CIRCA: 1900 / early 1900’s
A Yomut Turkoman flat-woven juval (chuval)* where the gols / guls – or motifs – throughout the center field (and the border designs) are woven in the soumak technique**, which is a type of flat weave with a smooth front face and a loose or ragged looking back. And besides using the soumak technique, the major ‘stepped and hooked’ shaped gols and the minor ‘diamond’ shaped gols here all use undyed white cotton (all the white areas), and mix of naturally dyed black (major gols) and blue (diamond gols) wool. White cotton (for the white motifs) is also incorporated into the border design along with other coloured wool. And while the main central border strip around the carpet is much the same, the horizontal inner and outer borders use a wave design in a beautiful blue (bottom left above), while the inner and outer vertical borders use the so-called ‘running dog’ type design (bottom right above). The wide elm strip along the bottom has been left plain. The warp and weft are wool, while the designs use a wool warp and a weft of cotton. The cotton has worn slightly in some places on the front, but there are no repairs or reweaves anywhere. Fabric hanging loops to top edge verso have been added for wall display. Overall it is in good condition.
*An example of similar can be seen on page 203, Oriental Rugs Volume 5, Turkoman by Uwe Jourdan
**Unlike the smooth back of the flat woven ‘kilim type’ (in this instance, red) base, by using the soumak weaving technique the back of all the designs (gols, etc) are intentionally left with the loose ends of the differently-coloured weft threads visible, and are often several inches long as seen in the photos of the back side above.