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San Francisco Bay Area Rug Society
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NEWSLETTER September 2010
Exhibit and Talk Thursday, October 14, 2010
Peter Poullada
FLOWERS OF THE ERSARI: Turkmen Main Carpets of the Middle Amu Darya
Carpets of the Inner Circle 444 Jackson Street, San Francisco. 415-398-2988 (Nearby public parking three blocks away at Broadway and Sansome and Broadway and Battery)
Exhibit and social event open at 6:00 pm for SFBARS and attendees at ARTS Rug Week Talk begins at 7:15 pm
In conjunction with ARTS Rug Week in San Francisco, Peter Poullada’s talk will illuminate the exhibit organized by Carpets of the Inner Circle. The focus will be on the so-called “gul-i-gul” main carpets woven the Ersari Turkmen tribesmen of the Middle Amu Darya region in Central Asia and northern Afghanistan. Poullada will briefly describe how the Ersari Turkmen came to be settled along the banks of the Amu Darya (Oxus River) and what brought them to their “qishlaqs” (villages) in northern Afghanistan. By the end of the nineteenth century, the Ersari were probably the third largest Turkmen tribe after the Yomut and Tekke, and they dominated the Middle Amu Darya region. There were some 25-30 other Turkmen tribes that inhabited the region alongside them.
In the early twentieth century, a number of Ersari had moved into northern Afghanistan and begun to produce main carpets that are generally identified by the names of the qishlags where they were woven: Dali, Taghan, Sulaiman, Daykatabadm etc. Generally speaking, the Ersari used classic western Turkmen designs for their main carpets, with rows of guls (medallions) floating in a red field with various motifs as minor elements. Their main carpets were woven almost exclusively for commercial purposes, for sale in the marketplaces of the Bukharan Khanate and in the bazaar towns of northern Afghanistan (Mazar-i-Sharif, Aqcha, and Ankkhui) not for private use in tents or for Turkmen wedding ceremonies.
This emphasis on commercially attractive weavings meant that they were made to the tastes and demands of the buyers, mostly Uzbeks or Tajiks or Jewish merchant families in the Khanate of Bukhara or Afghan Turkestan. In terms of readily identifiable designs, the Ersari main carpets can be divided into three groups based on the type of main gull used: the gul-i-gul, the tavuk muskha gul, and the temirdjin or onruga gul. The first of these used a trefoil motif in the quarters of each gul and the differentiation of this trefoil, as well as differences in the secondary motifs and main borders, are the principal ways we can categorize these carpets.
The exhibit at Carpets of the Inner Circle will show a small selection of gul-i-gul Ersari carpets for the purpose of illustrating the subtle differences between them and to demonstrate how they developed over time. Members are welcome to bring in other examples of Ersari or Middle Amu Darya/northern Afghan weavings to join in the Show and Tell which will follow the talk.
About the Speaker S. Peter Poullada has been the President of the San Francisco Bay Area Rug Society since 2002 and has specialized in research and collecting of Turkmen carpets, with special focus on the weavings and the ethno-history of the Middle Amu Darya region. It has been his long-term passion to convince the carpet world to replace the terms “Ersari” and “Beshir” with what he feels is the more correct and generic term of “Middle Amu Darya.” In the past, several collectors have asked Peter why he likes to NOT to refer to these weavings as Ersari and for his opinion as to just what IS an Ersari carpet. This talk is the beginning of the answer to that question. October 12-17 Antique Rugs and Textile Show – San Francisco Rug Week The second annual Antique Rug & Textile Show (ARTS) returns to the Motel Capri in San Francisco’s Marina district from October 12 -17, 2010. In addition to the dealer show, ARTAA (the newly organized sponsor) and SFBARS will be jointly mounting an exhibition of antique Chinese pile squares from Bay Area private collections. SFBARS members and Bay Area collectors with an interest in lending pieces should feel free to contact either Peter Poullada or Ben Banayan for more information. ARTS will also coincide with the sixth annual S.F. Tribal Art Fair at Fort Mason from October 13-17, in which several northern California tribal art dealers known for their taste in antique textiles will be exhibiting. For more information and updates online please check www.artaa.org, the new ARTS website. October 2, 2010 October 16, 2010 November 14, 2010 Textile Arts Council of the deYoung Museum “Recent Studies in Textiles from the Silk Road in China.” Dr. Zhao Feng, author of Textiles from Dunhuang in UK Collections and Professor of Textile and Costume History in Shanghai, will discuss his recent work, with special attention to the clothing of one mummy excavated in the Xinjiang region. $5 after museum admission. “Carriers of Tradition in the Philippines: Kalinga Baskets and T’boli Textiles.” The Textile Arts Council celebrates Filipino American heritage Month in welcoming Dr. Ramon Silvestre and Fides Enriques. Dr. Silvestre has studied the Kalinga people of northern Luzon Island, where the men weave fine baskets using a variety of techniques. Ms. Enriques will show her film, Weaving T'nalak about the intricate ikat textiles woven by the T'boli women of southern Mindinao. Koret Auditorium, de Young Museum, 10:00 am – Noon. Free to TAC members, $5 for museum members and students, $10 for non-members. Ethnic Textile Bazaar. Over 20 TAC member vendors will offer treasures from their collections. Shop for books, ethnic jewelry, clothing and textiles. Add to your own collection or find that special holiday gift and support the Fine Arts Museums’ Textile Department, its collection and the Textile Conservation Lab at the de Young. Please expect to pay by check or with cash. Free parking adjacent to the church. 10am – 4pm, Moriarty Hall, St. Anne of the Sunset Church, 1300 Funston at Judah, San Francisco. For more information: 415 750-3627, tac@famsf.org . The ICOC website for the Stockholm conference (June 16–19, 2011) is now online and ready to accept registrations: http://www.icoc2011stockholm. The St. Petersburg tour will clearly be a highlight of this 12th ICOC, but the Local Organizing Committee, the conference planner and the Executive Committee are all working to resolve some unexpected problems. The goal is to present this exciting tour to you at as reasonable a cost as possible. When you register for the conference, please follow the instructions for advising Congrex that you want to be included in the St. Petersburg tour. Note that both the Copenhagen and St. Petersburg tours are only available to full registrants and their companions. Members of the ICOC Executive Committee will continue to receive inquiries about the conference and respond to them,, but the conference planner, Congrex, is the first place to submit your questions. Discussion, comments and advice will be found on the ICOC Facebook page, which is http://www.facebook.com/ November 16 Early December Mid-January 2011 Early February 2011 Mid March 2011 Mid April 2011 End of May 2011 Preview of SFBARS Year Stefan Ionescu presents “Great Ottoman Carpets, Sourced in Transylvania, from European Collections, at Peter Pap Gallery, San Francisco. Annual SFBARS Year End Party and Silent Auction, to be held at a restaurant in Berkeley, exact place and date to be finalized. Annual joint event with the Armenian Rug Society in San Mateo. Speaker will be Paul Hepworth, textile conservator from Istanbul, talking about either the Topkapi textile and carpet collection or about Persian garden carpets. In conjunction with the Tribal Arts Show at Fort Mason and with the deYoung Museum, SFBARS is co-sponsoring the Annual Caroline and McCoy Jones Memorial Lecture. Speaker and topic to be finalized. Peter Bichler, head of the Austrian Carpet Society, “Fez and Kilim: Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Trade in Carpets and Kilims after 1683.” Date and venue to be finalized. The second SFBARS Moth Market and Members Bazaar. Date and venue to be finalized (probably Emmet Eiland's Gallery in Berkeley) As a send-off for the upcoming Stockholm ICOC (June 16-19), the SFBARS end of the season picnic at Jim Dixon's Carpet Palace and Gardens in Occidental. Date to be finalized.
San Francisco Bay Area
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