Stare at a tribal carpet long enough and something pops. It makes you wonder what those women were thinking. Women were at the forefront of producing these masterpieces from Central Asia and the Caucasus region, mostly for personal use. The men sheared the sheep, goats, or camels for the wool and did the dyeing, and the women carded and spun the wool yarn and wove the designs from their imagination. Their Shamanistic views translated their surroundings into icons and patterns: people, animals, birds, mountains, gardens, flowers… The weavings were either flat kilims (like durries), which have two dimensions – warp and weft, or carpets with a pile, i.e., the third dimension of a vertical knot that creates the soft cushiony surface. The tribes were nomadic and moved as the seasons changed. Their horizontal looms were uprooted and moved with their caravan of belongings. That is probably why a lot of these tribal carpets are not cookie-cutter or straight-edged. They have rustic dings and dongs. I call them “perfectly imperfect.”

These treasures contain symbols left to our interpretation: for example, earrings, which supposedly indicated the desire of a young woman to marry, the snake for wisdom, the paisley for the universe, the star for happiness, and so on… The ancient tribal way of life and weaving traditions are now more or less extinct. Modern tribal carpets are generally designed by professional urban designers and mass-produced in large workshops from formal samples and precision drawings.

These carpets are between 100 and 200 years old and were actively used in the day-to-day lives of the homes and families they belonged to: on the floor, as curtains to divide the tent into living quarters, as beds and blankets, as storage bags for food and clothes, as animal trappings, and so on… Though the weavers are long gone, they have left us their treasures. 

These carpets have been on a journey, and each one has a story to tell…