Almost everyone has heard of a Bokhara rug, but it is possibly true to say that hardly anyone knows anything more about the wonderful knotted fabrics which come from the two Soviet Republics of Turkmenskaya and Uzbekskaya.
This area, bounded in the south by Persia and Afghanistan, and by the Caspian Sea in the west, is the original home of the Turks, and turns out many items in knotted pile other than rugs. All their products are made for home use, or perhaps one should say tent use, because these are a nomadic people, and there is no organized industry as in other rug-producing countries. Although on the ancient trade route from China, there is no record of rug weaving earlier than the nineteenth century; yet the sheer artistry and technique of these rugs can only lead one to believe that they stem from a long ancestry. The probable reason for our lack of knowledge about them is the fact that for some centuries Turkestan was isolated from the rest of the world, only opening up somewhat in the last quarter of the nineteenth century after the Russian conquest.
Nothing of interest historically will have survived, as the products of Turkestan were always purely functional, and although hand-woven textiles, particularly knotted ones, are extremely hard wearing, the constant use of them by a tribe always on the move is hardly conducive to preservation.
Before giving consideration to the various tribes in Turkestan, it may be as well to dispose of some ill-founded descriptions which may confuse the issue. For instance, it is general practice to refer to all products from this area, and also from.other areas, not necessarily adjoining but using the same designs, as Bokhara. There must also be many owners of rugs who bought them with the rather grand labels of ‘Royal Bokhara’ or ‘Princess Bokhara’. These descriptions are the figment of a rug dealer’s mind, to obtain a better price by upgrading rugs with non-essential names. It should be noted that the city of Bokhara is not a rug-making town, but the market for many of the pieces made by the various Turkoman tribes.
It has been mentioned above that many items other then rugs are made in this district. Tent bands, woven with the design in pile on a flat hand-woven canvas foundation which gives an embossed effect, are used as a kind of frieze round the walls of a tent. Their length is usually about 42 ft, which would doubtless be equivalent to the perimeter of a normal sized tent, although some much longer ones have been found. Gun and water bottle covers are other examples of the great variety of objects made with knotted pile. More commonplace in western countries, however, are tent bags, camel bags and cushions, all gracefully worked by these strange nomadic people for their comfort in what must be a very hard country. The largest tribe is that known as Tekke.
These people inhabit the southern part of Turkestan and part of the province of Khorassan, over the political border in Persia, as also do the Yamouts, who weave the finest qualities. Other large tribes are the Salors and the Pendehs. All these have their little characteristics in design, and strictly speaking any Turkoman rug should be prefixed by the tribal name. The one exception is the Hatchli, which is a design in the form of a cross, made by various tribes, and reputedly used as a tent doorway.
The name Beshir is applied to a particular kind of Turkoman rug. It is not a tribal piece, as is the case with the others enumerated above. There is some doubt as to where the name originates, one being that it is a sept or branch of a large tribe. Beshirs do not contain the conventional Turkoman octagon forms, and a further characteristic is that very large carpets are occasionally found, which is not so in the case of the other Turkoman pieces, the largest size being about 13 ft x 10 ft. One other form of weaving has to be mentioned: the pileless fabric known elsewhere as Kelim, but here referred to as ‘Palas’. These pieces are used as wall hangings, settee covers and divan or table coverings.
All Turkoman textile products feature the blood red ground colour which is not found anywhere else. Apart from being a very acceptable colour to western eyes, it is the natural colour for a nomadic people to use in such a cold and desolate area as Turkistan.
Of course, the foregoing was primarily about Western Turkestan, and although the political boundaries do not coincide, there is a region which must be termed, for the purposes of this website, Eastern Turkestan. The marketing centre for this district is Samarkand, something over 100 miles east of Bokhara; although it is, like Bokhara, in the Soviet Republic of Uzbekskaya, the design is purely Chinese in character. It is true that Chinese designs found their way westwards, even into Turkey, and many of the so-called Turkish designs can be traced back to Chinese origin, but Eastern Turkestan appears to be a no-man’s-land between East and West, and the designs encountered in this market, while retaining their Chinese motifs, have also a flavour of the West about them.
It is a vast area, and rugs from Khotan, Kashgar, and Yarkand are collectively called Samarkand in the markets of the West. One deplorable practice must be mentioned here, which does not enhance the reputation of this district which produces such original pieces. It is well known that as in Western Turkestan no proof of antiquity can be established. However, in Europe, and particularly in England, there has grown up a practice of washing the rather brash colourings out of these primitive, but not old pieces, the resulting appearance almost completely colourless being much favoured by certain interior decorators. While there can be a certain charm in a room decorated with a carpet treated in this manner, the intrinsic value of the piece has been utterly destroyed, and its wearing qualities very seriously impaired. Unfortunately, too, these pieces are often represented to be much older than they are.