Imre Jakabffy (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 2. (Budapest, 1974)
GOMBOS, Károly: An interesting Tekke-Turkoman carpet
It is well-known that its use became nearly quite general in all carpet making countries from the end of the last century. Returning to the colours of Turkoman rugs: besides the basic colour they applied other complementary colours : white, brown and black. These colours were furnished by natural unpainted wool yarns. The durability and the fineness of the carpet are ensured by the density of knots per unit area. The number of knots of Turkoman rugs is 2—3.000 knots per dm-, but in a few cases of carpets of high quality it can amount even to 8—10000. I had a view in the experimental workshop of the Carpet Museum of Ashabad. I was astonished how fast even the youngest of the carpetweaving women tied the knots and chose with a very sure eye the yarn of the colour that was needed in that very moment. The more skilled weavers work without any graphs, giving vent to their creative imagination, and though the designs come out very regularly yet they are never the same, they are always newer versions of colours and design combinations. In the artistical stricture of the carpet besides the colouring the designing has a great part. At first sight the attractive bright red seems to prevail in the whole surface of the carpet. But really it is not so, because of the dominent character of the ornamentation in the carpets and in actual fact that is what catches the eye. Naturally the particular design is greatly due to the different tints of red as well. The design of extraordinary beauty of Turkoman rugs engaged the attention of a great number of scholars, among them Hungarians too. It was striking for everybody that these designs have characters of precision, of clearness and of geometrical style, are not the dull results of cold calculations, but traditional folk motifs built on ancient origins. Zoltán Felvinczi Takács, first director of the Museum of Eastern Asiatic Arts reviewed already in 1927 the Bukhara carpets in the periodical "Műgyűjtő", l:i and later in 1935 he summed up the most important distinctive features of Turkoman carpets for the Encyclopaedia of Arts. It will be worth quoting his words which are valid nowadays too: "The Salors — one of the oldest Turkoman tribes — worked in the most strict and perfect style but after they came under the rule of Persians and the Persians exacted from them as ransom their carpets, they gave up this handicraft." The treasure of the Salors' art was inherited first by the Saryks and after them by the Tekkes. Anyhow the basic patterns of Turkoman carpets are very old. On the research work's level of those times it is understandable that also the Hungarian carpet scholars — like the other European ones — misinterpreted the basis of Turkoman carpet ornamentation. Also the above mentioned scholar calles "Salorrose" the Turkoman design of octagon shape, moreover he publishes in his book a design like that. The word "gul" means rose but its form "göl" is used by the Turkoman weavers simply for "pattern", more exactly the pattern particular to a given tribe. The term "Salor-rose" was born before the Great October Socialist Revolution. It sounds well, but it is not scientific, observes prof. A. Pugacenkova very smartly. It does not explain the nature and the origin of Turkoman ornamentations. 1 ' 1 So the word "göl" in connection with carpets does not mean "rose" but patterns, peculiar to respective tribes and to their carpet-products. Western-European and American scholars hold the same view in this important question. Siawosch Azadi in his catalogue published in 1970 in Hamburg, or CD. Reed American scholar in his work 137
