Floral Sprays in Nurata

In  the splendid occasion of the 4th International Congress "The Legacy of Uzbekistan : Mutual Influence of Civilizations and Renaissances", 15 - 18 December 2020 Tashkent, part of the Project "Cultural Legacy of Uzbekistan in the World Collection", and of the publication of a series of albums, an important collection of Central Asian antique textiles was uncovered in Italy - among them a large corpus of present Uzbekistan suzanis, costumes and traditional woven objects.

Alberto Levi is the collector.
Asides reckoning himself a 'hunter and gatherer' in a true archeological perspective to the extent of travelling the world and hunting the best and more often than not hidden preys, he is also an epicure. 

Such attitude permitted him to collect a unique variety of textiles drawn by quality and luxury, and, by the innate inclination towards heritage preservation. 

In the attentive analysis of the Levi's collection suzani designs (addressed in the album essay by this author) some features distinguished as seal of the multifaceted cultural legacy permeating the visual language embroidered on the pieces. 

Here we like to share the short supplement that was presented as a video in the lectures section of the Congress. It consists of an insight into a specific design - the floral spray featured in the Nurata group. 

Levi's Nurata, detail

The author aims to focus on the relationship of this pattern with Indian art.

Bonds with Indian art are grounded on historical evidence. In fact, while history says that a  large community of Indian merchants were operating in Central Asia since the 15th century, textiles studies reveal the great favour for Indian fabrics, epitomised in the Cotton Road, less known, but as important as the Silk 'sister'.  

Importantly, Indian cottons and Kashmir shawls were regularly exchanged in Central Asian markets. Traded for local consumption and international consumers, they have been influential source of imitation and inspiration to the point of creating a sort of cross-pollination of style and design.

The Levi's collection has two such pieces of brilliant beauty.

The floral spray is principal ornament in the Nurata group yet not exclusive, fact proven by this piece from Shahresabz.

Shahresabz suzani with floral sprays, Christie's

It is hard to not recall the myriad floral sprays populating Indian art in the 17th and 18th century, a long period of intense craze not second to the Tulip Era. The similarity is cogent and reasonable.

End of pashmina shawl, 17th c. (in A. Pathak, Pashmina)

Indian gown, 18th c., The York Museum Trust

Flora sprays are indeed typical of Mughal art, although common feature in the Islamic context.

Marble panel from the Taj Mahal

 

Drawing for the decoration of the Taj Mahal, The British Museum

Then, let’s go tracking them in the roots of Mughal art. 

Babur, the founder of the Mughal dynasty was born in Anjian, Uzbekistan. Son of the Emir of Ferghana he raised in a Timurid court. 

Babur in a landscape, Mughal folio 1605-1615, The British Museum

Claiming to descend from both Timur and Chingiz Khan, he decided to revive their imperial traditions. 

First act of kingship, he made gardens built on conquered lands as his forbears did. In the folio below he is supervising the lying of the Garden of Fidelity in his first capital Kabul.

Babur supervising the construction of the Garden of Fidelity in Kabul, 1590, Victoria & Albert Museum

His Central Asian predecessors were actually fond of gardens, a passion inherited from Timur. 

Samarkand had 9 such gardens built under his reign and others paved his tireless moving. They were royal encampments where the Prince held court, gave rest to the army and showed his power. 

Timur adopted the traditional nomadic encampment usually home to the tribe’s festivals and ceremonies. 

Nomadic encampment, China 15th, The Metropolitan Museum

But he adapted the camp to a new Princely Vision. Not more than gentrified camping grounds, they soon became refined gardens via advanced horticulture, architecture and portable structures. 

Royal Reception in a Landscape, late 15th c., The Cleveland Museum

Sprays of flowers abound as seen also in the art of the landscape design. Below, an idyllic landscape replenished with natural recurrent themes: trees, flowers, birds, water, earth and sky.

Court poets of Ghazni, Herat 1444, The Fitzwilliam Museum

It is important to mark that nature has been associated with the feminine element of Spring, Birth and Perennial Life ever since. These are again notions rooted in ancestral nomadic traditions. Not for nothing, Timur used to dedicate his gardens to his wives.

Coming back to Babur, his intention to revive the Timurid splendours produced a real exchange of knowledge and art between India and Central Asia.. Seyyed Mirak, a famous agronomist and garden architect, moved from the last fabulous Timurid capital Herat to work in Agra 1529.

Babur Receiving Envoys, 1590, Indian School, Fineartamerica

One year later he turned to Central Asia and in Bukhara constructed a magnificent garden for ‘Ubeydallah Khan I. His son, Mohammad, in 1559 went from Bukhara to Delhi charged with the construction of Homayun’s tomb. An artistical symbiosis was really occurring between the Central Asian Khanates and the Mughal Empire.

In a short time Mughal art landed at a unique floral style here epitomised in a silk velvet fragment and a silk embroidered cotton panel. 

Silk velvet fragment, knotted carpet, mid 17th c., Victoria and Albert Museum

Silk embroidered cotton panel, 17th/18th ., MFA Boston

Shah Jahan, reportedly the initiator of the style, aiming at a personal imprint in the kingship, sought again inspiration in the Timurid legacy. Promoted royal gardens and moving cities as pomp of power. While Mughal naturalistic depictions truly cope with the influence of European botanical books that were avidly collected at court libraries, they may have been a way of updating the conventional Timurid style.

Floral Study, Mughal folio 1630, The British Library

Period Indian carpets are exquisite example of the art and are rightly called ‘Landscape carpets’. They were meant to replicate real fields of flowers and flowerbeds. The style went viral.

Below, the miniature sports a flowerbed replenished with floral sprays in a princely garden. 

Landscape garden, assemblage, India (Lahore?) mid 17th c., Moshe Tabibnia

A Prince in a garden meeting, Mughal folio 1615-20, Chester Beatty

Finally, I like to address the influence of Kashmir shawl designs. 

Central Asia was well acquainted with Kashmir shawls. The luxury fabric was in fact much sought after in Safavid, Ottoman and Uzbek courts. Akbar introduced Kashmir shawls in the khilat ceremony, bestowing cloth of honour, and the use soon spread across Central Asia to the point that in 19th century Bukhara it is still verified among nobility and officials. 

Regular commercial activities between Kashmir and Central Asia were dynamic till the 19th century - Bukhara the principal entrepot . And, we can safely say that Kashmiri traders contributed to the familiaraization of these designs. Blossoming shrubs in a row ornate many Kashmir shawls in the 17th, 18th and early 19th century complying with the period craze. 

Shah Jahan, Mughal folio, 17th c.

Indian prince,  Mughal floio 1700, San Diego Museum of Art

Again, myriads of floral compositions woven on these clothes were once more available to the ingenious creativity of Uzbek weavers. Here some examples.

Pallakas (end of the long shawl) of a man court sash,  Kashmir 17th-18th c.,  MFA Boston

Long shawl, Kashmir II half of the 17th, The David Collection

Long shawl,  Kashmir 18th, Victoria and Albert Museum

Detail of the above design

Detail, long shawl, Kashmir, 18th, The Tapie Collection 

Detail, long shawl, Kashmir, 18th c

Long shawl, Kashmir, 1790-1800

For comparison, I like to share here the details of the diverse floral sprays in a Nurata suzani conserved in the MAAS, Australia. Principal design a large carnation cluster, then a carnation spray and some fancy designs.

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In this light we can say that the weavers’ enchanting abilities preserved in the floral sprays two main factors of the rich Uzbek identity – the nomadic encampment, seal of the steppe roots, and the royal garden, show of wealth and status.

As tokens for the journey we offer again the pictures of the two Levi's Nurata suzanis. 

The one exudes the pure elegance of the Taj Mahal pietra dura inlays, the other invokes the glorious opulence of Spring and Birth.

     

The Bird and the Standard

Great Collections always present great pieces, usually masterpieces.

Orient Stars is one such collection. The catalogue was published in 1993. 

In the kilim section, curated by the late J. Rageth, there is a small fragment 105 p. 180 captioned:

West Anatolian Kilim Fragment

Ushak region

19th century

76x92 cm

a short description says " ...it is possible to to guess the overall design: the red ground field was covered by several horizontally-placed rows of bird-like shapes, which carried a kind of standard with pendants at the sides on their backs...the possibility that the original kilim had a central medallion can't be discounted".

The section titled Anatolian Kilim is accompanied by a short essay from which this excerpt

"The designs and motifs in Anatolian kilims are deep-rooted and survived almost unchanged until the breakdown of the Anatolian kilim tradition in the 20th century. In the course of the past few years it has become increasingly clear that many designs and motifs on Anatolian flatweaves have an autochtonous origin, which can be traced back almost unchanged over a period of several millennia and can be placed within the context of an ancient religion and mythology. The origin and meaning of many designs is today viewed and defined in terms of an ancient Anatolian goddess cult. In simple terms, this is a religion of rebirth..." (p. 154)

Birds have long populated ancient Eastern and Neareastern religions. They came to gain a decisive place in folk beliefs and traditions. They can relate to rebirth and heavenly realms, messengers between earth and heaven. Goddesses belong with the same vast realm.

Birds belong also with shamanism to which nomadic populations were usually attached, the Anatolian Turks amid them.

Birds are sometimes represented in Anatolian weavings with full body, at times with only a detail (the head with beak mostly). One such depiction is clear in a Orient Stars kilim, 106 p. 181.

Hard to state which bird is, although a long tail and a crest are depicted.

'Central Anatolian Flatweave', second half 19th, 76x182, Orient Stars collection

The most famous Anatolian Bird is in the so called Marby rug

The Marby rug, 15th, National Museum of Stockholm

Anatolian Bird rug, 16th (?) Konya Ethnographic Museum

Birds with standards are not a common image.

However, the design in the fragment at issue can look quite misterious. The small motifs filling the red field are usual in Anatolian kilims, not the main motif. 

Given the high grade of stylisation and abstraction woven designs may go through, they do often appear enigmatic. And, enigmas have since ever entrapped and fascinated man. The most abstruse the most challenging.

The real challenge is to appreciate things for what they are. This is a genuine and lasting appreciation. "All the rest is wind".

After a quiete assimilation of the device,  I nearly forgot the fragment. But things work for us while sleeping.

One day I thought it might be a stylised version of a floral motif. Really not enigmatic or misterious, but I am best attracted to simplicity.

The asymmetrical shape led me to look for a foreign design, a western on the flow of French floral designs seen in 19th century Persian and Caucasian types.

Kuba Seichour floral carpet, detail, 19th, photocr. W. Barron

It was interesting investigating how stylised and abstracted these flowers were in Persian tribal weavings to the point to become else from the model (originally clusters and garlands of roses). 

Afshar floral cluster, Afshar rug, South Persia, 19th ,photocr. Peter Pap

Anatolian weavers were no less inventive, as the workshop rug below shows in the ornament of the red field. Domestic production likely permitted and favored a still heavier distancing from a realistic rendition.

Abdul Mejid I reign (1839-1861) is usually mentioned for the wide introduction of western/French style in Ottoman visual media, although the Ottoman court started to be fascinated with it in the beginning of the 18th century during the reign of Sultan Ahmed III (1703-1730).

Kirshehir rug, second half 19th, photocr. redbubbles

A providential reference was kindly given in a facebook group by a dealer (Ilkay Talu) - the picture of a Ushak kilim offered at Skinner. Nearly identical to the Orient Stars design.

Ushak kilim,  late 19th, Skinner photocr.

And anothe picture was to me decisive, also providentially added by another dealer (Huseyin Arisoy).

It shows a medallion Ushak kilim with a pretty similar floral device. As a rule this late type has floral medallion and corner ornamentation. The dealer, himself from Ushak, confirmed this type of kilim to be a domestic output for domestic use. The  detail speaks loud its affinity with the fragment at issue.

Tiny bouquets are very likely the original intention. Small differences between them are part of the game.

(There are picture colour issues because of the diverse conditions pictures have been taken)

Of this kilim others fragments exist residing in different private collections. From one of them the border appears according with the Skinner piece and the other one.

 Private Collection photocr.

I had a little joy trying to follow the weaver drawing the flowing design with all the difficulty the flatweave technique involves. Lovely decisions she took.

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Orient Stars, A Carpet Collection Hali Publications Ltd 1993