Although called "The Textile Museum Rug Convention," the event is devoted to textiles, not just to rugs. While the Central Asian nomads and villagers wove rugs, floor coverings are a small fraction of their output and, from the standpoint of ethnography, rugs are less significant than are bags (usually pile woven), trappings, and clothing (often embroidered and/or ikat fabrics). The program focused on the significance of weaving to the cultures of Central Asian peoples rather than on the woven objects as pieces to be admired more or less in vacuo. Aesthetics were not ignored, of course. Besides, most of us find that the aesthetics of woven pieces are greatly enhanced by understanding their significance to the weaver and to the culture in which they were produced. (Interestingly, this enhancement does not seem to depend on the accuracy of our understanding, only in our belief in it.)
The conference opened with a two-hour reception in the Textile Museum garden on Friday evening. The setting provided a nice opportunity for greetings between acquaintances and introduction of participants to each other. The weather was perfect, setting an upbeat mood from the start. The rest of the schedule consisted of a series of lectures on Saturday, with some of the Textile Museum's Turkoman treasures being shown on Sunday along with an opportunity for participants to see the museum's current exhibitions, and finished on Sunday with two hours of displaying pieces brought in by participants.
Anthropologist Thomas Barfield gave the first lecture, an overview of Central Asian ethnography and history during the past couple of millennia. We were reminded that while "remote Central Asia" is remote to us, Central Asians saw it as central. Samarqand and Bukhara were great centers where nomadic and sedentary peoples interacted in commerce and developed their cultures.
Mügül Andrews, a charming woman of wide experience and expertise in embroidery who also happens to be Turkish (she reminded us of this, with obvious pride, several times during the conference) and, at least partially, of Turkoman descent, brought a number of beautiful and unusual Central Asian embroidered pieces which were available for examination, and presented an informative talk on techniques of embroidery and the uses to which various embroidered items were put. This was her first visit to the U.S.A., and the first opportunity for many Americans to hear her. If the conference, like professional sports, gave an award for Most Valuable Player, she would undoubtedly have received it. She was a frequent participant in discussions throughout the program, and her knowledge of the customs of Central Asian nomads derived from her upbringing and from her field work with Peter Andrews, her husband, enabled her to explode many an incipient myth before it could gain much momentum.
Jon Thompson lectured on some of the relatively unstudied weavings of Central Asia -- those of Turkoman-Uzbek, Karakalpak, Kazakh, Tadjik and Kirghiz. There is clearly much fertile ground for study among these groups. One truly striking aspect of their weavings is how similar in structure and decoration their tentbands (and items made by sewing widths of tentband-like weavings together) are to each other and to Turkoman tentbands. Tentbands are nearly unique within Turkoman products: constructed with pile decoration on a flatwoven field, and decorated with motifs found nowhere else in Turkoman weavings. The same statements seem to apply to the less studied Central Asians. What is the explanation for the similarity of the tentbands across these groups? In addition to raising many interesting questions in his very stimulating presentation, Jon Thompson was the first speaker on the program to leave time for questions and discussion from the audience.
Michael Bazinet, a doctoral candidate in anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania and collector of photo post cards, presented a number of old photos of Bukhara (only two of which were from his collection). Many of these have been published and appear in the literature on Central Asian weavings. Bazinet critiqued the usefulness of many of them, pointing out that because of the technological limitations of 19th century photography the people were almost always posed rather than candid, and that the costumes in which they were posed probably were completely inappropriate for the activities in which they were participating. There is also a tendency for the black and white photos to misrepresent the color intensities of the actual items because of the insensitivity of early films to red (panchromatic films were invented much later, although red-blind films are still used by photographers who like to be able to work in a darkroom with a dim red light rather than in total darkness). To me, at least, this presentation offered little illumination of Central Asian ethnography or weaving, but some found it very interesting and relevant.
Peter Andrews provided a comparative view of tent furnishings from Turkmanistan to Mongolia. He has an excellent set of slides illustrating tent interiors and animal trappings from his field work, and being able to see the weavings en situ was a special treat. The published descriptions of the uses are often unclear, and he was able to unmuddy some of the murky waters. There is, of course, risk in assuming that the way the Qazaq (the group he has recently studied most thoroughly in the field) use certain items in 1990 accurately reflects the only way in which similar items were used by all tribes of Central Asia in the past, although that certainly seems like a reasonable point from which to depart.
Ned Long with a Turkoman bagface at the Sunday showing of selections from the museum's Turkoman collection. |  |
The final two hours on the program were listed as participant "Show and Tell," although most showing and telling was done by the invited speakers. It will come as no surprise to the reader that 175 lovers of textiles have some wonderful pieces in their collections and that they are happy to have them shown to an audience of like-minded addicts. There were many beautifully embroidered pieces that included articles of clothing, suzanis, and who knows what else. Mügül Andrews was extremely helpful in clarifying the uses of some of these, although a discussion of what looked like an embroidered knife sheath left me puzzled. Mügül Andrews insisted that it could not be for a knife because a knife would destroy it very quickly, but that it was commonly used to hold materials for calligraphy. Another member of the group volunteered that it was generally seen on women, often with a knife inside it, and that, as the dissenter had never met a nomadic woman in that part of the world who could write, its use as a calligraphy tool holder seemed unlikely. Many ikat cloths and garments were presented. One, a coat made of silk velvet, drew an audible response from the crowd because of its striking colors and obvious luxuriousness.
There were a great many Turkoman pieces, mostly bags, with Jon Thompson and Peter Andrews holding forth on each. Andrews believes that most Turkoman juvals are not, in fact, juvals at all but should be called "kharjin" because they were lain flat in stacks in tents rather than hung from the trellis frame inside the tent. It was not clear to me by what criteria he was deciding what was a kharjin and what was a juval. It seems odd that large bags with faces elegantly decorated except for relatively (sometimes totally) plain lower skirts would be stacked in such a way that the only visible part would be the flatwoven bottom and the skirt. I look forward to Andrews publishing further information on this matter.
 | Harold Keshishian discusses a rug formerly in the Ballard Collection at Sunday's Show & Tell |
