Do you have any insights into why the TM or other museums have not attempted to obtain funds so that experts like you or May could continue researching and writing on rugs?

Ellis: I don't know what they do down there; I don't know who tries to do it. They are a small museum. They have had a problem of a succession of directors that is not good for morale. There has been a succession of curators and no continuity from one curator to the next, and that has not been a good picture. It has now extended to the library. It's difficult to say.

One question today is what is going to be important for the museum tomorrow, what is going to bring in a big crowd. Are they more likely to get money for a big show of West African weaving than for rugs? That may not have been what the museum was founded for but may be what is going to get the attention of grant giving institutions.

ORR: Yes, I wondered about that because I was never aware they had any significant African textiles.

Ellis: No, African textiles were never a part of Mr. Myers' idea at all. And they have had several African shows there. He was interested in Africa to the extent that it was Islamic and had to do with rugs. I think his interest tended to wane when it got out to Morocco; he never had any interest in Moroccan rugs.

Of Myers, McMullan, Jenkins, and Jones

Ellis: No, he dropped out of the picture shortly before I started going down there. He probably would not have put up with me.

ORR: Why do you say that?

Ellis: He was very decided in his views, and I would probably have said something or done something that would have gotten his back up early on. Who knows? I just got a letter a day or so ago in which Carol (Bier) raises the question of raising funds to do some scholarly work and bringing it back to a scholarly reputation and establishing some arrangement for resident students and carpet studies and things of that sort.

ORR: Was that ever discussed when you and May were more active there?

Ellis: No, no. May and I never discussed anything like that. It was never discussed when Sawyer and Tony (Landreau} were there.

ORR: Well, May was there when I became aware of the TM in 1968 or 1969.

Ellis: She had supplied several articles for the Journal but they were sporadic and I don't think there was any thought about regularity. I had been supplying articles for the Journal on a regular basis, every year until I ran into a snag with Tony over the Mamluk mandala article.

ORR: I wonder if you would give me some brief comments on some collectors. McMullan...

Ellis: He had an excellent eye on the whole for collecting semi-antique Turkish rugs, Turkoman rugs, and Chinese saddle covers. When he went into classic rugs, he got into trouble promptly, particularly when he got into Turkish classical rugs of the types which tended to be faked. He did not know what he was doing, and so he got booby-trapped.

ORR: And those are still in museum collections to which he contributed his rugs?

Ellis: Certainly. One I think of is still at the Art Institute. The Met has just pulled one back from the TM where it has been resting in storage - a fake bird rug.

ORR: And the Persian classical rugs?

Ellis: His Persian classical rugs are on the whole quite good. The problem is with the Turkish. I'm just trying to think how some of this stuff is classified. The very showy Kurdish carpet he bought from Dilley (he and someone else bought it together). This is the rug mentioned by Martin in his carpet history, and I'm quite sure it was a new rug when Martin mentioned it - the Nigde rug, it was allegedly Caucasian, I think. (Pulling out a book} The genuine rugs of this type are Jufti knotted and have a different color scheme and construction. This is a rug I would say was made about 1900, yes, Plate 41 there.

ORR: What about McCoy Jones, or "Uncle Piggy" as you called him earlier?

Ellis: Uncle Piggy had a certain nondescript collection of rugs, a very large and nondescript collection. By the time it got to San Francisco, it seemed to have been miraculously improved a great deal. It has a lot of good Turkoman rugs anyhow. I would say it is a collection of semi-antique rugs of very good quality.

ORR: Condition was very important to Mr. Jones.

Ellis: Oh, very important. He and Carolyn were very influenced recently by Cathy Cootner.

ORR: What's the origin of the nickname Uncle Piggy?

Ellis: I believe he picked it up as a cadet at the Naval Academy. Only a few close friends used it in his presence. It's probably not appropriate for me to use it in this interview.

ORR: But it's the kind of term which makes these old timers more human to those of us who came to rugs later. What about Arthur Jenkins?

ORR: Are there private collections that you know of, people who care not to be known as collectors that you could mention?

Ellis: I am aware of collections on a worldwide basis, but I am not so aware of collections in the United States which is what you are looking for. But several of the important collections that have been put together in this country recently have been in California, largely in the Bay Area. I don't know what Burns has, for instance; he has a small Dragon rug which is very good. He had a garden carpet which was not so wonderful from one of the old collections. He has a Caucasian collection which I would like to see at some point, and I do not think that the book has done them justice. I think there are a couple of collectors in the Bay Area who have perhaps more important rugs. I don't know what all they have. One I think of has a northwest Persian Medallion carpet which is quite nice, better than anything else of that sort to be found in the market, and a second-rate Dragon rug.

ORR: Do you think there are still classical rugs around to emerge on the market?

Ellis: There are classical rugs around, definitely. Rugs keep coming to the surface which have appeared in the literature in the past. I am commenting a bit about that in a future article in Hali.

Trips and Rugs in Japan

Ellis: I'm starting in Spain. I'll start with a couple of nights in Madrid and then move on to Barcelona where I will look at a group of Spanish rug fragments at the textile museum there. Then I go to Milan and down to Genoa and confer with my patron there and see what rugs he has picked up. There is one he has been after and he hopes to have it available for me to see.

ORR: I assume these are classical rugs?

Ellis: Yes.

ORR: You use the term semi-antique with reference to McMullan and Jones' rugs. How are you using that term?

Ellis: Generally, in both cases I mean 19th century. (Looking for a book) That is the Stroganoff rug which is illustrated here; it dropped out of sight for years and finally was discovered by Boralevi, and he published it and it was bought by my friend over in Genoa.

ORR: Following the 1986 I.C.O.C. in Vienna, you went to Japan. What did you find there?

Ellis: It was a very interesting series of rugs there. I don't know to what extent I should discuss them for publication at this point, but I found basically one thing that I had gone for and I will show you that.

In parades on the 17th of July they have floats which are designed more or less like this (showing a picture from a book) that are several stories high that are drawn by a group of 30 to 40 men around through the streets. And on the fronts and sides are various textiles, including these carpets.

ORR: And what is this book and where was it published?

Ellis: This is a book of the textiles and carpets that are used on the floats in this parade. It is published by a Japanese firm and as far as I know is only available in Japan.

And so this book was brought to my attention by Nabuko Kajitani and, in going through it, I came to this. In design and color, this rug is what is illustrated in a series of 17th century Dutch paintings by Jan Steen and various other contemporaries.

ORR: And there are no rugs like them to your knowledge? And they are all pile rugs? Here is one that looks like a Kazak and something that looks like a Chinese rug with Kufic borders.

Ellis: That's right. There are no rugs like it in Western museums. Here it is: an illustration of a similar rug in a painting in the National Gallery in London. Here's one in a Jan Steen painting in San Francisco and another one in a painting in Detroit, and it is the same design and border except for the guard stripes. It is the same color scheme besides. An article was written on the rugs of that type in the paintings by Scheunemann a number of years ago. She died early. She reconstructed the design of the carpets as being this. This is a different border from this rug, but there are many common borders between the paintings and the rugs. I saw some of these rugs. I saw one in a private collection in Nagoya and a fragment of yet another one that is owned by a different group that is used in the same parade. And from the technical details, these are not the Dutch rugs that I thought from looking at the plates in this book but Japanese copies. They tie in fairly closely with another, larger group of rugs which I take to be Japanese rugs. Here is one that is copied from an Indian rug. Here is an example of a Lahore Indian rug and this is the Japanese copy. So is this.

ORR: And so what do the Japanese call them?

Ellis: They don't know what to call them. In some cases they have ledger records of their purchase in the 1700s, in one case, at least, from Dutch traders. This is a Japanese copy. This is Indo- Persian, not Herat - Agra, shall we say. (Leafing through the book) This is not the northwest Persian one would assume but an Indian copy of one. I find this quite fascinating. This is Lahore; again, this is Lahore; this is a Japanese copy of an Indian rug; and here is a real Polonaise. Here is another worn-out Polonaise.

At any rate, those are some of them. The Chinese rugs with Kufesque borders are Japanese, some of which were made just a few years ago in a Japanese rug factory up in the northwest part of Honshu. I have gotten a catalog from them, but they didn't answer any of my questions.

ORR: Do they have cotton foundations?

Ellis: I would have to go back in my records to see, but at any rate I think it is a fascinating story. I don't know if I would put all of this in the article I want to write but I want to put in a fair amount, particularly about the rugs with the Dutch designs because I think the original rugs were made in Holland.

ORR: This is one of the things you have written before?

Ellis: Yes, I think they bring a number of things together.

As we finished the interview (see Part I, ORR 9/3), we inquired again about how Charlie Ellis kept records on rugs he had inspected. He pulled out a small record book. It contained data from a trip to Portugal and a visit to the Gulbenkian Collection and several small museums in Portugal. There in a clearly written hand were concise comments on the designs and technical aspects of every rug he had seen.

We asked what plans he had for future disposition of these records. It was the most poignant moment of the interview; clearly no institution has expressed interest.

The coming tragedy for rug studies is that the knowledge and records of independent, non-institutionally connected scholars like Charlie Ellis and May Beattie, rug collectors like Ralph Yohe and Gerhard Kabisch, and the longitudinal market knowledge of dealers like Richard Markarian and Yousuf Balour are not being recorded and preserved by those institutions which are concerned with rug collections, conservation, and study. Not only is it expensive and painstakingly slow to recreate such data after it is lost, but Amercian scholarship and knowledge in general has always been advanced by those who were on the outside, who questioned and challenged the established concepts. Charles Grant Ellis is a paradigm of that kind of quintessential American independent scholar.

Books, Author

Books, Translator

Articles, Author

Oriental Rug Review

"Commentary on F. R. Martin," V/12-VII 12, 1985-1987
"Confusion from the Dutch," IV/138-139
"Dragon Rug Located," V/5
"A Northwest Persian Medallion Carpet," VI/12
"The Baltimore Vase Carpet at Sotheby's," VIII/3/54-55

Hali

"The Rugs from the Great Mosque of Divrigi," 1/3/269- 274
"Small Pattern Holbein Carpets in Paintings, A Continuation," 3/3/216-217
"The Art of the Mughal Carpet," 4/3/220-238, with others
"Garden Carpets and their Relation to Safavid Gardens," 5/1/10-17
"Shepherd's Pie," 10/6/74-75

Oriental Carpet and Textile Studies "Ellis in Holbeinland," I, 1985
"On 'Holbein' and 'Lotto' Rugs," II, 1986

Carpets of Central Persia, Proceeding of Colloquium "The Antique Carpets that We Call Kirman," Sheffield, 1976

Islamic Art "Where Have the Other Corners Gone?", in press

Marg "Indian Carpets in United States Museums," Bombay, 1965

Delaware Antiques Show Catalog "Mixed Thoughts on Oriental Carpets," Wilmington, 1969

Forschungen Zur Kunst Asiens "Caucasian Carpets in the Textile Museum," Istanbul, 1969

Islamic Art in the Metropolitan Museum of Art "The Portuguese Carpets of Gujerat," New York, 1972

Festschrift fur Peter Wilhelm Meister "The 'Lotto' Pattern as a Fashion in Carpets," Hamburg, 1975

National Gallery of Art Publications Volume containing section on carpets, awaiting publication

Book Reviews

Pamphlets

Near Eastern Kilims, The Textile Museum, 1965
The Hajji Baba Exhibition of Oriental Rugs, The Textile Museum, 1960
Mamluk and Ottoman Carpets, The Textile Museum, 1969
Spain's Carpet Heritage, The Textile Museum, 1988