Customer Reviews

Tribal Rugs: Treasures of the Black Tent

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To begin with, Tribal Rugs: Treasures Of The Black Tent is by design a comprehensive reference work. Dealers and collectors will be well-served by Brian W. MacDonald's exhaustive survey of the carpets of Central Asia. But as one spends time hypnotically absorbed in the patterns of the incredibly intricate weavings presented in these pages, and learns a bit about the tribal cultures of the people who created them, one sees that Tribal Rugs is also a profound portrait of a highly evolved art form. An art form that is not pursued in order to create art. But rather unselfconciously, in a utilitarian way. Because the weaving is always done for practical purposes, to meet the needs of the family as it travels from region to region throughout the year. Which makes the infinite patience and unstinting devotion to aesthetic ideal with which the work is accomplished that much more remarkable. My thought about these rugs, about their visual and emotional impact, is that each depicts a rarefied landscape of uncompromising beauty. A landscape that intrinsically possesses meaning and maybe even sacred qualities (many weavings are in fact uniquely configured as prayer rugs). To study carefully these landscapes reveals a world of otherness that endlessly fascinates, captivates, and ultimately challenges thoroughly perceptual complacency with salubrious result.

Several things struck me about the documentation of this book and since one Doctor has all ready covered a nice section of the material, I will try and cover some items that were striking to me ... such as a history of three thousand years of grazing rights among what are now, the citizens of about seven different countries. Here in Idaho, we have grazing rights to BLM ground which is Federally owned and managed. These grazing rights and some of the wars between sheep men and cattle men are well documented all across the West. They go back a little over one hundred years.

I also found it interesting that experts could tell that a rug came from one area and that it had designs in it that were not supposed to be there and wars and slavery was considered to be a possible answer.

We have experienced this winter 2007-2008 the winter kill of several hundred shepherds and perhaps ten thousand sheep in Afghanistan. Farther NE we have perhaps seen the end of a complete type of cashmere goat and their herders due to excessive amounts of snow. Which brings up an important fact that all goats and sheep both fat tail and short come from the domestication of these wild herds at various times and various places to produce all the known species that we have now. They all walked the Il Ray ... the ancient Tribal Rugs and the grazing rights and the tribes that produced them down through the millenia.