The Textile Museum Convention followed its usual format. The opening event on Friday evening was an informal social gathering in the garden of The Textile Museum. The weather was perfect for this, and, as usual, it made it easy for the attenders, official participants, and Textile Museum staff to exchange pleasantries and get the whole thing off to a comfortable start. Saturday was devoted to formal presentations and discussion of them, held in the lecture room of Washington's prestigious Cosmos Club, a comfortable venue for a group of 150 or so people. Sunday morning began with a very elegant buffet style breakfast, then tours of the Museum's current exhibitions. The convention closed with about two hours of show-and-tell of pieces brought in by attenders, with commentary offered, mostly by the participants but from the audience as well.
The Saturday morning session was essentially dedicated to South Persia, and following opening remarks from Ed Zimmerman, president of the Museum's Board of Trustees, the formal lectures began. The first was by Lois Beck. professor of Anthropology, Washington University, St. Louis. Professor Beck has spent the past 25 or so summers doing field research among the Qashqa'i, and it is difficult to imagine that there is anyone more knowledgeable about how these people live. She had an enormous amount of information to share with us (and had much to contribute during the show-and-tell the next day) about the Qashqa'i and how weaving fits into their societal structure. Her approach to the subject was essentially anecdotal, revolving around the histories of two rugs in which she had firsthand knowledge of the weavers, the circumstances surrounding the weaving of the rugs, and the rugs themselves. Qashqa'i women have long been famous for their ability to weave copies of nearly anything they've seen, but her experiences showed that this ability exceeds anything we might have expected. She related that she had been carrying a notebook with an ornate cover on one of her field trips, and that during the following year, a Qashqa'i woman who had only briefly seen the cover wove a rug on which it was reproduced with remarkable fidelity.
We learned a great deal from Professor Beck about the Qashqa'i, and I believe that this was appreciated by the attenders. This appreciation was well deserved. Unfortunately, she came with only a smattering of information about oriental rugs, especially about 19th century works, all of it from what she referred to as "the rug literature." It was clear that there was a great deal, some of it absolutely fundamental, of which she was ignorant. For example, she had obviously run across some reference to the garish, virtually fade-proof early synthetic orange dye that clashes so dreadfully with the mellowed natural dyes in the turn-of-the-century rugs on which it was used. Her understanding of what she had read was that oranges are offensive to oriental rug collectors, and she had no reluctance about letting us know what very odd people we must be to have such an attitude. It occurred to me that, were I to receive an invitation to address a gathering of anthropologists about rugs, and found that some ideas anthropologists hold dear didn't make sense to me, I would talk them over with someone knowledgeable before announcing to the audience that they held some very strange notions.
She was the first speaker to address the question, "What is a tribal rug?", by pointing out that she found the terms, tribe, nomad, and pastoral nomad being used interchangeably in the rug literature, and that these were very different things in anthropological terms. She wondered if a nomadic rug was one that wandered about (although, evidently, not if a tribal rug was one that was a member of a particular community). I suspect that any reasonably well informed ruggie could have explained to her that we use the term "tribe" rather loosely and are nearly always referring to tribes of pastoral nomads when we do so. In fact, we use the term "rug" just as loosely, frequently including all sorts of weavings and even felts and embroideries within it. Professor Beck's attitude toward the audience was capped off when she informed the rubes who were assembled before her, with great solemnity, that there is no such place as Persia and that the area to which we all refer by that word is, actually, Iran. The next speaker was James Opie, whose writings on the subject of the origins of motifs on oriental rugs are familiar to anyone likely to be reading this report. Among his central themes are the notions that the "latchhook" motifs so common on rugs are derived from bird heads (or, perhaps, the heads of other animals), and that "S" shaped elements also have an ancient, zoomorphic origin. His basis for this hypothesis is that similar forms can be found in bronze age artifacts from South Persia. This is hardly what most would call compelling evidence, and, of course, Mr. Opie recognizes this. Indeed, a quotation from the abstracts handed out to attenders rather succinctly summarizes his turn of mind: ...in many cases, that which we wish to understand, but really cannot know definitively, is often more interesting than factual knowledge based on information.
Mr. Opie illustrated his points with a number of perfectly beautiful South Persian tribal weavings, first in a series of slides and then with actual pieces. These made his presentation a source of great pleasure to me and, I am sure, to everyone else present.
Thomas Cook then took the stage to incite and moderate a discussion of why it is difficult to decide whether certain weavings (which he displayed) are "tribal." The approach was mostly by way of introducing rugs made by tribal people but with distinctly urban workshop characteristics. This is not difficult to do with South Persian rugs. Perhaps the quintessential statement of the issue is posed in the Qashqa'i rendition of Mughal millefleurs rugs, of which there are many examples. Are these tribal? Well, they are surely derived from urban workshop rather than nomadic tribal traditions. On the other hand, they are just a surely woven by the hands of tribal peoples. Are they tribal? Despite considerable discussion of the matter, I see the issue as entirely semantic, with no conceptual problem involved. We will return to this. After lunch the program continued with Brian Spooner, professor of Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania, attempting to analyze exactly what it is that we mean by the term "tribal" in the parlance of the ruggie. His presentation was scholarly and analytical. The elements that we consider to be those that define tribal rugs include the use of materials that are readily available to people in the tribal community, more or less traditional motifs, sizes compatible with the limitations of looms used by tribal people, and so forth. On the other hand, he reminded us (Lois Beck had emphasized this point earlier), a tribe is a form of community organization that may have no more than a very indirect relationship to any particular example of the community's woven output.
The topic then shifted to Baluch weavings, with lectures from DeWitt Mallary, Robert Pittenger, and Mark Hopkins. Mallary emphasized the extraordinarily confused and confusing state of attribution of Baluch group rugs, with highly specific attributions so often made on the basis of virtually no evidence other than the word of dealers in the middle eastern bazaars. The region encompassing northeastern Iran and western Afghanistan, the source of the so-called Baluch rugs, is a veritable mosaic of ethnic groups, including tribal peoples of Baluch, Timuri, and various Arab stocks. They speak a variety of languages and come from very different traditions, although they have intermingled sufficiently so that their weavings are readily recognized as a group. That is, they tend to share an aesthetic, a palette, a vocabulary of motifs and layouts, and certain technical features that are so distinctive that nearly any initiate to rugdom can identify them from a distance. Attempts to organize weavings into groups within the larger category are usually based on certain motifs or particular technical details, and more often than not these attempts are successful. Assigning specific attributions to those groups on the basis of reliable evidence is another matter altogether, and, in my opinion, is usually going to turn out to be impossible.
Robert Pittenger has recently completed a survey of handwritten notes written in the 19th century by British officers stationed in the region from which Baluch group weavings originate. His source was the India Office Library, in London. His presentation was a last-minute addition to the program, and it was clear that he had not had time to digest and organize his notes. The recitation of scattered information was difficult (at least for this member of his audience) to synthesize on the hoof. My impression was that there really is a lot of interesting stuff in those notes, and I look forward to seeing it in print in a more structured form.
Mark Hopkins finished up the Baluch section of the program with a presentation of some work he has been doing. He has attempted to correlate various Baluch prayer rug layouts with border and field designs in the hope that distinct categories would become apparent. Thus far, he has found no absolute associations in his analysis, but he has not yet sought statistical correlations. It would be very surprising if none exist, and his 200 rug database is probably large enough to make it possible to extract them. The approach seems very promising.
Carol Bier, curator of The Textile Museum, had her annual unenviable task of providing the summary and attempting to run a thread through all that had gone before. She does this as well as anyone could hope, and brought the day's lectures to a reasonably satisfying close. Sunday morning began with the sumptuous buffet breakfast that the Textile Museum Rug Conventions offer the attenders. This not only gets the day off to a pleasant start, it provides some opportunity for informal discussion and exchange of impressions of the lectures. One of the Museum's current exhibitions is a group of pieces from the Boucher Collection of Baluch rugs. DeWitt Mallary, who curated the exhibit, provided commentary for those who chose to view it during the hour or so between breakfast and the Grand Finale (the show-and-tell). The Boucher Collection, of which 70 pieces were published in his book, was abbreviated to 19 pieces because of the Textile Museum's space limitations. I heard some criticisms of Mallary's selections -- actually, of his omissions -- but it would be difficult to argue that any of the rugs he included were unworthy of exhibition. Mallary is far more conservative about attributions than Col. Boucher was, and anyone expecting rather specific attributions of each piece with regard to place, tribe, and date would have to seek them in Boucher's book rather than on the labels on these walls describing the rugs.
The convention ended with a two-hour show-and-tell session expertly run by Michael Seidman, held under a tent in the Museum's garden. About half the pieces shown were Baluch, and they presented the difficulty inherent in the dark, low contrast palette of these weavings. Their aesthetics are frequently not obvious when they are viewed from more than a few feet away except in strong light. The rugs were held up in front of the audience, walked across the width of the tent, and finally brought to the one corner of the tent that admitted some sunlight. It was interesting to see the Baluch weavings "light up" when they were maneuvered into a position where sunlight fell on them. A number of the weavings generated comments and discussion about how they might have been made or used within a tribal community, and Lois Beck's firsthand experience among the Qashqa'i was a welcome fund of information.
Overall, how do I feel about the conference? There were some very beautiful weavings to be seen, and anyone who came hoping to have the opportunity to admire some gorgeous products of Baluch and South Persian looms went home happy. The lectures were a mixed bag. The anthropologists had much to teach us (the ruggies), but I found Professor Beck's attitude offensive. Someone should have told her that most of the folks in her audience would be high school graduates. I've long been uneasy about the lack of rigor with which attribution of dates, ethnographic origin, and significance of motifs is approached by those writing about oriental rugs, and there was little comfort to be found in the lectures or discussions here.
The overall theme -- "What is a Tribal Rug?" -- strikes me as forced, a semantic ploy based on the fact that it is customary among ruggies to refer to the weavings of pastoral nomadic tribespeople simply as tribal rugs. It is enormously convenient to be able to drop things into classes, even if the classes have fuzzy edges (they almost always do, after all). In rugdom, we find it useful to divide the products into workshop and folk art weavings. The existence of a little gray zone between them doesn't destroy the usefulness of this convention. We further divide the folk art into village and tribal categories. Again, the fact that the dividing line between them is less than razor sharp presents no real intellectual problem to most of us. A good statement of what it is that we mean by "tribal rug" can be found in as basic and widely disseminated a book as Jon Thompson's, Oriental Carpets:
The term tribal is used here rather loosely as a practical description of carpets and the circumstances of their production and not as a definition of the social structure of a weaving community. It refers to weavings made primarily for personal use within a community. The tribal category includes the weavings of a few groups that are unlikely to be accepted within the technical anthropological definition of the term. A better term might be tribal-style... The term tribal is intended to exclude the products of communities where weaving is carried out solely as a means of livelihood, but does not exclude weavings just because their makers sell a portion of them.
A debate centering around the gray areas of the definition of nearly anything would, almost surely, generate heat rather than light. Focussing upon the gray areas of this one certainly did so.
1. Jeff Boucher, Baluchi Woven Treasures, Alexandria, VA (1989).
2. The world is still awaiting the first conference on oriental rugs (probably on anything) in which this is not the case.
3. As an exercise, consider the categories, "man" and "woman," into which we place all adult humans. By nearly any criteria we choose to adopt, it will be possible to find an individual who is not unambiguously one or the other. This does not destroy the usefulness of the categories.
4. Jon Thompson, Oriental Carpets, E.P. Dutton, New York, 1988. p. 70.