These
are articles of interest to rug collectors and fans, that are written
by myself as well as others in the industry. This section will be updated
often. If you have any submissions, please email
me.
11/29/02
Why
Tribal?
Or Jazz and Rugs
The
question, I think, is historical as much as it is personal. From an
anthropological perspective I guess it depends on what you're collecting.
If you're not collecting at all, then by all means consider a formal
rug from one of the manufacturing cities of Iran, or even a budget copy
from one of the countries that invariably cause rug dealers to raise
their noses a notch.
If
you are collecting, you have to decide why you're collecting, what interests
you about rugs. Is it the use of color? The motifs? Is it the function
of historical items? As you begin to unravel these questions, it becomes
easier to identify why a collection of tribal rugs from various areas
is the only way to go. Rugs change over time, tribal rugs are influenced
by families marrying each other, nomads doing what they do (moving around)
and outside influences (read European introduction of synthetic dyes
et al.)
For
this reason, collecting antique tribal rugs, can quickly give you interesting
material to study and learn about. An antique Isphahan, albeit a very
beautiful and authoritative piece, may likely look extremely similar
to a brand new top line Isphahan. This is not to say that in the snapshot
of the 200 or so years that we can generally collect, decent quality
rugs from the motifs, structure and color schemes have changed so dramatically
from region to region as to produce rugs that are now not recognizable
to the context of what they once were. Simply, that even between two
rugs from the same region, even by the same weaver, there will be interesting
variance in design.
I have
summarized this choice of tribal over formal city rugs in the following
analogy for many of my friends, who are almost universally musicians:
There
are only two kinds of people in the world of serious music, classical
people and jazz people. Sometimes these worlds cross, but rarely. In
the past thirty years, jazz has become heavily institutionalized and
studied at the university level to the point that there are several
PhD programs at serious universities in jazz studies. In other words,
both forms of music are considered equally serious, and equally worthy
of academic consideration.
Those
who prefer classical music, study composers. They study the structure,
the form, the compositional mastery of the great works. The listen to
Bartok's Microcosmos, and marvel at his use of the Pythagorean theorum
in the construction of music, and marvel even more at the fact that
it has aural appeal. They listen to Britten's operatic inventions with
equal zeal, but rarely (not never) do they focus the thrust of their
attention onto the company, group, or individual performing it, beyond
admiring their unique virtuosity, or simply applauding their technical
or interpretative accomplishments. Even when we do study an interpretation,
it is far more often a conductor who call genius then the actual musicians
performing the work.
Those
people who prefer jazz, listen to it studying structure, form and compositional
mastery, but also the individualism inherent in the art. Jazz students
study the interpretation of a twelve bar blues beginning with Dexter
Gordon, listening to the explosive developments of Bird, approach Sonny
Rollins' thematic playing on 'Sonny Moon for Two" and usually wind up
their formal education recovering from late Coltrane. The point is that
the individual voices of the musicians are so important that the best
in jazz can usually be identified within three or four notes. Moreover,
every single time a great, like the very active modern saxophonist David
Liebman plays one of his own compositions, it will be different. Yes,
the basic form will still be there, if he is playing a standard, "There'll
Never Be Another You", will likely still have it's form, some of
it's chord progression, and melody, but the rest is open season, and
different enough to warrant his fans eagerly awaiting a chance to get
a rare live recording of the piece, even though they already own the
album it was recorded on. Not likely with say, Brahms.
So
how does this apply to rugs?
Easy.
City rugs are essentially like classical music, those who love them
love them for the work of the master weaver, and the technical virtuosity
with which the individual weavers working on the piece have knotted
the piece using the finest materials, and carefully following the direction
of the master weaver in bringing the work to fruition.
Tribal
rugs are like jazz. One weaver usually creates these pieces, as was
taught to her by rote. Her motifs will be added improvisationally, only
concerned about keeping the general form of the rug, but everything
else may change, in fact she may even change her mind about the design
or color halfway through the construction, and create a dramatic dissonance
in the rest of the piece. Each rug is unique in a far more tangible
way then with city pieces, and this is why I say Tribal.
