Twentieth-century Myth-making: Persian Tribal Rugs

The subject of a number of studies including a TV programme, Qashqa'i carpets are perhaps the best-known tribal rugs of Iran; much is made of their 'authenticity'. This article examines the argument that the aesthetic value of tribal carpets, especially those of Turkoman Central Asia, is gauged on regional and ethnic identification, rather than on design, colour and structural considerations, and reveals dual standards in operation, concerning the role of the maker in society. The Western fascination with oriental carpets is society focused on the exotic character, the apparently inexhaustible, nourished to a great design and colouring and the technical superextent by a mythology which revolves around iority of such oriental textiles (including velvets, the twin concept of 'origin' and 'authenticity' of silks and printed cottons), the interest from the the object. Aesthetic value is accordingly con- second half of the nineteenth century has tended ferred by the identification of tribal and/or regio- to centre on the element of handwork, the identinal production, with 'the interpretation of fication of a special function and the relationship genuineness and our desire for it'2 often relating of the piece to a 'primitive' society. In order to to the supposed individuality of the piece, its gauge aesthetic value it is deemed necessary to function and the reading (i.e. symbolism) of its assign provenance, a regional and thus social decorative composition and motif. Design, colour identity. However, such provenancing in late and structural considerations play only a minor nineteenth-century museum records and publicarole. This phenomenon has been recognized and tions had little factual basis but reflected contemexamined by Brian Spooner3 in the context of porary critical opinion that all 'quality' carpets Turcoman rug-collecting and recently reviewed and rugs (i.e. those with curvilinear design motifs, by Pennina Barnett,4 with reference to retail mar- arranged on a concealed grid arrangement in the keting in the United Kingdom. This article field) were Persian (and thus Aryan) in origin, explores whether there are parallels in modern while more 'barbaric' examples (i.e. with stylized studies of Persian 'tribal' carpets. motifs and visual grid) were the products of the The notion of labelling carpets and rugs accord- Turkish Ottoman Empire and Turkic Central Asia: ing to their provenance rather than, say, their