A 'C-GUL' MAIN CARPET, YOMUT CONFEDERATION, WEST TURKESTAN

A rare Group III ‘C-gul’ main carpet with an early version of the gul form. Hans Sienknecht, in his article "A Turkic Heritage," Hali 47, October 1989, pp. 30-39, studied the development of Yomud C-gul carpets and organised them into four groups: I through IV. Under Sienknecht’s classification, Group I uses multiple forms of palmettes and guls in various stages of transition: the James Ballard carpet in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, inv. no. 22.100.44 is arguably the best and most well known of this subset. Group II employs a mix of kepse and C-guls, whilst Group III uses only C-guls but arranged in a kind of quincunx pattern based on their colour, whilst Group IV lays the guls out in diagonal rows by colour, resulting in a much less lively field than in the other groups. On the basis of these definitions, the present lot is part of Group III, of which there are perhaps less than 10 examples. These include lot 40 in Sotheby’s New York, 1 October 2015; Sienknecht, op.cit., figs. 8, 9, 10, 11; Herrmann, Eberhart, Seltene Orientteppiche V, Munich 1983, pl. 82, pp. 170-171 (fig. 8 in Sienknecht ibid); Skinner, Bolton, Massachusetts, December 6, 1987, lot 101; and Azadi, S., Herrenhausen '86: 18.Kunst & Antiquitäten Messe, Hannover, 1986, p. 18. Jon Thompson and Louise Mackie In Turkman: Tribal Carpets and Traditions, Washington D.C., 1980 illustrate (p.150) a possible evolution of the C-gul from a feathered palmette. The guls seen in the present lot are an early iteration of the form, with the serrated edges cleanly drawn and clearly directional, and with a small stepped motif to the centre. Delicate stems project from each end. The guls are not truncated at the sides of the field but instead the field is decorated at the edges with sagdak minor guls, a feature which Sienknecht calls rare and is seen in the example in fig. 9 of his article, op.cit. The borders of the present lot have a curled leaf motif at each end alternating with a hooked and serrated motif and vine zig-zag at each side.

Herrmann notes regarding his thoughts on C-gul carpets: “I came across one carpet with the C-motif gül in the mid-1980’s, through Richard Purdon, who was based in Cirencester and regularly checked small auction houses in the West Country. Some of the great Turkmen objects must have found their way to England with people who had served in Asia. I published it in my 1984 book Seltene Orientteppiche Vol. VI, p.199 in which I mentioned a fragment of this type from the Hermitage collection, then Leningrad, documented in the same year by Elena Tsarewa, Teppiche aus Mittelasien, p.66. The border of both those carpets carries the so-called syrga motif (or more precisely in farsi seir gah) meaning 'the passageway’. This is in concordance with other Turkmen nomenclature for motifs, for example the darwaza gul in Salor trapping, or more precisely from the farsi word dar-wazeh meaning a wide open door. This all relates to the imaginary path between the two worlds, a discipline called eschatological geography. The C-motif which lends its name to this group is more or less an expression for the momentary cosmic presence, namely where the imaginary path makes a 90° turn within the four directions from E/W to N/S. (See graphic below for the geometrical construction): Furthermore, the path is shown by reconstructing the form of the C-gul itself with two concentric flattened octagons based at the beginning with an asymmetrical lozenge, the sides of which have all different angles taken from the tool kit of sun, the moon and the star geometries. The clue is that by movements only of the abstract geometrical figures of hexagon and octagons (step 1-5) which allow the reconstruction of the form and the placing of the C-motif. What a task, we are looking at frozen movies! (See graphics: 2 images: steps 1-3 and steps 4-5). A closer look into the construction above will lead us to the conclusion that all 22 C-motifs find their placing by the moving geometrical tools of the hexagons in vertical and horizontal positions and the small octagons in the very centre of the C-Gul-form. But why 8 C-motifs in the inner flattened octagon and 14 C-motifs in the outer ones? Because there exists another mathematical reason, to be found in the triangle 2 x ∠ 1:7 (or triangle 7:24:25) which communicates within an angle identity with triangle ∆ 3:4:5. (See 2 graphics below) ‘Moon/star triangles before crossing vertical axis = 8 circles’ and ‘Moon/star triangles after crossing the vertical axis, the path turning North to the heavens = 14 circles.’ According to the Hadith (the sayings and norms linked to the Prophet by a chain of transmitting authorities) Paradise has eight gates. This could be an explanation for the eight C-motifs in the inner C-gul-form. A last question: Why have the two carpets mentioned above for comparison the syrga motif border while the carpet presented has the do-gah-tschik motif? Because border design, is in my opinion, based on the terms of escatological geography, the cosmic position just passed, whilst the inner field shows the cosmic present, that is to say having passed the gateway (syrga) or being in approach to it (do-gah-tschik)."