Selendi carpet

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White-ground Selendi "bird" carpet, Schäßburg monastery church , Transylvania, Romania.

A group of antique Anatolian knotted carpets is known as selendi or "white-ground" carpets . The basic color of the fields and borders is white. They got their name from the western Anatolian market town of Selendi . The carpets have characteristic patterns that allow their further classification into "Chintamani" , "Bird" and "Scorpion carpets" .

In older literature, Selendi carpets were attributed to the region around the city of Uşak . In an official Ottoman price list (narh defter) from Edirne from 1640 “white carpets with leopard or crow pattern” from the city of Selendi were listed. Since this source discovery, the white-ground carpets have been referred to as Selendi carpets.

A significant number of white-ground Selendi carpets have been preserved among the so-called Transylvanian carpets in Transylvania in what is now Romania. A number of white-ground Chintamani carpets were copied by the Romanian forger Theodor Tuduc in the 20th century and found their way into the collections of the Islamic Museum in Berlin and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London under the false assumption that they were originals.

Types

Large-format "bird" carpet; Museum of Turkish and Islamic Art , Istanbul

All Selendi carpets have a white background made of undyed wool. Compared to other Anatolian carpets, their coarser knotting and pattern design as well as the frequent evidence of visible diagonal connections in the fabric, the so-called " loafers ", suggests that they were made in more rural surroundings or in small factories. There are three groups, Chintamani carpets, "bird" and "scorpion carpets".

Chintamani carpets

A group of white-ground carpets has a motif of three colored spheres arranged in a triangle shape, which are spread over the field in an endless repeat . Often two wavy lines are drawn under the base of each triangle. This motif is widely used in Ottoman art. The origin is controversial: the price register from 1640 lists a "carpet with a leopard pattern", which indicates that there was an association with patterned animal skins even at the time the textile was created. Archaeological finds in Anatolia dating back to the second millennium BC BC, are decorated with the characteristic three-ball motif. At the time of the Timurids , the three-ball motif served as a symbol ( tamgha ) of the dynasty.

In 1902, Wilhelm von Bode (1902) equated the three-ball motif with the Buddhist Chintamani motif in his handbook Vorderasiatische Knotteppiche . In later editions of the book, Ernst Kühnel withdrew Bode's thesis and agreed that the three-ball motif was derived from the pattern of animal skins. Kadoi (2007) places the three-ball motif in the Turkic-Persian tradition of animal fur as a talisman and symbol of power, from which it was introduced into Ottoman visual art and was widely used there.

In addition to some large-format knots from the environment of the Ottoman court manufactory, around 30 Chintamani carpets of smaller format (around 80 × 150 cm) and coarser knots are known worldwide. The three-ball motifs stretch across the entire field in staggered rows, with small rosettes or cross motifs occasionally. Some carpets are given the shape of a prayer rug by inserting a step line that forms a niche and separates two otherwise identically patterned areas of the field. Their borders are usually simple, designed in the form of a grid. The most important collection of small-format white-ground carpets can be found in the Margaret Church in the Transylvanian city of Mediaș . In 1998, one of only 13 white-ground Chintamani carpets with prayer niche patterns known worldwide was discovered by chance in the premises of the Ciba-Geigy company in Basel. It probably came from the Albert Boehringer collection .

Bird and scorpion carpets

Vogel carpets have a continuous repeat of four passes on, each enclosing a central rosette or flower symmetrical group. The sides of the quatrains are formed by approximately diamond-shaped ornaments, which are connected at their corners by rosettes. The four-passes continuously cover the entire field. Despite their geometric design, the patterns look like a series of birds, and appear as such in the price register of 1640. The basic color is white, which has yellowed to an ivory shade due to the use of undyed wool. The color palette is limited to matte red and blue as well as medium brown, the outlines are black. In larger formats, two “bird ornaments” of a quatrefoil form parallel rows over the entire length of the carpet field.

The group of scorpion carpets is the smallest among the white-ground carpets from Selendi. Only four are known worldwide, of which two have been preserved in Transylvania (in the Margaret Church in Medias, inv.EKM 111 and the Black Church in Kronstadt , inv. 373), one (inv. 7968) in the Hungarian Museum of Applied Arts in Budapest, one in the Keir Collection , now in the Dallas Museum of Art . The field of the scorpion carpets is clearly structured along the longitudinal axis by parallel rows of arrow ornaments and rosettes. These alternate with rows of “scorpion” motifs, which are rotated by 45 ° against the rows of arrows and rosettes and 90 ° against each other. The main borders, decorated with eight-pointed “cogwheel” rosettes and hook leaves or stylized meanders, can also be found in this form on some bird and lottery carpets .

Reception in Western Europe

From the middle of the 16th to the 17th century, Selendi carpets came to Western Europe with trade. They can be found in paintings from the Renaissance period , for example in Portrait of a Protestant Doctor of Laws (around 1540) by Hans Mielich and in Alessandro Varotaris Eugenes et Roxana (around 1630). In the Portrait of Henry Hastings, 5th Earl of Huntingdon , attributed to Paulus van Somer, the sitter stands on an easily recognizable bird carpet. In the picture The Bockelung of a Young Saxon Woman (1890; Brukenthal Museum , Inv. 1248) by the Transylvanian-Saxon portrait painter Robert Wellmann, a bird carpet covers the table in the background.

literature

  • Levent Boz: White-ground 'Bird' carpets of Selendi and their reflections in European art and lifestyle . In: Universitatea Babeș-Bolyai (ed.): Studia et documenta turcologica . No. 3-4 . Presa Universitară Clujeană, Cluj-Napoca 2016, p. 175-189 .
  • White-ground carpets . In: Stefano Ionescu (ed.): The Margarethenkirche in Mediasch . Verduci Editore, Rome 2018, ISBN 978-88-7620-928-4 , p. 115-121 .
  • Jürg Rageth: A Selendi Rug: An Addition to the Canon of White-Ground Cintamani Prayer Rugs . In: Hali 98 . May 1998, p. 84-91 . - to the small group of white-ground Chintamani carpets with a prayer niche.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Mübahat Kütükoğlu: Osmanlılarda Narh Müessesesi ve 1640 Tarihli Narh Defteri . Enderun kitabevi, İstanbul 1983, p. 72, 178 .
  2. ↑ Halil İnalcık : Carpets of the Mediterranean Countries 1400–1600. The Yürüks. Their Origins, Expansion and Economic Role . In: Robert Pinner, Walter Denny (Eds.): Oriental Carpet and Textile Studies . tape II . London 1986, p. 58 .
  3. ↑ a b c Stefano Ionescu: Antique Ottoman Rugs in Transylvania . 2nd Edition. Verduci Editore, Rome 2005, p. 53-57 .
  4. ↑ Jürg Rageth: A Selendi Rug: An Addition to the Canon of White-Ground Cintamani Prayer Rugs . In: Hali 98 . May 1998, p. 84-91 .
  5. ↑ Mübahat Kütükoğlu: Osmanlılarda Narh Müessesesi ve 1640 Tarihli Narh Defteri . Enderun kitabevi, İstanbul 1983, p. 72 : Selendi'nin peleng nakışlı seccadesi , quoted from Boz (2016)
  6. ↑ Michael Franses, Robert Pinner: The classical carpets of the 15th to 17th centuries . In: Hali . tape 6 , no. 4 , 1984, pp. 373 .
  7. ^ Wilhelm von Bode: Near Eastern knotted carpets from an older time . 2nd Edition. Hermann Seemann successor, Leipzig 1902, p. 133 : "that [...] the peculiar spherical ornament could also be borrowed from Chinese models: that we have to see in it the emblem of the Buddha's teaching, the chintamani."
  8. ^ Wilhelm von Bode, Ernst Kühnel: Vorderasiatische Knüpfteppiche from old times . 5th edition. Klinkhardt & Biermann, Munich 1985, ISBN 3-7814-0247-9 , pp. 161 : “Completely different origins, on the other hand, neither to be addressed as East Asian nor as typically Persian, is the“ three-ball motif ”used several times, which in the earlier editions of this manual erroneously referred to as the“ Tschintamani ”, emblem of Buddhism. was interpreted. In reality it is a reminder of the legendary panther skin with which the oldest Iranian and Turanian rulers are said to have been clothed [...] "
  9. ↑ Yuka Kadoi: Çintamani. Notes on the Formation of the Turco-Iranian Style . In: Persica . tape 21 , 2007, p. 33-49 . doi : 10.2143 / PERS.21.0.2022785
  10. ↑ White-ground carpets . In: Stefano Ionescu (ed.): The Margarethenkirche in Mediasch . Verduci Editore, Rome 2018, ISBN 978-88-7620-928-4 , p. 115-121 .
  11. ↑ Jürg Rageth: A Selendi Rug: An Addition to the Canon of White-Ground Cintamani Prayer Rugs . In: Hali 98 . May 1998, p. 84-91 .
  12. ↑ Mübahat Kütükoğlu: Osmanlılarda Narh Müessesesi ve 1640 Tarihli Narh Defteri . Enderun kitabevi, İstanbul 1983, p. 178 : Selendi'nin beyaz üzerine karga nakışlı kaliçesi - " Selendi'nin carpets with a crow motif on a white background" , quoted from Boz (2016)
  13. ↑ Levent Boz: White-ground 'Bird' carpets of Selendi and their reflections in European art and lifestyle . In: Universitatea Babeș-Bolyai (ed.): Studia et documenta turcologica . No. 3-4 . Presa Universitară Clujeană, Cluj-Napoca 2016, p. 175-189 .
  14. ↑ White-ground carpets . In: Stefano Ionescu (ed.): The Margarethenkirche in Mediasch . Verduci Editore, Rome 2018, ISBN 978-88-7620-928-4 , p. 120 .
  15. ^ Stefano Ionescu: Antique Ottoman Rugs in Transylvania . 2nd Edition. Verduci Editore, Rome 2005, p. 110 with ill .
  16. ^ Ferenc Batári: Ottoman Turkish carpets. the Collections of the Museum of Applied Arts Budapest . Budapest Museum of Applied Arts, Budapest 1994, p. 32; full-page illustration on p. 124 .
  17. ↑ Levent Boz: White-ground 'Bird' carpets of Selendi and their reflections in European art and lifestyle . In: Universitatea Babeș-Bolyai (ed.): Studia et documenta turcologica . No. 3-4 . Presa Universitară Clujeană, Cluj-Napoca 2016, p. 175-189 .