Imre Jakabffy (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 2. (Budapest, 1974)
GOMBOS, Károly: An interesting Tekke-Turkoman carpet
running away with a hare) that are respected as totem animals and were represented with a special liking, are stylized to the utmost yet still discernible in the guls of Ersari, Yomud and other tribes. V.G. Moskova ethnographer and his collaborators relied on the works of historians and linguists of the Middle Ages. In the 11th century Mahmud Kashgari and other writers spoke in high terms of the snow-white felts and excellent carpets covering the yurt. Some notes like the above mentioned survived from the 13 th century too, about the beauty and sale of carpets made by Turkomans. The works of Rashid-ed-Din from the 14th century and Abul Ghazi Bahadur from the 17th century helped very much the understanding of the history, the tribalism, the everyday life and art of Turkmans. The heritage of ancient Turkoman carpet-industry is an extremely valuable source of the Turkoman applied arts of today. G.S. Saurova summed up in her book that the Turkoman folk art had a crysis before the victory of the Great Revolution. The Soviet government started to organize in 1926 the cooperatives of carpetweavers. It supplied them with raw material, with excellent dyes, with standing looms that could prove better conditions for work and the patterns of the best ancient carpets. 19 The Turkoman carpet-industry revived in a relatively short time. In 1937 in Paris and in 1939 in New York had a success and it merits particular attention that some weeks before the breaking of the war against the Soviets the review "Magyar Iparművészet" in 1941 published an article of acknowledgement about the products ol the Turkoman carpet-industry. The anonymous writer of the column "Chronicle" mentions that "in Ashabad was established a Carpet-Museum" and "in order to furnish it with good material ethnographers had been looking for the ancient good specimens among the yurts for years which now are on the walls of the Museum. Painters copy those patterns and then handicraftsmen make themselves the carpets of high quality, of dense knotting with vegetable-dyed yarns." The author mentions also that these carpets which are called wrongly "Bukhara carpets" gained very great success at international markets 20 V.A. Myrtov Turkoman cultural-historian in one of his essays wrote up the opinions of European and American art historians about the designing and colouring of Turkoman carpets. The scholars consider that the patterning of ancient Turkish and Persian carpets has many similar features with those of Turkomans and they influenced each-other mutually.1 The rhythmically repeated ornamentation of ancient Turkoman carpets radiant with Rembrandt's colours are not objects of unknown mysticism any more because the public visiting the Museum can learn on traces of scholars' activities more and more of Central Asian carpets, which not long ago were scarcely known. 139
