If some synthetic dye was introduced in 1875 and we feel confident that it's 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. It's 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 rug1 (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." Illustration 1 shows a Daghestan rug of the type usually identified as Avar.2 It includes a fuchsin red-violet; the other dyes appear to be natural. Using the presence of the fuchsin dye as the criterion, we would attribute this piece to the last quarter of the 19th century. However, it has a date boldly inscribed in the border at one end, 1331 (1913/1914 A.D.). We would attribute this rug to 1913/1914 on that basis. The borders are typical of 19th and early 20th century Avar rugs, as is the predominantly red and blue palette (there are 10 colors, which is more than the usual for Avar rugs and kilims of that period). The field, though, has a decidedly contemporary look, and except for the inscription or the synthetic dye we might be inclined to believe that the rug was woven during the second half of the 20th century.
We all know that many of the dates woven into rugs are implausible as representing the date of the rug's manufacture. In fact, there are some who consider an inscribed date as virtually useless for this purpose. I disagree. Many rugs with inscribed dates probably commemorate an occasion, and the dates on such pieces are likely to be accurate. I suspect that intentional misdating is very unusual. There would be no point at all in weaving a date in the recent past into a rug, and inscribing a date in the remote past (say, 50 years or more) wouldn't fool anybody when the rug was new. Thus, most erroneous dates probably result from illiterate weavers copying inscriptions that they couldn't read or understand. Bearing in mind that any method we use for attribution is little more than an educated guess and subject to far more uncertainty than most of us like to admit, an inscribed date is probably the most reliable of the indicators to a rug's age. I believe that it should be considered to be the date of production unless there is a good reason for thinking otherwise. Therefore, I believe that this rug was woven in 1913 or 1914. Neither the inscription nor the dyes are consistent with a post World War II attribution, so the contemporary look of the field must reflect the unusual aesthetic (for its time) of an early 20th century weaver. If I am correct, this rug is an exception to the rule that fugitive fuchsins don't appear in Caucasian rugs after the turn of the century.
In addition to the date, this rug has an elegant inscription, woven in two colors Arabic inscriptions other than the date are quite unusual in Caucasian rugs, and the use of two colors for the inscription is rarer still. It includes devices that resemble crowns, worked in gold and deep blue, which makes it tempting to consider that it is of some importance. Could it be the name of some member of the nobility for whom this piece was woven? A friend who reads Turkish and Farsi tells me that it simply says, "The year". If he is correct, the full inscription is nothing that would feed our fantasies: "The year 1331". On the other hand, the elegance of the drawing, the colors in the writing, and the fact that it is done in a much different a scale than the numerals make me wonder if it really is part of the dating inscription.
Another generally accepted criterion for dating is that a palette free of synthetic dyes in a Caucasian village or tribal weaving, or a tribal weaving from any area, predates the 20th century3 and was probably woven before 1880.
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, plausible4 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:
1. T. Hazeltine, Hali 78, p. 95, Dec. 1994/Jan. 1995.
2. I am grateful to Saul Barodofsky (Sun Bow Trading Company, Charlottesville, Virginia) for allowing me to examine and photograph both of the pieces shown in this article.
3. Tribal weavings of the Baluch are considered to be the exceptions, since there is ample evidence that they continued to produce many pieces in which only natural dyes were used until about 1940.
4. A date later than the one at which the rug was acquired is obviously implausible, as is a date earlier than 1870 in a piece that contains a synthetic dye.
There are also rugs with inscriptions that commemorate events, in which the date clearly refers to the event rather than to the production of the weaving.
