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Payment | Shipping | Additional Information | Policies ANTIQUE 1880 CAUCASIAN KAZAK N/R (562)
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T is a tribe of nomad Kazaks inhabiting the hills about Nova Bayezid and Lake Goktcha in Erivan. They are an old offshoot of the great hordes whose home is in the Kirghiz steppes and whose kinsmen are scattered over the southern districts of Russia away to the banks of the Don. "Kazak" means virtually a roughrider. It describes the whole race of these restless, roaming, troublesome people, who, in a sense, are born, live, and die in the saddle. It is the original of the name Cossack, which is familiar to all the world. The Kazaks of the Kirghiz steppes weave rugs, but, it is conceded, chiefly for home use. Nearly all the Kazak fabrics, which come to market, are made -- or were originally made -- in the district of Transcaucasia just mentioned. This Kazak colony, which invaded the neighborhood while yet Transcaucasia was reckoned in the Persian domain, is Sunni Mohammedan in faith, for a long time its rugs were made after the models of the North, but of late have begun to show more likeness to the Karabagh type made throughout the surrounding country. This is chiefly the work, not of the Kazaks, but of Armenians, who inhabit the villages in the district, and who, having learned the weaving trade from the shepherds, proceeded to develop a type for themselves, better suited, they thought, to the requirements of the market. It leaned toward the Karabaghs. From Nova Bayezid, w most of the rugs are exchanged for other commodities, the Armenian storekeepers make large shipments from time to time. About seventy-five per cent, of these are of the old-fashioned Kazak order. The remainder are degenerate Kazaks or out and out Karabaghs. Antique Kazak fabrics of the best sort are few now. Occasionally an old, patched, threadbare specimen comes to light to rebuke the latter-day products, which bear the name. Bad dyes have made a mockery of many of the moderns. Great stains of some unstable color, usually magenta, soaked over perhaps one-third of the fabric, tell the sad story of their deterioration. Many a dealer has had these loose-dyed rugs left upon his hands. The older ones have a remarkable softness. They are thick and heavy; the tufts or knots of the pile are longer than those of almost any old Oriental rugs. The peculiar feature is that four threads of the weft are thrown across after every row of knots, as in the Samarkands. In this way the tufts forming the pile are made to overlap each other smoothly instead of standing nearly upright, as do those of most other fabrics. The only saving accomplished by thus burdening the rug with weft-threads is that of time. The original designs are strong and characteristic to a degree -- big, geometrical figures, upon fields of magnificent red or green, which half a century of wear and exposure will scarcely suffice to dim. Throughout the field are distributed detached figures-crosses, particolored diamonds, squares and circles and disproportioned representations of birds, trees, animals and human beings, all in the most archaic drawing and most primitive color. In the borders are many variations of the latch-hook feature, and a reciprocal saw-tooth pattern distinctive of some Caucasian fabrics. This same border often appears in the Persian Sarabands. Persian weavers call it the sechandisih -- "teeth of the rat." The Kazaks are usually finished with a stout selvage at the sides, and at the ends with a shaggy fringe, which may be omitted from one end to allow the web formed from warp and weft to be turned back and hemmed. The most common sizes are from three to six feet wide by five to eight feet long. The whole effect, whether the rug be...
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