ARCHITECTURAL TEXTILES; TENT BANDS OF CENTRAL ASIA

The opening sentences to the brochure for this marvellous exhibit reads "The trellis tent is a brilliant invention. In its present form, it has made nomadic life possible across Central Asia for at least one and a half millennia". The trellis tent, or yurta, its most common name among the Turkic peoples across Central Asia who inhabit it, does not actually apear in the galleries at the Textile Museum ( 2320 S Street, NW, Washington, DC )although a charming table-top Kirghiz yurta accompanied by miniature Kirghiz and their herd animals is in the exhibit. A short Video from the Mingei Museum in San Diego shows the entire process of construction, demonstrated by a group of Kirghiz tribespeople whose yurta's components are spectacular; its tent bands and appliqued felts, its reed screens and its tasseled ties.

The people who occupy the trellis tents are pastoral people, nomadic and semi-nomadic, Turkmen, Karakalpak, Kyrgyz, Kazakh and Uzbek; they weave carpets, saddle and tent bags as well as the tent bands that provide the material for this stunning exhibit. Richard Isaacson, the Curator, drew on the Textile Museum's own holdings for about 1/3 of the bands; the remainder come from private collections in the US and Europe. He conducted three tours on opening day. First he showed a few pile weavings -bag faces from a variety of Turkmen tribes, and discussed the difficulty of relating the bags and carpets of specific tribes to specific tent bands. In that long gallery a half dozen or more horizontally mounted tent bands were labelled; materials, size and origin provided --.but Isaacson carefully added a question mark after every attribution. indicating the difficulties of attribution even after a great amount of study and comparison.

Where on the yurta the tent bands' functions are both as critical elements bracing the walls against collapse AND as decorative objects in the culture of their peoples, here they function as a dramatic visual treat and provide an intense indroduction into their ethnic, aesthetic and technical aspects. Tent bands from Central Asia are woven in several different structures. Isaacson has divided them into three groups; flatwoven, pile and mixed technique. While he discussed the technique of the pile weavings, particularly the highly prized pile designs on plain weave grounds, he discussed the flatweaves in terms of their intricate design elements. There he discoursed on their repeats and variations as in a musical composition. This provided him and the listeners with the ability to look at the at-first confusing changes and repeats in terms of the symmetry and placement; all of which made the experience pleasantly intense. On the website here (vanishingtextiles.com) look at #733 Turkmen ghujeri tent rug (in Medium Rugs). Try counting the design motifs and the repeats of their juxtapositions - for a brain buster.

A special group of tent bands, ceremonial in nature, and kept carefully to be passed on by the generation, are records of the wedding ceremony (see detail of one above).

One gallery called "Transformations" showed ways in which sections of tent bands were reassembled into other useful textiles; rugs or covers or hangings in the conservative manner of peoples who do not throw away the usable portions of anything that is part of their spare existence. Creative patchwork has always cast its spell on me, for one. Look at our ghujeri #2010 in Large Rugs. It is Uzbeki ahd has ten bands of which 4 are different treatments of diamond designs, 3 have different shaped, different sized extended hook motifs and the others are unrelated. These unschooled women weavers are certainly up on their geometry. Our Ersari Turkmen tent rug #1078, also in Large Rugs, contains solid bands of colors with jagged edges alternating with plain weave white bands which heighten the drama. Tent bands are approximately 40' in length, the size of the trellis tent's circumference where they are placed facing the interior, under the felt outer covering. The horizontal loom, staked to the ground extends from the interior where the weaver sits, out beyond the tent as is necessary. I do not remember as I write this if the bands for the ghujeri are chosen from a stock of band material made for that purpose of if they are pieces unused in a planned tent band. If you are interested, stay tuned.

Congratulations to the Textile Museum and to Richard Isaacson for a brilliant job. A catalogue is planned; I hear there will be fold-outs to show the horizontality of the tent bands.

Valerie Justin. April 1, 2007

 

Matisse, The Fabric of Dreams: His Art and His Textiles

At the 9th ICOC (International Conference on Carpets in 1999. a large exhibit showed Classical paintings from Italian collections, each accompanied by detailed analysis of the Oriental Rugs in the paintings.

In 400 years from now, if there are paintings from the 20th century to look at, what will be said about the textiles in Matisse’s paintings? If records of the exhibit Matisse, The Fabric of Dreams: His Art and His Textiles; and its Catalogue are still extant, they will reveal that the textiles so omnipresent in Matisse’s paintings are not there simply as rich embellishment but are the font, the reservoir from which is drawn Henri Matisse’s art.

The Exhibit shows groups of textiles, hanging, close to the related paintings. Although all labeled from “private collection”; they are textiles that belonged to Matisse himself, re-collected from many sources by the curators. It is easy to identify the textiles in the paintings, loose but unquestionably replicates. Many appear in their entirety. The textile designs are not used to become something else (it is prevalent these years for fashion and home designers to use kilim and oriental rug motifs as patterns in their shirting and upholstery fabric) .
A purple and white caftan (identified as Ottoman, 19th c)worn by the seated woman in ‘Purple Robe and Anemones’, painted in 1937, is proudly itself. A velvet jacket appliquéd with gold trim (‘Ottoman or Moroccan’) is found in one of the gorgeous Odelisque paintings (the ‘Seated Odelisque’ from the Cone Colllection at the Baltimore Museum).

Matisse was born into the life of textiles. Born to a weavers’ family in northeastern France, he grew up in Bohain-en-Vermandois, a center of textile production highly regarded for its luxury silks and taffetas. Generations of Matisses had earned their living at the loom. “He grew up on a block surrounded by weavers; embroiders’ and designers’ workshops, and among people preoccupied with finding fresh ways of combining and exploring colors.” Contemporary accounts agreed in the supremacy of “the Bohain weavers’, delicacy and richness of their colors, their unerring sense of design and their insatiable appetite for experiment” Fine French furnishing fabrics are in Matisse’s collection and in the paintings.

It is interesting to know from a chapter in the book/catalogue written by Hilary Spurling, the chief curator of the exhibition, that Matisse’s art education was in great contrast to the open-mindedness found in textile production. At the Academy drawing was taught like a dead language, use of color forbidden. In the weavers’ workshops, on the contrary, individuality was highly prized. I suggest that Matisse’s visual sophistication was both genetic and environmental.

There are fine French furnishing fabrics in Matisse’s collection and they appear in some of the paintings. Among the textiles in the largest display in the first gallery are a 1760 Toile de Jouy printed cotton, a 19th c otton ikat identified as possibly French provencal, a Javanese Batik, a Morccan silk sash and an embroidered silk. But I feel that his major textile loves were North African, African (Congo Kuba cloths) and Polynesian.

Very dramatic in the galleries were a pair of Moroccan transparent lattice screens with prayer rug mihrab designs. They were made of colored cottons appliquéd to a burlap and pierced to resemble fretwork screens common throughout the Islamic world. When shown in front of a window they make shadows and intricate surfaces as in several of the paintings. Islamic design, calligraphy and arabesques appear throughout.

Kuba raffias, woven by men in the Republic of the Congo from the raffia palm leaf and embroidered with dyed raffia by women, were signs of wealth and standing (smaller pieces were used as units of currency). Such Kuba raffias adorned the walls of Matisse’s Villa where he moved to Nice in World War two. He had purchased them, known as African velvets, when they were in vogue in Paris in the 1920s. Their designs appear in many paintings. In his studio Matisse juxtaposed the Kuba clothes with bark cloth brought back from his 1930s trip to the South Seas. Two large pieces of this work are in one of the galleries. (the cloth known as Tapa was the bark of breadfruit or mulberry trees, soaked and pounded and covered with strips of raised designs.) Matisse said he could look at them for hours pondering the mysteries of their instinctive geometry.

A remarkable result of that Polynesian trip was perhaps the triumph of Matisse’s last art, the magnificent paper cutouts.
The cutouts feature free form sea anemones, fish and other water creatures, waves, leaves that float on vivid blocs of brilliant colors and became the most direct way Matisse developed to express himself. Two huge tan and white silk screened works (Algae 1947) filled a wall of the final room in the exhibition shared with the ecclesiastic copes Matisse designed for the famous Chapel of the Rosary in Vence in southern France. His copes with their minimal motifs
and startling color contrasts remind me of the early Byzantine vestments I saw at the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersberg.

As for actual carpets, I found that an Algerian rug, most probably a kilim, figured in several paintings. It had a wide red border with minimized garland motif and a black field with just suggestions of flower heads. I found one (1924) in “Interiors Flowers and Parakeets”. Another appears in “Dishes and Fruit on a Red & Black Rug”. This was bought by Schulkin, the Russian textile magnet, in 1906 and is now in the Hermitage. Catalogue #19 See below.

 

 

 

Schulkin was one of the largest Matisse collectors. It is nice to think of Matisse and Schulkin discussing rugs and paintings and their interconnections. Another painting bought by Schulkin, now also in the Hermitage, the 1923 “The Painter’s Family”, contains a carpet that was possibly a Heriz.

A rug in a painting from the Philadelphia Museum was a dark colored runner partly covering a large orange carpet whose origin I was unable to place.

Another rug, in “Piano and Checker Players” (1924), looking most like a Balkan kilim, was also a Schulkin possession.

Early critics talked about Matisse’s revolutionary art “He confused two senses; the art of the painter and the art of the tapestry-maker” (1910-Jean Francois Scherb)”Matisse’s painting in a gallery furnish the walls in sumptuous fashion and match the tonalities of the handsomest carpets”(Michael Puy).

Apparently the great appreciation of carpets came to Matisse after a famous Munich exhibit which he visited in October of 1910 – at the end of his life he said of those masterpieces of ‘Mohammedan art’ “revelation thus came to me from the Orient”.

Matisse also said, toward the end of his life, that in the Odelisque paintings (studies of scantily and exotically dressed women) the textiles were as important as the models. He layered the textiles to create a tension and then softened them to convey “the impression of happy colors – a balance of deliberately massed riches”.

“Matisse’s lifelong love of colored cloth came wide awake once he realized its potency for modern painting, a discovery that proved as fecund, in its way, as Picasso’s of African sculpture….Matisse played the ambiguity between pattern and a picture of a pattern, setting up resonances of color so strong that you seem to hear, feel, taste and small them” (Peter Schjeldahl, New Yorker)

The textiles shown in the exhibit are good looking, some very fine, examples in their categories. They are not knock-out pieces. There are no carpets; great carpets can be seen right there at the Met in the Islamic galleries. This exhibit of the art of Henri Matisse demonstrates the relationship of inspiration and creativity. The inspiration Matisse derived from the patterns, designs, and cultures of diverse peoples empowered him to create these great works.

Until September 25th 2005. Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC

Matisse, The Fabric of Dreams His Art and His Textiles
Book is available in hardcover or paperback at the Museum or discounted at Amazon.com

Valerie Justin.
Sag Harbor. September 2005

GIANT LEAF TAPESTRIES OF THE RENAISSANCE 1500-1600

A group of Verdure tapestries called Giant Leaf Tapestries is being shown in New York City. The tapestries are possibly the earliest renderings of the newly discovered great forested landscapes of the New World.

To see these exuberant tapestries hanging in a Manhattan brownstone is to enter into the fantastic once-upon-a-time landscape that was the Americas circa 1500.The great curling blue green/light green leaves massed against mysterioso dark backgrounds dominate the space - looking carefully one sees exotic birds; parrots, wild turkeys and herons, vines are entangled in the dentated or serrated leaves, wild roses are central in several of the pieces. In “Giant Leaf tapestry with serrated leaves and hounds” two elegant hounds are Old World dogs and might have actually accompanied the original explorers. The explorers, (could the artist have been among them?), also noted leaves torn and damaged by the feeding insects and snails shown in natural detail in several of the tapestries.

Giant Leaf Tapestries were acquired by the rulers of England and Europe. Inventories of Henry VIII show he owned sets in every palace, as did the Roman Emperor Charles V. Being in a grand hall in candlelight. its walls completely covered with these powerful natural images, would have been dramatic - creating the experience of being enclosed in a primeval forest. They were first woven in the early 1500s after Vasco de Gama and Christofo Colombo had brought fauna and flora from the Americas to Europe causing an explosion of interest in botany and spawning the study and understanding of the medicinal properties of plants, and wide interest in their cultivation.

The absence of historic and religious subjects, the naturalism of these scenes, and the accuracy of their observation changed the treatment of subject matter in tapestry design. Replacing the more formal “mille fleur” depictions of frame-filling flowers, proto Giant Leaf Tapestries appeared; a charming one in the exhibit shows a confrontational lion and griffin of medieval appearance.

These tapestries are not marked with makers’ names and there are no extant drawings (the cartoons) – specific knowledge of their birth seems still elusive. They are woven with wool and silk. The warp count is given as between 11 and 16 threads to the inch.

The exhibition includes complete examples (the longest shown is 13’1” but is only 4’5” wide because it was woven as a wainscot tapestry to cover a wall above the paneling). Also included are fragments from large tapestries that had been altered for furnishing bed canopies. The fragments are beautiful and somehow touching , as I often find fragmented art to be. According to the catalogue “frequently the cartoons were over 150 square feet and cumulatively a set could be over a thousand square feet”.

Some of the tapestries (there are fourteen) are bordered with simple narrow bands (red is an effective border color in the first one on view; reds not being prevalent in most of the tapestries - possibly due to the higher costs of red-dyed wool and silk.) On the other hand, the border of Giant Leaf Tapestry with Dentated Leaves is very wide and elaborate, extending into the field on all sides. It is a stunning frame filled with luscious garlands of fruits and flowers.

As the vogue for Giant Leaf tapestries grew, their production spread - they were woven in small and large tapestry centers in Flanders and France for most of the 16th century; many of their weavers migrated to Paris as well as to Germany and Denmark.

In Kronberg Castle in Denmark, a surviving Giant Leaf tapestry shows a rhinoceros along with exotic birds and other creatures, a mix possibly created by an artist without a clear mastery of the new geographical information. (A live rhinoceros being transported from Goa by a Portuguese ship had caused a sensation in 1515.)

Other Giant Leafs can be seen at the Louvre, the Victoria and Albert, many museums in Europe. In the United States they are represented at the Art Institute of Chicago, The Rhode Island School of Design, the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Museum of Fine Arts Boston included two of them in its 1967 Catalogue of TAPESTRIES. The author states that “literally hundreds of similar tapestries survive in public and private collections.” However, this exhibit is, according to the catalogue, “the first ever devoted to the subject of Giant Leaf tapestries”

The exhibit is the inaugural show at the New York City gallery of S. Franses, the London historic tapestry and carpet specialist. The excellent catalogue, ‘Giant Leaf Tapestries of the Renaissance 1500-1600’, includes essays on their development, their revival in the late 19th century (William Morris was the leading exponent), complete plates with descriptions and technical information. Available from FRANSES . 132 Eat 61 St. NY NY 10021.

Photo Caption:
Detail of Giant Leaf Tapestry with Serrated Leaves and Hounds
Catalogue #2

Valerie Justin. Sag Harbor, NY. November 28, 2005