the Bokharas and Afghans. In many, their classification is fixed, or at least approximated, rather by their borders than by the figuring of their fields. There are many border designs surely determining their origin and the region to which they properly belong. These borders may have been borrowed or stolen, or may have naturally spread to other regions, even in the old time; and they may be adapted to various other makes to-day. Their evident individuality of design tells its own history just the same.

It is not difficult to master the characteristic features of the borders of many types; and, once known, they make a fair foundation of knowledge for the collector. They are often truer and safer guides to classification than are the designs of centre or field. Indeed, the study of borders, inner, middle, and outer borders, and borders characteristic, modified, or exceptional would make a book of wondrous artistic interest and beauty of design. Even the item of selvedge, particularly in the Beluchistans, shows great skill in colouring and pattern.

Turtle Border		Crab Border

The consideration of characteristic patterns in field and border is so involved with verbal description and specification in the various classes of rugs that an attempt at complete pictorial illustration of such figures in their proper place is practically impossible. A few reproductions are shown in this chapter which may serve as examples. Some of them are more particularly considered elsewhere in the text, as reference may show.

The Serabend border is referred to on p. 50, and is quite unmistakable; and the Persian border (p. 23) is familiar to every one, and appears frequently on Caucasian rugs of every quality and every age. The Feraghan leaf design is noticed on p. 52, and wherever used in the drawing, determines its class as absolutely as any figure may. The Rhodian border is referred to more particularly on p. 72, and the Koniah design and Koulah border are described in their proper place, p. 72. Other Persian borders are most interesting, although they may not particularize any class or locality. Such are the turtle and crab borders (pp. 28 and 29), and the lobster design, at the head of this page. The origin of these strange forms of ornament as applied to carpet-weaving adds only another mystery to the subject. But dyes were derived not only from leaves and roots, but also from insects, molluscs, and crustaceans. It must be that the origin of the colour originally suggested these symbols of marine or insect life for decorative effect. The more they were used, however, the more conventionalized and meaningless they appear, recent weavers not appreciating what they represented. Old pieces show more clearly the evident model. But old pieces also often show original creations in border and design, far more artistic than the usual types. The Kazak border of the titlepage is an example. The discriminating collector, when a choice offers, will do well to avoid the commonplace.

OF THE DYEING

Chapter IV

OF THE DYEING

The dye, the tone, the richness, and colour value of a rug was, and still is, an essential characteristic of the weaving of each class and region; and it was formerly not only essential but exclusive, the dyes being often trade secrets or, more truly said, tribe secrets.

Of course every one knows that the colouring of the yarn of the best Oriental rugs is derived only from vegetable or animal dyes, and to this is due their beauty and durability. It may be noted also, in parenthesis, that it is the yarn and not the wool that is dyed. Alas, that modern weavers, Oriental and Occidental, have learned to substitute mineral or aniline dyes! These not only destroy the wool and fade badly, but when the fabric is cleaned or wet by any chance the colours run, and leave their stains and blemishes. Of course, too, they fail to give the richness, depth, and lustre of the good old method. Generally, their manifest crudity bespeaks the poor quality and coarseness of their make. Some vegetable dyes also fade, but they fade only into softer and more pleasing shades, and more delicate and harmonious blendings, as witness, in many antiques, the soft and beautiful tones of pink, salmon, and fawn which come from raw magentas, as the back of the rug will prove. But that magenta dye was of the old school. Modern magentas seem never to fade away gracefully and becomingly. It must be noted, however, while speaking of the dyes used in the fine old rugs and in the best rugs of to-day, that for one or two colours resort was, and is, had to mineral dyes. Many of the best old Turkish specimens have thus suffered in their blacks and browns, and many a museum exhibit is eaten to the warp where these colours occur. It may be well to remember this, as some varieties of Mousul and of Turkish weave, thus worn to the warp in spots, leaving the other figures raised and in relief, are palmed off on the innocent purchaser as rare, “embossed” pieces. Iron pyrites is the mineral from which these black dyes are made, and some Turkish weavers seem to know no vegetable black or brown. In some of the best Persians, Serabends particularly, the green which is used in the borders has the same fault as the Turkish blacks and browns; and if it does not “fade away suddenly like the grass,” at least it leaves the nap “cut down, dried up, and withered.”

Larger Image

Plate III.
ANTIQUE KAZAK
From the Collection of Mr. Erickson Perkins
Size: 5.9 x 7.2

The subject of the various dyes might be extended to a separate monograph, for really the whole history of rug making depends upon the dyes used. The day that the aniline, petroleum dyes came into use doomed the perfect making of carpet or rug; and not all the strictest laws of the Medes and Persians—which is to say, the Shah of Persia—have availed to prevent the use of the mineral dyes, and the complete demoralization of modern weaving. You may find even in choice, closely woven, artistic Shirvans and