Oriental carpets a Very Interesting Subject: Turkmen Rugs and Carpets

Turkmen Rugs and Carpets:

I came across this informative explanation regarding popular Turkmen rugs, one of the most interesting topics in Oriental rugs discussions. It was posted on the wonderful rug notes and website of rug scholar Barry O' Connell. As a group we now call them Turkmen Rugs. The old name in common usage was Turkoman Rugs but the trend today is to drop Turkoman rugs in favor of Turkmen rugs in the common usage. Earlier they were called Bukhara or Afghan rugs. We use Turkmen rug because the weavers are Turkmen who speak one of the dialects of the Turkmen language. When in doubt we can categorize people by their "milk" language. If a woman's primary language is the Teke dialect of Turkmen then we call her a Teke Turkmen and if she weaves a rug then it is a Tekke Turkmen Rug. It would be more correct to say Teke Rugs but Tekke rugs is accepted in the rug dealer/collector community. Interestingly the rugs generally fall into groups that correspond to language. This has caused me to come to the conclusion that weaving is an unspoken language.

Source: http://www.spongobongo.com/Turkoman.htm

Khosrow Sobhe
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