VERY EARLY CHINESE RUG
Monograph Number Six in The Mentor Reading Course
Length, nine feet nine inches.
Width, six feet six inches.
Sixteen hand-tied knots to the square inch, double yarns.
It should be, and probably will be, unnecessary to write any words of praise for the wonderful old carpet so well reproduced in this plate. It has all the marks of great and genuine antiquity. It represents the Chinese rug-weaving art at its best, so far as clear concept, perfect simplicity, and balance go, and the marvelous color which distinguishes the highest expression. When this piece came to America, together with the temple carpet shown in [Plate V], it was in a sorry state of disrepair, although but little of the original web was missing. The work of reparation occupied a very considerable period of time, but resulted in bringing back to life and utility one of the most perfect examples of early weaving that have ever been imported.
If praise of the rug is unnecessary, analysis of it is next to impossible, for the good reason that there is nothing much to analyze. In color there are only two shades of tan, one gold, the other brown, and the one shade of very peculiar, misty blue. These, together with the wide band of dark brown around the sides and ends, all softened by age, complete the narrowest color schedule it could well be possible to employ in a rug. The range of design is still more limited. There is nothing but the fret in the central medallion and the single border, and the small medallions and corners, which, while not pretending to actual depiction, even conventionally, are nevertheless doubtless derived from the simple dragon forms so widely used at the remote period when this rug was made. In all this there is nothing complex, nothing pretentious, and yet the whole has a decorative atmosphere, and a completeness, which could not have been more impressive and which a free use of divers patterns could only have impaired.
From the standpoint of composition, particular attention should be paid to this blue. The color printing process has fortunately reproduced it with astonishing fidelity. It is not alone unique among the multitude of wonderful blues in which the old Chinese dyers excelled, but it would be difficult for the most skilful of present day colorists to have selected or devised a shade which would have taken its place in complementing to the shades of gold brown which dominate the entire fabric. In the light of such an accomplishment, it is difficult to believe that the scientific theory of color was worked out by a Frenchman, at so very late a day.
Some importance, finally, attaches to the brown band formed around the outside of the rug. Wide observation of old Chinese rugs reveals the fact that brown, used for this purpose, is an almost unfailing mark of very early origin. As time went on, blue began to supersede it, and through recent centuries the blue band has been well nigh universal; though in some few localities, apparently, brown has been adhered to for this purpose, down to a comparatively late day.
PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION
ILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR, VOL. 4, No. 2, SERIAL No. 102
COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION, INC.