The Border and The Carpet - A Twin Birth

The Niniveh Star Map, 5500 BC (?)

Looking at ancient times and other forms of art than the woven  the 'border' appears as a defining line that embodies a strong symbolical meaning to the space within.

Spirituality probably was one very ancient field where human mind practiced and improved its creative power. Trying to explain the mysteries of Universe led to create 'maps' of the cosmos which man could grasp from the observation of sky and earth.

Celestial bodies and earthly appearances had to be defined and shaped so as to give them a comprehensible function; so as to diminish and partly control uncontrolled fears. Such subtlest process, among others, somehow represents the dawn of human thought so intensely occupied with understanding the lifeworld.

The same need of rationalising applied also to human first activities. Day-life utensils, buildings and roads aroused from practical needs, but were perfectioned by a 'design project', as we'd say nowadays. Many an 'abstract' form derived from a keen observation of reality. Clearly enough, it emerges how important was a 'plan' made by a line giving form to an idea: the line  defines and gives meaning (a shared meaning) to the idea. Form and content are bond forever in a reciprocal function.

Hollow based projectile point from the Al Fayum A Neolithic

As to the issue at case here, that is the border in a carpet, some appropriate examples come to mind; they belong to the field of sacred space and building, a momentous output of human conquest ever. Let's see how this can apply to our topic.

The neo-Sumerian word 'temen' signifies the design of the zigurrat's foundations, a design defining specific spaces and symbolical functions likewise. Similarly, the word 'nemeton' in Celtic tradition and 'temenos' in many Mediterranean ones  refers to a reserved sacred ground outlined by a 'precinct'.

Ziggurat Choga Zanbil, Elamite period, Iran. A temenos wall separates the temple from the urban settlement

Not otherwise, the Persian Achemenid pairi-deiza (i.e. paradise-garden), derived from the ancient scripts of the Avesta as image of royal power and control over the world, indeed is a walled space. Order, richness, water, fruits, beasts and shadow were real symbols of the monarch's status, without which the world would dwell into caos and death. Most interestingly, then, the wall signifies a separation from all such terrifying realities and in turn reveals a conceit of definition.

More than one religion will inherit this archetype, namely the Hebrew with its 'Pardes', the Christian with its 'Paradisum' and the Islamic with its 'Janna' (from the Hebrew word Eden). All these represent the after-death realm like a garden enclosure.

The Enclosed Garden and the Sealed Fountain, XVth-XVIth

It is quite arguable a symbolic meaning to be implied when 'planning' a carpet, be it just protecting from the uncomfortable soil. The protective function would easily implicate the intervention of divine favour. On the other hand, there are carpets specifically conceived for a royal or religious purpose.

In this perspective it is logical to hypothesize border and field to be definitively conceived together, fitting each other as to designs and symbols as well.

For the border may indeed have had the role of 'precinct' wherein a sort of mystery-play is happening, it could have varied meanings. These have not yet received a wide attention, but they can enjoy interesting interpretations on the basis of the field design. In so doing they may complete the whole representation.

A survey of designs woven into carpets testifies them to primarily represent beliefs, religious and ethnic identity, cosmologic images and significant symbols often derived from the observation of earthly flora and fauna, and celestial events. They were basically transformed into a rich dictionary where abstract design and geometry appear aside more naturalistic forms. This issue will present only a limited choice of examples just to give a prospect of the subject. 

Observing the first complete surviving carpet, the so called 'Pazyryk' from the royal burial site on the Altai mountains, possibly woven on an Achaemenid template in the 300 BC circa, it is possible to read one such royal iconography related to an important nomad warrior. Quite interestingly, the outer border depicts repeat squares inscribed with an animal. The added wings to the quadruped indicates a celestial animal, one of numerous populating ancient mythologies. While it is difficult to safely state the meaning of the whole carpet, a representation of kingship is arguable to which the border adds a divine status, protection and favour.

The Pazyryk carpet, Schytian artifact, 300 BC circa, Hermitage

The Pazyryk carpet, detail of the border design

A big gap exists between this first heroic survivor and the first group of rugs which mark a fix point in carpet history. In fact, to look at other well preserved carpets we have to jump to medieval carpets, the so called 'Seljiuk', woven during the first period of Turkic dominion over Iran and Anatolia (11th-14th century).

'Seljuk' carpet, XIIIth

The border had never better expressed its manifest symbolic nature as in this group. Some of them sport the most conceptual design possible: calligraphy (in the case above a bold kufesque type). One design par excellence to carpets. It found great diffusion in Anatolian carpets, 15th-16th century, and in the Persianate world, late 13th-15th century, as seen in illustrated books.

Anatolian carpet, Lotto type, 16th, kufesque border

The wide spread of a new pugnacious religion, Islam, in the Oriental Latitudes was one marking sign in a variety of artifacts. Calligraphy was just developing in the 8th-9th century Islamic courts as the most revered form of art for it 'translated' the divine verb. 

Also in carpets the Koranic word was knotted as a wall around the field so as to justify the artifact's religious piety. It practically became a new 'design' springing into many a variation. Never again such strict and clean meaning was used into borders. 

Usually, the pattern shows a scrolling arrangement of motifs relating to the field.

Some of them can be found also in different visual medium, for designs usually circulated and were appropriated from a medium and then adapted to another.

More usually than not, a pattern is composed by a few elements, or even just one, composed in a design suited to be unfolded through. Various flowers, leaves and vines, trees and birds, geometrical forms (diamond, octagon, eight pointed star) and numerous stylised designs (arabesque amidst them), all of them mostly relate to the ultra mundane reality, i. e. a celestial landscape or cosmological symbols. Animals as well participate in the completion of the allegorical message whether part of a lifeworld, sign of kingship or celestial beings.

The example below shows how an arabesque field may be framed by a landscape design. Both really hint at the same celestial imagery: the garden of paradise populated with any kind of vegetal lushness. Only, the field offers a stylised version by means of the infinite interlacements of arabesques and flowers. In turn, the border presents a more realistic image with trees and blooming shrubs. But we can find also just one design for both border and field, although rarer, like in the second example.

'Vase' carpet, Kirman 17th, Moshe Tabibnia

'Vase' carpet, Kirman, 18th, the Rotschild Collection

Creativity was very busy at times and it is interesting to try to understand how it may have processed images.

Safavid carpet, border fragment, 16th-17th

The fragment above is a good test. It seemingly represents a well known rhetorical figure called 'pars pro toto' where a significant detail hints at the whole of the requested image. In this case the detail may represent an animal head generated from and generating vines.

The animal head, apparently a lion, is often named 'mask' or 'grotesque' yet it evokes the famous narrative of the Talking Tree. Therein human faces, demons and animal heads hang from branches and talk predicting the future.

The Talking Tree was typically elaborated also in stylised versions where interlacing blossoming vines (arabesques) cover a surface while intertwining with others figures. Border arrangements of this design are well known in Mughal India and Safavid Iran despite the rare survivors.

Mughal India, Talking Tree motif, field, late 16th, Qatar Museum

Safavid Iran, Talking Tree motif, border, 16th/17th The Burrell Collection

The Talking Tree easily reminds another as important image, that of the Tree of Life, one more archetype representing the perennial source of life. The added quality of predicting the future clearly hints at the supreme divine knowledge enshrouded therein. The Cosmic Tree speaks therefore of an overarching theme somehow offering a summa of Eastern spirituality.

As to floral arrangements, the meaning can be easily suggested by many a good example. One evident is the typical Rosette and Palmette border as seen in Cairene-Ottoman niche rugs.

Cairene-Ottoma prayer rug, III° quarter of the 16th, The Khalili Collection

The above awesome combination of sorts of flowers and leaves definitely alludes to Janna, the garden of Eden described in Islamic sacred scripts. The design suggests the well know narrative of a garden filled with any delights: the earthly, distilled from human fails, and the heavenly. Really the entire depiction of Eden is abstracted by just flowers. Likewise, the interior walls of period mosques were allover bedecked with floral tiles as if echoed the desired paradise. This  carpet is devoted to the mystic elation of human soul through prayer and contemplation; the designs in field and border offer to the believer the one and only sacred 'precinct' wherein nothing more distracts his pious efforts.

However, it is necessary to remind many carpet designs to be sourced from other visual medium and to have probably underwent several adaptations before arriving to the weaver. She would in turn adapt them via specific technical and visual requirements.

That is to say the original source not to be immediately traceable to modern eye. 

The period viewer probably was aware of current symbols, imagery, narratives and messages conveyed by the artifact. As well, viewer and commissioner were used to a multiple allegorical meaning to the representations. Some can be read as if real riddles flattering one's deciphering ability. Such taste and quest for ingenuity was most sought after in Islamic Persianate courts, more greatly so in the Safavid, following the Timurid fondness of 'Rarity'.

Persian miniature,Humay meets Humayun, Herat 1405-20

Usually, in 15th and 16th century Persian painting, which was leading model for anyone in the Islamic world involved in artistic output, near each and every detail is part of a definite message hinting at multiple allegorical messages.

It would be quite hyperbolic to read carpets with the same lens, yet it must be reminded them to participate in the same cultural milieu.

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Even in the case of carpets woven in distant centres from courtly and finely educated contexts a meaningful relation between the two is apparent.

The main theme of the following Anatolian carpet, the eight pointed star, is repeated in the main border. One such geometric symbol was part of pre-Islamic beliefs here, in fact, superseding the urban pattern of central medallion and four corners.

Aksaray carpet, 17th, Rippon Boswell 2010

The same border is back here, even though the main theme is only superficially different.

Aksaray carpet, second half 17th, Rippon Boswell 2009

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Such connection border-field is apparent in far afield weaving areas too where Islam was not the main religion. A flat weave rug, possibly woven 13th/14th century in eastern regions during the Mongolian Yuan dynasty ruling China, speaks for it.

The correlation is again striking. A paradisiacal landscape, possibly the Buddhist Pure Lands, populated with lotus and birds, is framed by a repeat lotus bud and flanking leaves. The lotus itself in the Buddhist tradition was a sign of purity and perennial life. The scrolling units can be read also as a patterned image of the famous eastern design called Cloud-Collar. The four protruding forms around a circle were originally designed as if trefoils and later lotus buds with leaves. The device conveys the idea of the sacred gate in the sky connecting earth and heaven. Widely distributed in China and Central Asia, it also represents the four directions of the Universe and an emanating source of life. The ancient concept of a gate to heaven, situated in the centre of the sky-dome, at the upper end of the world-axis, is encountered in many Oriental philosophies and beliefs and was given diverse renditions.

This representation, as well as others related to heavenly spheres and invisible concepts, came to receive humanised terrestrial and reduced depictions.

'Floral' carpet, flat weave, Mongolian period, 14th

Cloud collar motif used for a garment, Central Asia 14th-15th

Only one more design, amidst others, will be presented here for its still archaic nature - the key pattern and/or meander.

Chinese royal carpet, XVIth, II half, Palace Museum, Peking

Not really part of the huge corpus of motifs belonging to Oriental rugs as it is restricted to Chinese, it may be, however, a quintessential evidence of the remarkable bond between field and border. Also, it may further enlighten the original idea of it as a sacred precinct.

The key pattern appeared in Chinese art during the the Neolithic period in Machang earth ware vases (2300 - 2000). Yet similar designs may be found at diverse Latitudes in diverse civilisations, one for all the Greek. They are supposed to indicate a steady flowing and motion, not far from the heart-beat; a perennial vital pulse as seen in the sea waves, in the spiralling movements of the celestial bodies, in the continuous seasons' revolving. Under these lens, it is one most conceptual yet realistic design ever achieved, at the opposite pole of the calligraphy derived kufesque, solely conceptual. It received many renditions the youngest the most elaborated. At times it includes a swastika in each and every unit as if it enhances the meaning.

Machang earth ware vase, neolithic era 2300 2000 BC

In the carpet above it is used to frame the image of the supreme eartlhy divinity, namely the dragon/emperor.

Interestingly enough, it is also contained by one more complementing design, the vegetal meander. The latter seems to belong to the naturalistic depiction of the Pure Lands, where nature serves anew a humanised rendition of inconceivable realms. Vegetal forms often befriend 'abstract' ones declaring established metaphors.

In Buddhism the lotus with its spiralling stems and stylised leaves is the epitome of Buddha and nirvana, the highest level of enlightenment lying beyond the Pure Lands. It is not strange, in fact, to see a vegetal meander gracing the sacred mandorla hosting Buddha, amidst other meaningful designs.

 Bezeklik Buddhist Caves, Turpan, 11th, leafed meander

Chinese royal carpet, Lotus design, XVIth, II half, Moshe Tabibnia

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A warning should be added here, although at the end of this short issue. It is quite debatable whether the original meaning of such designs was still understood in distant periods of use, such as those of later carpets, or it was lost in a standardised decorative usage. However, their survival and the efforts to decode them may give back echoes of times otherwise lost. This very fact is one precious message weaving art consigns to us. After all, art does live through the increasing meaning mankind adds to it in the passing time.