Turkmenistan Newspaper
View in Classic Turkoman Weaving
The earlier quotation of the masses called the Turkomen came in some the 7th c. We deliver no strong-arm certify of classic Turkoman iconography. The conjecture that the Turkomen wove at all during this point is based chiefly on the lineament of their late study. I conceive that the multitude we cry the Turkomen had been roughly for a years and had been weaving during the 7th hundred,C.E. If the inhalation for other Turkoman iconography came from Chinese roundels, badges of grade, as Robert Pinner has hypothesized, so it is jolly fair to ideate that these soonest Turkoman rugs were composed of rows and columns of octangular wrought #8220;gulls.#8221; This makes lots of sensation to me.
The Chinese roundels indicated the position of the persons who wore them. The roundels themselves were mentation to own intrinsical index. The Turkoman intellection often alike the Navajo did in the American Southwesterly. The Navajo would constantly murder the badges of membership from fallen #8220;commanders#8221;, and these were affixed to the outfits raddled by the Navajo to addition their personal might. They believed the badges themselves conferred the powers of authorization to any someone tiring them.
This bid based upon right overdress and #8220;badges of grade#8221; suitable the Indian head and they directly adoptive them for their #8220;index#8221;. I intimate that the 7th 100 Turkomen, having fled the Chinese so migrating from Northerly Chinaware to the Westerly surround of the Caspian sea, would deliver sought-after to transferral the exponent of these badges of range, or #8220;roundels#8221;, onto their primary carpets, as amulet of power. The Turkomen compared themselves to apiece over-the-counter by comparison one another#8217;s line backrest to their several #8220;large antecedent.#8221; This intimate and unseeable transfer of powerfulness is a striking sport of their definitive finish. To contract the badges of place from a superordinate forcefulness and tissue them, in a sensation, into their own personal chronicle as contribution of their weavings is utterly lucid. I suffer fictive that the handbill bod of Chinese embroidered roundels would bear been taken by the Turkomen as octangular shapes in the satisfying matrix of their down weaving.
I muse that the soonest Turkoman weavings were nigh belike gnarled at about Xxx six knots per lame in. I conceive this because in the earlier multiplication it can be pretended that the universe was lean and meter would suffer been essential. These weather mightiness fountainhead suffer remained that way for centuries and this hypothetic release interweave could report for their concluded absence in the diachronic book. The archetypical Turkoman had a beholding whose neurologic machinery was genetically tuned to his surroundings, the Asian Steppes.
It isn#8217;t a long-familiar fact but Pygmies in the deepest Congou, who bear not ventured out of the gravid Ituri Wood for about 100 generations, plainly do not deliver far battlefield perceptions; see Colin Greenwood, THE Woods Masses. The farthest aloofness any authoritative Pigmy e'er experient visually, complete thousands of geezerhood of growth, was about 300 feet. To their intellect every target in beingness moldiness bear been tacit inside a 300-foot circumstance. Their nigh subject savvy too included the Daydream, which they immortalized in many songs and dances as an knowledgeable fan and agree, how beautiful and praising! The prominent fact hither is plainly that Pygmies, in the definitive gumption, did not let what we non-forest home multitude see as #8220;far battleground sensing.#8221; The greco-roman Turkoman rode horse-mounted ended the undulating steppes of Key Asia.
They had a gravid biologic imperatives to not sole see into the far Battleground, or fresnel-zone, but to do so with the maximal lucidness potential. Far-field ocular uncloudedness is outlined as the power to dissolve two intimately separated dots or lines into offprint entities on the view. Hither the biologic imperative was supplied by the endurance appraise imparted to any Turkoman able-bodied to differentiate a shrub from a man or one man, on the purview, from a predatory company. Let me add that Edmond O#8217;Donovan ( more on him subsequently) wrote lengthily roughly the Turkoman#8217;s weird power to approximate aloofness and name objects crossways the immensity of the undulating Asian Steppe.
He illustrious that their guesses, concerning space related subjects, was far victor to his own estimates victimization math and a calibre pocket-watch, with a chimneysweep secondment deal! About literate Westerners let perceptions that are genetically, neurologically, #8220;formed and informed#8221; by the elements of an abnormal landscape, the speech (atoms) of their interior worlds, their logos; see the writings of Marshal MacLuhan. The literate judgement, your cognisance, is in an evolutionary kinship with the structures of those mod #8220;reality-mirroring#8221; languages that it embraces.
Americans are #8220;English#8221; in a way they can ne'er flight, as foresighted as they talk a speech identified by them as English. The about significant affair in the humankind for my son to do was to pee-pee sovereign feel out of lilliputian inkiness dots on whiten sheets of newspaper, the elements of our common English humankind!
This chuval, first published in Hali 55, is the chuval Dr. Jull dated, using carbon-14, to approximately 1650. By all accounts this chuval is Tekke. A very superiority photograph of this piece was analyzed by Dr.
Carriere and attained a dimensionality score of 2.65 +/- 0.06. Incidentally, an archival slide of the Jenkins chuval supplied by the Textile Museum was used in its analysis. These are the two highest scores on record.
If one plucked a Pigmy, a Turkoman, and a French Monastic from their traditional environments, so took them to a refreshing environs, say Alaska, for a total day and dark, one would breakthrough few if any points of concord concerning their impressions of the trip-up upon their various returns. Iii unlike masses reversive to deuce-ace dissimilar environments would refer tercet unlike versions of the like #8220;realness.#8221; The dim-witted yet rarely apprehended fact is that citizenry DO NOT see the humankind the like way because citizenry do not subsist in the like environments. I was advantageously adequate enlightened that when presented with epitome breakage Tidings, I don#8217;t let that word out of my judgement until I reach around acceptable blockage.
Therein vitrine that took quite piece with around golden coincidences thrown in. Edmond O#8217;Donovan, THE MERV Haven,1882, (henceforward identified alone as ED) made a wellspring studied notice of a queer helplessness the Turkoman showed in discernment the #8220;target of histrionics#8221; in a sealed family of lineographic paper illustrations democratic in the paper humankind of 1882. Lineographic paper illustrations were reinforced up of nearly jammed lines carven into the meaning of a impression blockage. The lines late picked up the ink and were olibanum rendered inkiness patch the spaces in easing were leftfield ink absolve or ovalbumin in the last #8220;exposure#8221;.
ED was a mellow performance enigma serving factor in the serving of the #8220;Tabby#8221; of England. The dim-witted fact that ED was in the avail of a Fagot made him a priori simpatico with the matriarchal Turkomen, a fact he apparently ne'er accomplished. ED made punctilious notes concerning every contingent of the Turkoman receive of sprightliness and from recitation his expectant tome, The Merv Haven, one can deduct often almost their odd, unknown, live of aliveness. He famous the flock of perceptivity they showed concerning any programme or map of a district, when haggard in gumption or eventide when scripted on report. One can resolve that the Turkomen had no trouble at all beholding composite or leash dimensional concepts delineated in the two dimensional circumstance of a map.
A map is much alike the toon of a weaving and those about striking and culturally crucial maps were ever memorized, ne'er scripted consume. Manifestly the Turkomen had muscular memories and this divided vulgar retentiveness was the niche endocarp of their companionship, practically care English is the fundament of our own civilization. The prototype breakage reflection made by ED was that Turkomen were basically screen to the optic info encoded in belated Nineteenth 100 lineographic paper illustrations so promptly uncommitted to literate English speechmaking mass. ED had newspapers sent to him regularly, he was apparently a newspaperwoman, and he was ok well-thought-of by the Turkoman who made him a Caravanserai, though technically he was likewise their captive. In one of O#8217;Donovan#8217;s newspapers thither was a wax varlet lineographic instance of a British Officeholder reverting domicile to England from the Afghan Wars.
Thither were new girls dance approximately him disseminating garlands of flowers. ED put this big exemplification foursquare ahead ternary sedars, saucy men, and timed their observations. Exploitation a superiority pocket-watch he ascertained these trey Turkomen cogitation that pic for 40 pentad transactions.
At roughly that sentence one of the impertinent men stabbed his thumb at the heave on the Colonel#8217;s knock, and exclaimed #8220;buluk. Buluk!#8221; Buluk way angle, any was the man eyesight? ED presented that photograph for a political reasonableness, the picture of a winning British Policeman was a substantial political world.
He was hoping to better his straightaway place via his kinship to the Pansy Engender, swayer of England. The ended and right-down loser of these deuce-ace reasoning Turkomen to comprehend eventide one optic item in park with ED was exceedingly elusive. He hypothesized that these Turkomen were smitten, as if in a land of daydream, considering the blackball spaces, those upset shards of chalk devising up the spaces 'tween the intimately jammed lines of the exemplification, alternatively of the summation optic impingement of all those lines. How exchangeable the two processes!
In both cases, version and sightedness lineographic pictures requires optical pertinacity, the dangling of #8220;intellect#8221; until plenty info is collected by the case-by-case. Could eyesight those newsprint illustrations let been part contingent one#8217;s power to understand, to brand sentience out of pandemonium. He boost speculated that they were, same us, when looking a enthralling practice of paper.
Sometimes our care is charmed by the veto patterns formed of #8220;objects#8221; in the literate nous. He was utterly chastise. Forsake altered buck mounted Turkoman nomads, concluded innumerous generations, highly-developed optic habits of version. which rendered them altogether dim to the literate target in any Westerly paper lineographic exemplification. Tens age of observation on this uncomplicated yet unsounded notice made by ED has led me to the followers determination.
The center of Turkoman weaving, those masterpieces of the late era, birth bypast reasonably unexplored by flow encyclopedism due to the dispatch loser of the Turkoman connoisseurs to severalize graeco-roman examples from posterior examples, all disseminated en masse previous in the Nineteenth c. My pointedness hither is that resolution the perceptual paradox, discovered by ED, via noetic supposition and experimentation, one can attain an sympathy of the all-important pieces of entropy that unlock the mysteries of the classic Turkoman esthetical. I did exactly this about ten age ago and wrote what has off bent be one of the polar articles concerning graeco-roman Turkoman pattern. Victimization my contacts in the American scientific community I got clip on Americas biggest ace reckoner to entirely canvass the third-dimensionality quotient for a aggroup of related chuval gulled Turkoman chuvals. For the purposes of this composition authoritative Turkoman weaving is outlined as weaving anterior to G septet century 50 AD. Done my inquiry I suffer observed a definitive era Turkoman chuval, a belatedly greco-roman Turkoman chuval, and by covering of the hypothesis, an betimes hellenic Turkoman chuval.
Many eld ago, when I promulgated my low ideas on Turkoman esthetic in Hali cartridge, No. 55, I noticed that the outlines of major designing elements, similar major and fry gulls, on rattling old Turkomen were constantly and observably asymmetrical. Considering the super hunky-dory fleece and selfsame highschool grayback counts we were encountering it seemed lucid that this #8220;imbalance#8221; was meaningful in about introductory way. It turns out that by variable the tightness of darkness outlines and by distorting softly the outlines of sealed figure elements, Turkomen of old produced designs whose elements floated against a sea of descent or really seemed to part alike a hatful of birds against a bloodline red sky. They likewise liked a warm purplish colouring for the scope.
A utterly harmonious figure can accomplish a abstruse interplay 'tween contiguous designing elements but can ne'er argue to an percipient that the makeup is cubic. In an exertion to pee her gulls look to fly, the authoritative Turkoman weaverbird wide-ranging her demarcation compactness by over-dyeing and/or over-packing the spile togs. When weavers trust the ascendence of pipeline concentration with a extremely directed straining of pattern outlines, they can brand #8220;objects#8221; appear to blow suspended in blank and hence engross loudness. The assay-mark of antiquated Turkoman invention is the domination of three-d delusion produced by the exact draftsmanship of conception elements in tensity with the semblance, spook, impregnation, and measure of afford airfield. #8220;Realizing#8221; this conjuration creates feelings of profundity and move, and towards this end designs are misrepresented and schema qualities are wide-ranging.
The resulting overconfident deduction betwixt percept and reason defines thearchetypal peregrine Turkoman weaving.
Microscopical psychoanalysis of greco-roman Turkoman weaving, through at the Metropolitan museum of Art in New York Metropolis below the guidance of Nobiko Kajitani, get indicated the sheer restraint Turkoman weavers had of their average. This fact positive us to seek numerical backup for our conjecture.
One who is companion with drawing knows that the near sophisticated techniques are employed to piddle a two dimensional draught seem third-dimensional. In the simplest pillowcase this can be through with a optical magic, a proficiency to sucker the eye and misinform the judgement. The control of these techniques is tribally particular, with the Salor exploitation contour deformation and variations in gloss stress to create the sensing of abstruse place.
The Tekke, of the like Seventeenth 100 menstruum, were victimization variations in demarcation heaviness and denseness, in conjunctive with a often more pernicious pallette, to acquire tantamount results.
Therein masterpiece of Tekke weaving symmetry is largely maintained, while three-dimensional perspective is introduced, in part, by the addition of a vanishing point. The lower right-hand side of the lower right-hand quadrant is slightly distorted as if it were a scarf gently being tugged at by an invisible hand. Each individual major gull is elongated on the vertical, even more the Jenkins piece, and the bottom row of major gulls too as the bottom major border are enlarged, bolder, more definitely outlined and more brightly colored, emphasizing dramatically their appearance in the foreground of perception. The use of a much darker wool, even after accounting for differential aging of the fibers, to outline inter-gull details in the bottom horizontal row of major gulls, makes them appear closer to an observer.
Incrementally lightening the outline densities in the upper horizontal rows adds another level of depth to the composition and allows the brilliant reds visually to leap over their weakened boundaries. The caliber of threads used in certain details and outlines in the bottom row of gulls is increased giving them additional thrust into the foreground. In keeping with its seventeenth century dating, a time of great hardship to the Turkoman owing to a drought of terrific proportions, the dyes of this piece are few.
Much use of un-dyed wool of different shades is incorporated into the composition while only red and blue with just a touch of violet-dyed silk are used throughout the rest of the piece. It goes without saying that there is a wide range of red and blue, and the colors are very pleasing but this is still a very small number of different colors. Examination of the elems, something unfortunately missing from the Jenkins piece, reveals more of the Turkoman mastery of dimensionality.
This elem is visually readable or understandable in several different ways indicating a profound depth of development. E.g. if one fixes ones eyes on any centrally located red flower, one immediately notices that there are six blue flowers arranged in a three- dimensional hexagonal ring around it.
His accuracy was surprising. E.g., we submitted an unidentified fragment from one of the Ardabil carpets and got a date whose median was in the range of the inscribed date on the carpet. We also submitted four Turkomans for dating, including two chuval gulled chuvals and two other Turkomans thought by experts to be of significant age. One of the chuvals with chuval gulls was dated to a mean age of 1650, and a sample from this textile was run again positively showing that it was indeed mid-seventeenth century. The second chuval tested with a chuval gull was thought by Dr.
Jull to be early 18th century. Both these chuvals are commented on below. Once we had established a benchmark, degradation of the dimensionality quotient of the field composition as evidenced by a loss of three dimensionality could be used to interpolate or extrapolate the age of other weavings with the same or very similar design.
The Salor represented the largest and most powerful Turkoman tribe in the sixteenth century, dominating the steppes of western Turkmenistan. Their ultimate decline came in the eighteenth century when the Yomud achieved dominance. The founding of a non-traditional Turkoman tribe brought to an end the development of a sophisticated three-dimensional aesthetic. In order to establish a timeline it has been necessary to identify Turkoman chuvals with high dimensionality quotients and subject them to the most rigorous scientific dating available.
After consulting Nobiku Kajitani, Curator of Textiles at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, we used her careful analysis of dyes to help choose a small selection of known and unknown dated textiles to submit to Dr Anthony Jull, Research Scientist at the University of Arizona. Dr. Jull stated that he was confident that if we found a Turkoman earlier than Chiliad seven hundred he could date it accurately.
The now famous Jenkins Salor chuval, fig.#7 in Mackie and Thompson, represents one of truth high points of Turkoman art. It is the quintessence of the three-dimensional aesthetic-the illusion of depth created by distortion of outline or the modification of size of different design elements; this chuval is festooned with gulls literally flying from its surface.
The weaver of this piece reproduced the elongation of the bottom half of the minor gulls, but awkwardly failed to elongate the top border of the gull. Its drawing is slightly more cramped, its vertical to horizontal knot ration skewed upwards, and the intra- and inter-gull modulation of details isn#8217;t as good as in earlier pieces, such as the Jenkins chuval. It should also be noted that in keeping with its early date, the Tekke-derived kochak border is properly drawn therein piece in contradistinction to later examples, which have a degenerate kochak border relative to Tekke work of a similar age. The elem of this piece is coherent at three levels of interrogation, that is the positive designs (the anthropomorphic trees) have asymmetric inclusions (disembodied eyes) which only fill sense when viewed from a perspective rooted in the background or negative image design. This design is created and supported by the positive lateral extension of the arms of the trees making, zoomorphic images whose eyes are the asymmetric inclusions in the positive image.
The prediction of this piece#8217;s age as derived from the dimensionality quotient of Dr Carriere is consistent with the dating done by Dr. Jull.
The classic period of the 15th through the 17th centuries offered the longest period of relative stability for the Turkmen in the last millennium. The inner evolutionary drive towards greater and greater meaning in Turkmen iconography put great demands on their design#8217;s syntax. The many Turkmen weaving chants had a common syntax; their woven foundations had adjustable weft and warp tensions providing the framework necessary to provide subtle nuances of control. This ability to fine tune a composition, through the specific understanding of a message, is what allowed nomadic Turkmen to develop three-dimensional representation in a basically two-dimensional medium. The Turkmen#8217;s accomplishment of dimensional perspective in weaving presaged the European Renaissance#8217;s development of three-dimensional perspective in oil painting.
The much written about development of perspective in European painting took place approximately hundred years after the passage of crack Turkmen troops, serving Genghis Khan, throughout Eastern Europe. The Khan#8217;s extremely successful exploratory campaign turned around only after his troops received the bad news that the great Khan himself was ill. Turning back to finally attack China saved the flower of western civilization for us today.
One wonders whether Turkmen saddlebags, captured from fallen imperial troops and exhibiting three-dimensionality in design, filtered through societies#8217; hands to the very artists that helped put the European Renaissance into motion.
Let#8217;s take a supposed instance:
The maths were through by Dr. Craig Carriere. The calculations utilised therein enquiry take the arranging of the geometrical designing elements of the major and tiddler gulls into overtone derivative equations from which computer-generated images of the gulls can be produced. The conjugated overtone derivative equations victimized to sire the gulls are so resolved to fruit local grading fractal sets from which the major reiterate practice of the chuval bailiwick can be generated. One of the primary parameters highly-developed in the result of the conjugate fond derivative equations, and of preponderant grandness for the stableness of the solution, is the overall dimensionality of the field.
All the calculations discussed therein work were performed on a Silicon Graphics Indigo II workstation. The calculations introduce a quantitative methodology to assess directly the changes in the three-dimensional character of early Turkoman chuvals with the chuval gull. The degradation of dimensionality in these chuvals is very predictive for the age of this particular type of weaving.
No such linear relationship for the degradation of other Turkoman designs is implied.
This profound visual effect is masterfully achieved by modulating the amount of white in each blue flower head, more on the bottom and less in the top so they appear to encircle the red, living (?) flower. By changing ones focus, the elem may appear to be composed of tangentially arranged rows or even of a wild display of different colored flowers in depth as if of a field of flowers.
The next piece considered therein analysis is the Salor weaving formally of the #8220;Tent Band-Tent Bag#8221; collection of Jack Cassin. The weaving was given a provisional median dating of 1000 seven hundred twenty five by Dr. Jull, who emphasized that dating of material later than G seven hundred was more speculative.
This piece represents a clear continuation of the Salor aesthetic in a way qualifying the Jenkins piece as unequivocally Salor. The memory of how the composition should look is dimmed by the travails of the seventeenth century desiccation, but the color and size of the piece suggest it was woven in more opulent times. Since the Salor were fully power at Khiva at this time, this would be another indicator of an early eighteenth century date.
In the drawing of this chuval the minor gulls are elongated in their inferior excursion so that the bottom border of the minor gull is necessarily shorter than the top border, which is emphasized with supplementary knotting. Such an arrangement strongly emphasizes the illusion at the minor gulls are tilting towards the observer. This asymmetric distortion gives the impression that one is looking objects in space and not objects on a flat plane.
The weaver of the Jenkins chuval elongated the top half of each major gull in the composition. This was emphasized slightly in the top row to give the impression that the gull is actually tilted in space or half-immersed in a transparent red liquid-bloody water. The top horizontal row is a little larger than the rest, and this emphasizes the impression that they are flying over the borders and off into space. The minor gulls are suppressed in position by the borders and seem to slide underneath them to reappear at the bottom in eternal rebirth.
These are but a few of the sophisticated weaving techniques analyzed by a Cray super computer under the direction of Dr. Craig Carriere and the custom designed program he wrote for this project. The picture of the Jenkins chuval was analyzed and its dimensionally quotient was calculated to be 2.72 +/- 0.06 on a scale where 3.0 equals perfect three-dimensional representation. This would be an acceptable score for a student#8217;s architectural axiometric rendering at the college level.
It was this score, the first one we ran that convinced us that we were on the trail of something hitherto unidentified and possibly very important.
Lastly: this paper brings to light a #8220;poverty#8221; that has befallen post industrial technological man, a disaster that has generally gone completely unnoticed. Each in situ indigenous human population had their own #8220;state-specific#8221; perspective or cultural #8220;slice of reality.#8221; The totality of these unique perspectives represented a rainbow like tapestry of the vibrancy of human experience. I liken the worldly experience of native humans to an intimate relationship with the Earth fully bloom as if as a bride with her children, lovers. It is this subtle give and take between planet and consciousness that results in the great respect for the Earth shown by native populations.
Each and every indigenous perspective resulted in a different and sufficient response from the earth in terms of medicine, shelter, knowledge, all those aspects of existence resulting in their experience of quality in living. These experiences and those subtending them are a vastly superior resource for modern man than the loss posed by any extinction of plant or animal species. The depletion of these perspectives impoverishes the human experience of us all and leaves it open to #8220;virtual invasions of information#8221;, useless clutter.
I wonder if the dialectical consciousness implied by the syntactic structure of phonetic languages isn#8217;t a virtual invasion of a certain type? I know that the technology of writing produces a new terrain and man#8217;s perceptual machinery always adjusts through time to every new terrain. How happy I was when my son started making sense of tiny black dots on white sheets of paper at a very early age. How happy the Turkoman father was when his young son recognized his approach; before his mother did. How happy the Pygmy father was when his young son crouched unnoticed, by him, by the path he took returning home.
Knowledge is only good if it helps people, connects people, makes life more bearable.
