The dye, the tone, the richness, and colour value of a rug was, and still is, an essential characteristic of the weaving of each class and region; and it was formerly not only essential but exclusive, the dyes being often trade secrets or, more truly said, tribe secrets.

Of course every one knows that the colouring of the yarn of the best Oriental rugs is derived only from vegetable or animal dyes, and to this is due their beauty and durability. It may be noted also, in parenthesis, that it is the yarn and not the wool that is dyed. Alas, that modern weavers, Oriental and Occidental, have learned to substitute mineral or aniline dyes! These not only destroy the wool and fade badly, but when the fabric is cleaned or wet by any chance the colours run, and leave their stains and blemishes. Of course, too, they fail to give the richness, depth, and lustre of the good old method. Generally, their manifest crudity bespeaks the poor quality and coarseness of their make. Some vegetable dyes also fade, but they fade only into softer and more pleasing shades, and more delicate and harmonious blendings, as witness, in many antiques, the soft and beautiful tones of pink, salmon, and fawn which come from raw magentas, as the back of the rug will prove. But that magenta dye was of the old school. Modern magentas seem never to fade away gracefully and becomingly. It must be noted, however, while speaking of the dyes used in the fine old rugs and in the best rugs of to-day, that for one or two colours resort was, and is, had to mineral dyes. Many of the best old Turkish specimens have thus suffered in their blacks and browns, and many a museum exhibit is eaten to the warp where these colours occur. It may be well to remember this, as some varieties of Mousul and of Turkish weave, thus worn to the warp in spots, leaving the other figures raised and in relief, are palmed off on the innocent purchaser as rare, “embossed” pieces. Iron pyrites is the mineral from which these black dyes are made, and some Turkish weavers seem to know no vegetable black or brown. In some of the best Persians, Serabends particularly, the green which is used in the borders has the same fault as the Turkish blacks and browns; and if it does not “fade away suddenly like the grass,” at least it leaves the nap “cut down, dried up, and withered.”

[Larger Image]

Plate III.
ANTIQUE KAZAK
From the Collection of Mr. Erickson Perkins
Size: 5.9 x 7.2

The subject of the various dyes might be extended to a separate monograph, for really the whole history of rug making depends upon the dyes used. The day that the aniline, petroleum dyes came into use doomed the perfect making of carpet or rug; and not all the strictest laws of the Medes and Persians—which is to say, the Shah of Persia—have availed to prevent the use of the mineral dyes, and the complete demoralization of modern weaving. You may find even in choice, closely woven, artistic Shirvans and Kabistans of fifteen and twenty years ago some few figures in certain colours which are clearly and manifestly aniline. They are the strong reds and especially the bright orange. And in some modern Kurdistans, which should be free from guile, a few figures betray the same telltale glaring media. Used with a sparing hand, as they are, they do not ruin a rug, but they are none the less a blotch upon its fair repute. The theory is, so far as concerns the new Kurdistans, for instance, that these few mineral dyes are bought by the weavers from some traveller or agent by chance and inadvertently, and without knowledge of their character. Otherwise they would hardly be used for a few figures in a finely woven piece, where all the other dyes are vegetable.

One expert Armenian has a sure test for mineral dyes in his tongue. When in doubt he cuts a bit of wool from the rug, nibbles it a minute or so, and then pronounces his sure verdict. But the test is a delicate one, and the fruit of knowledge is, presumably, bitter.

Again, in speaking of colours and shadings, it may be interesting to know why solid colours so often come in streaks, changing abruptly, for instance, from dark blue to light blue, or dark red to light red. You may have any of several explanations: that the weaver, dipping his wool into the dye, stopped, for any trivial word or interruption, and the wool took on a stronger hue; or, that another hand or one of the women or children took up the work; or, again, that the plant, from which he bruised that particular hue, gave out in his back garden. Any of these reasons may be right. But the more credible one is to believe that the artistic weaver knew how effective is this change of colour, and what a pleasing, changing, varying light and shade it gives to his masterpiece.