There can be nothing more artistic, there is nothing more seductive than these old Asiatic hand-paintings. I am drawn and fascinated by their weird beauty. What charms do they not reveal! what multiplicity yet harmony of hue and design! Though not unfrequently repeating themselves in the same piece, color and design never tire. They have their recurrent beat and rhythm, like the harmonious cadence of the Pantoum. This large Afghan rug, for instance, mellow with use and time, the general tone of which resembles that of a zircon, is composed of innumerable shades of red, so many shades I can scarcely count them, one shade melting into another shade—shades of shades—till the eye renounces the task of pursuit. When examined closely, I find even magenta has been employed by the craftsman, to become in his hands a medium of beauty. A European produces a stiff-set pattern, the Oriental a maze of which one never tires. There is always an unsuspected figure or color to reveal itself, an oddity to suddenly appear, new lights and new shadows.
In coloring, some of the Afghans touch closely upon the Bokharas, though the former are less closely woven, but are generally less set, and more pleasing in design. As a class, I think the Bokharas are overestimated, their usual lack of borders or indistinct bordering giving them an unfinished look, despite their fineness of texture and the gloss of their terra-cotta shades. My large thick blue Bokhara, however, is a striking departure from the type, and I never tire of admiring its artistic frame and its kaleidoscopic tints. The larger red Bokharas, where the pattern is fine, the texture thin and silky, and the rug straight, are very rich and handsome used as full single portières. But a rug when hung, or used as a portière, must be something entirely out of the ordinary to be in keeping, rugs in all such cases virtually competing with and taking the place of old tapestries. The substitute, therefore, should afford equal delight to the eye. I turn this closely woven, heavy Shiraz, with the nap running toward the light, and its forest of fluctuant palm leaves is blue. I spread it in the reverse direction to see its color change like a tourmaline, and the field become resilient with soft rich greens. Dusty, soiled, and dingy when I first saw it unrolled from the bale, it is now a gem, alive to every change of light and shade. Time has subdued its original strong colors. These delicate gleams of buff that dance upon the border were once a pronounced brown-crimson, while the original yellows of some of the figures have softened to pale primrose. Its blues and greens are alone unfaded, though refined by age. The artist painted better than he knew; or did he designedly leave the finishing touches to the master-hand of Time?
How strange this patch of shadow and yonder gleam of light in this ancient Tiflis, the shadow shifting to light and the light darkening to shadow, as I reverse my position. The cunning designer has suddenly reversed the nap in the center, and hence its puzzling changes. I marvel who has knelt upon these Conia prayers, in whose glowing centers four shades of blue and four shades of red are fused so imperceptibly you may scarcely tell where one shade ends and another begins—
The mossy marbles rest
On the knees that they have pressed
In their bloom.
Tender tones of olive, yellow, and blue lurk in some of the old Coulas, and suave tints of peach-blow and of rose gleam in the patterns of the rarer Kermans. Generally speaking, the Coulas possess little claim to distinction. But the finer old examples are a marked exception, many resembling the Yourdes prayers, while some are as velvety and intricate in design as the old Meccas. My most admired Coula (4 × 5) in its pattern and coloring might have been copied from an ancient cathedral window.
This yellow Daghestan, coined four-score years ago, is a veritable field of the cloth of gold. There are also the precious old Persian Sennas, with a diamond flashing in the center, and a certain weave of Anatolians with a bloom upon them like that of a ripe plum, so velvety one wants to stroke them just for the pleasure of the caress. When viewed against the nap, they look almost black, the colors hidden by the heavy fleece till revealed by another angle of view. What strange conceits, what fine-spun webs of tracery, what fillets, tangles, and tessellations of color do they not disclose!
The command in the Khoran prohibiting its followers from reproducing the image of living things has not been without its pronounced advantage. It has served to develop the infinite beauty of geometrical design. Color-study no edict of Mohammed could banish; it is a sixth sense reflected from the sky and atmosphere—a priceless gift of Allah! There has long been wanting a well-defined scale to describe and place the different shades intelligibly, just as there exists a standard of weights and measures comprehensible by all. Artists have one set of terms, shopmen and milliners another; the average person can not define a shade. Who can place the hues of a sunset sky? There needs to be a color-congress to form a closer chromatic scale, and the task belongs by right to the Orientals.
As a class, the Kazaks are not as desirable as many other makes, design and colorings frequently being so obtrusive, and the weave usually being marked by coarseness. Yet some Kazaks there are of remarkable beauty. My best examples of Kazak art are done in cardinal and old gold. The one is an antique, 6 × 7, thin and finely woven, the ground-work in three shades of red, with the “tree pattern” raised in black upon the field, and a storm of white flakes scattered over it. The other is a very old piece of nearly similar size, in perfect preservation, so heavy that to lift it is a task. Its luster is marvelous. The pattern is one of the most admired of all the Kazak patterns when the colors are happily employed, consisting of squares within squares or octagons variously dispersed upon the field, the largest figure in the center. The colors consist simply of four shades of yellow, the exquisite play of light and shade produced by the glossy texture of the wool employed and the frequent shiftings of the nap heightening the effect. It is my Asian Diaz, and my ship contained it among her precious stores.