FLATWEAVES
Flatweaves, or pileless rugs and fabrics, ordinarily require less labor and materials, and for this reason they are usually - but not always - cheaper to pro¬duce. While some may be works of great artistic merit, they are made primarily to serve a variety of practical functions as inexpensive floor coverings, animal trappings, bags, and draperies in both utilitarian and decorative contexts. Also, as they are lighter in weight than pile fabrics, they may be more convenient for some aspects of the nomadic lifestyle. Since many of them are made by tech¬niques simpler than pile knotting, it has long been assumed that they predate the pile carpet. No doubt various flatweaves have been in use for millennia.
This is confirmed by a number of well preserved kilim fragments from Pazyryk in Siberia (with estimates of age ranging around the fourth and fifth centuries B.C.), which show a variety of techniques and geometric motifs strikingly suggestive of some woven in the recent past. Kilim fragments uncov¬ered by Sir Mark Aurel Stein in Eastern Turkestan apparently date from the third or fourth century A.D., and the early first millennium Coptic kilims from Egypt show a considerable technical sophistication. |
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KNOTTING TECHNIQUES
 There are a number of ways of twisting or knotting the pile yarn around the warp strands, and this too provides a significant identifying feature. In the Middle East, there are two major types of k referred to in the older oriental rug literature as the Turkish (or Ghiordes, Gordes, and other spellings and the Persian (or Senneh, Sehna, and other spelling) knots. These terms, however, maybe misleading,as many Persian rugs are woven with so-called Turkish knots, and oriental rugs from the cits- of Senneh (now called Sanandaj) are Turkish knotted. Recent rug literature has consequently substituted the terms "symmetrical" and "asymmetrical," which are at least descriptive, and these will be used throughout this book.
The asymmetrical knot may be tied in two ways, with the loop to the left or to the right, and the pile emerging from the opposite side. Most frequently the pile emerges on the left, and the knot is thus described as "open to the left." While the type of knot seems to vary according to whether the weaver is right or left handed, there are also more significant variations on a regional or tribal basis. Turkmen rugs, for example, are often attributed to a certain tribe according, to some extent, to the direction in which the knot opens. It is possible to discover whether the knots were tied to the left or the right simply by passing one's hand over the . |
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SPINNING
 The manner in which wool and cotton are spun into yarn has an important effect on the oriental rug, as it creates variations in thickness, compressibility, and tensile strength. For many centuries yarn has been spun by hand methods that varied little from the villages to the cities. The standard implement, the spindle, is usually made of wood and measures between 9 and 15 inches, with both ends tapered and a notch at one end in which the yarn is held stable. Near the end of the spindle there is usually a whorl, a perforated disk that acts like a flywheel, giving the spindle inertia and stability as it turns. There are several methods of turning the spindle to form yarn from carded or combed fibers, and the completed material is then wound around the spindle. The single-strand yarn produced may then be plied into yarns of two or three strands. Among most village and nomadic groups, two-ply yarns are most common.
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