Imre Jakabffy (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 2. (Budapest, 1974)

GOMBOS, Károly: An interesting Tekke-Turkoman carpet

For this price in 1907 10, 12 cows with calves can have been bought".

9 The price of Turkoman carpets was not low at the beginning of the 19th century either, because of the great demand for them. The Turkoman villages after their annextion to the Soviet Union were overrun with dealers in carpet, who crowded up the prices without being anxious about the decline of their artistical beauty and they ordered more and more carpets, in order to sell them at a high profit in the shops of European cities. The II. volume of the 1928's year of the periodical "Műgyűjtő" gives informations about the auction that took place between 23rd november and 1

st december 1927, where the Bukhara carpet of No. 1586 was sold for 1700 silver florins (its size: 300 X 215 cm) and an other smaller one also from the 19th century (under registry number 1645, size: 140 X 150 cm) for 410 silver florins.

,n From 1867 to 1915 the Turkoman carpets appeared with success in St. Petersburg, Moscow, Vienna, Berlin and in other cities at world exhibitions and in international industrial fairs which were instrumental in their priceadvance and generally their spreading in Europe. The fine ancient Turkoman carpets were favoured by the people chiefly for their splendid colouring. The bright red is traditionally quite obligatory. This is the basic colour. This basic colour is completed by the different hues of red: wine-red, sang de boef, clotted blood-colour and gay, but never loud and glaring red. The dye of yarns spun of slender, fine wool material is durable. Its colour is silky, non-fading and is not turning gray. W. Bode probably did not understand the special colour-scale of Turkoman carpets, finding these colours sombre and dull and felt them monotonous in comparison with the Persian carpets.

11 The Turkoman women during their dying operations used natural vegetableand animal-materials and these formulas were inherited from generation to generation. They knew very much the dyestuffs which can be found in the Turkoman mountains and in the desert-plains. Only the indigo was exported from India or Persia, and by the aid of which they could produce the blue and bluish-green colours. These lengthy operations of washing and dying were not. inconvenient to the Turkomans living still in nomadic tribalism and also because at that time they made their carpets mainly for home use and not for sale. At the turn of the century besides Ashabad and Merv Bukhara became the biggest market-place. The aniline dye appeared and the decline of carpet-industry began which could be stopped only after the formation of the Soviet power. The enthusiasts and scholars of Hungarian applied arts gave news of Turkoman carpets among the first in Europe. In No.

7. 1892 of the periodical "Művészi Ipar" in the column "Miscellanies", in an article about "Persian carpet-weaving" we can read the followings: "The small rugs are of numerous sorts of kind. Certain kinds, for instance the Turkoman rugs which in the European commerce are called "Bukhara", are very similar in patterning each other, without the existence of two fully identical examples." The writer continues: "the Turkoman rugs whose weave and beauty are unique, are not woven in Persian territory, and the Turkomans have regretfully a great inclination to use aniline, particularly because their main colour is red."

1The anonymous writer of the above quoted text recognized rightly the beauty of design and of colours. He was only mistaken in that he imagined the use of aniline as a special Turkoman inclination. 136