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Ghiordes.—About
fifty miles northeast of Smyrna lies the rug making town
of Ghiordes. You may see it written in nearly as many
ways as there are stitches in its famous
fabrics—Gordes, Gilrdiz, Gierdi, Yoordis, Yurdi,
Yordi, and many more. But by whatever name, it is to the
native always to be revered; not so much because in the
popular belief, which cannot be shaken by archaeological
doubts, it is the ancient Gordium, home of the Gordian
knot, by severance of which, in accordance with prophecy,
world-compelling Alexander became master of all Asia, but
because the old Ghiordes rugs have there been woven,
which to the Turk, and many people besides, are the acme
of textile excellence.
From the
limitless field of design and the countless possibilities
of color combination, the weavers of Ghiordes, in other
centuries, wrought out a type which had universal
recognition as their own; a type to the chaste perfection
of which the designers, whether of East or West, have not
been able beneficially to add, and from which only
laziness, haste or greed has since prompted any man to
take aught away. This type found its greatest prevalence
in the prayer carpets, but can still be seen in
floor-coverings, though they have now grown rare.' In the
famous collections of Europe the old Ghiordes bits are
placed side by side with the most prized antiques from
the Persian looms.*
It is an
interesting middle ground which these most renowned of
Anatolian fabrics occupy, in the matter of design. While
eschewing the Persian realism and profusion in floral
patterns, the Ghiordes weavers have attained equal
mastery of synchromatic arrangement. From the deep mass
of solid color, sometimes rich red, canary, or pale
green, but most commonly blue, which forms the arched
central field of the prayer rugs, there is the most
delicate alternation of colors throughout the several
borders, even to the outermost band. In the ground of the
main or middle border stripe, or perhaps in its chief
floral pattern, will be found recurring, in subdued but
still dominant value, the central blue. In the inner
guard stripe, next to the central field, the blue is
almost unnoticeable, giving place to red or yellow, the
alternating color. In the outer one it is stronger,
though not sufficiently prominent to diminish the value
of the blue in the broad main stripe. Where the
prevailing color is red or the pale yellow frequent in
all Asia Minor prayer rugs (though most common in the
Kulahs), the balance is just as skillfully maintained. To
aid in this adjustment of color-balances the daintiest
tints of other colors are used, pale Nile green and the
paler yellow, which serve the lighting-place of white,
but leave softness instead of a glare. Where particularly
delicate color tone is required, cotton is sometimes used
in place of wool for the small white figures.
The
patterns used in the Ghiordes border ornament are
singularly adapted to this skilful distribution of color.
They are chiefly floral, and so insure softness, but the
flower forms, instead of presenting the broad
conventional surfaces customary in the Assyrian patterns,
or the severe angular indented style of the Caucasians,
consist of finely broken leaves and blossoms, which
assist in the production of the most minute color areas.
While not harshly geometrical, they are quasi-rectilinear
and so drawn as to lend themselves to regular
arrangement. There are in each spray one blossom and two
leaves, two blossoms and one leaf, or three blossoms.
These are arranged within an imaginary square, which,
repeated many times, forms the main border stripe. One
corner of the square is occupied by each leaf or blossom,
the remaining corner by the base of the stem and a few
tiny leaves which put out from it. The fine color balance
between the leaves and flowers on each branch is
distinctly noticeable in all the old examples. The border
stripe is virtually made up of these squares, which are
so arranged that the stems of the spray point alternately
inward and outward. Thus, in many pieces, the succession
of stems produces the effect of undulation, without
resort to the conventional vine which is the foundation
of the whole Persian system. The only pronounced trace of
this is in the narrow tertiary stripes which separate the
borders proper. These carry a central wave line, or thin
ribbon, and can be found in the majority of Ghiordes fabrics.
In some Ghiordes
rugs the main border is made up of a pattern which at
first glance suggests a comb. This, examination will
show, is also a leaf form. There is sometimes substituted
for the main border stripe, with its rich floral
decoration, a series of narrow stripes, alternately very
dark and very light—almost black and white. This
feature, which is carried to an even greater extreme in
the antique rugs of Kulah than in those of Ghiordes, lends
a decided brilliancy of effect, but interferes somewhat
with the fine color adjustment.
In the
spandrels over the arch of the prayer rugs there is a
repetition of the pear patterns or some variation of the
characteristic trifoliate border design, still arranged
in rows, and usually in an emphatic shade of the
alternating color. The entire oblong is topped by a
horizontal panel in which the principal color is even
more pronounced than in the border stripe. The patterns
in this panel and in a second panel nearly always put in
underneath the field, may be eccentric Anatolian floral
forms, but more frequently appears some phase of the old
symbolism, such, for example, as the swastika.
The niche
in the Ghiordes prayer rugs has a distinctive form. It is
tall. The angles at the base of the arch are frequently
broken ; the apex of the arch, instead of running to an
acute point, is also broken very near the top, so that
its angle is obtuse. In many specimens the tree of life
pattern, almost omnipresent in prayer rugs, is without
trunk, and consists merely of protruding floral branches,
drawn after the manner of the flower designs in the
borders and spandrels.
A feature
peculiar to some of the best of these prayer rugs is that
the fringe on the upper end, instead of being the
customary finishing of the ends of the warp, is a
separate affair, usually of silk, sewn fast, and reaching
down each side of the rug for the space of a foot or
more. The weft is sometimes cotton, and the finishing of
the sides often an extra selvage of silk in pale color
and of the finest weaving. So much for the antique Ghiordes.
It cannot be mistaken, except for the product of the
neighboring city of Kulah, and once seen at its best will
scarcely be forgotten.
As for the
modern Ghiordes, it marks the maximum of change in
Turkish rugs, as the Feraghan does in Persia; but the
Feraghan has been loyal to its antique design, while the Ghiordes
has not. The modern fabric is of infinitely coarser
texture and astounding color. The old vegetable tingents
are little used save in the finer grades. Even when the
dyes are vegetable products they are mordanted by
chemical methods, and the old formulae for preparing and
fixing them seem to have been lost.
There is
no special characteristic in the modern Ghiordes by which
they can be distinguished from other Smyrna carpets,
except that for the sake of economy a cotton thread is
used, even in the best of them—Hamidiehs,
Sultaniehs, Osmaniehs—for weft.1
The better
grades are known by the greater number of knots contained
in the square inch. The lowest have twenty and the
highest about seventy-five. All that these big moderns
retain from the old Ghiordes is the general border
arrangement, and the small undulating stripe referred to
in the description of the antiques. That is found, in
some shape, in all the latter-day fabrics except the fantaisie
rugs. For the rest, the fine patterns so delicately
wrought in the old prayer rugs are abandoned for great
and garish ones in the new carpets. "Big"
colors prevail. There is no limit to them. Harsh reds,
greens, terra cottas are common, and all manner of
figures are used to fill the vacant space. Frequently
there is a gigantic medallion in the centre, in red,
green, or some other heavy color. The remainder of the
field is filled in with all sorts of disjunct figures, a
reversion, unprejudiced critics would say, to the
barbarian tendency found in Kazaks, Turkmen, and the
rough products of Mosul and Southern Anatolia. The pile
of the great carpets varies in length from an inch
downward. The Ghiordes weaver of a century ago would have
laughed at these as monstrosities; to-day they are sold
by the ship load. The big firms who make the farmaish have
in Ghiordes, as in other large factory towns, expert men
whose business it is to establish the scale of the
patterns. They weave small sections of rugs, which are
given to the rank and file to work by.
John Kimberly Mumford's Oriental
rugs, 4th Edition, Scribner, 1921
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