Rust-colored with hues of blues, oranges, reds and deep brown splashes, the rug is a classic nomadic work. But it is not stunning. It is captivating.
It is at least 40 years old and from somewhere in the Caucuses. By its design, it appears to be from Azerbaijan, but the small crosses make me think it was made by Christian Armenians. Often, but not always, Christians sewed small crosses into the rugs they made in the Middle East and Caucuses to show their religious allegiances.
The rug attracts me because I am superstitious about rugs themselves. They do good, I believe, when simply sprawled out and allowed to breathe.
But I am not exactly sure what the rug is saying.
And so I ask store owner Mete Multu, who bought the rug by chance on a trip in Istanbul some time ago, and who explains the meaning behind the design that caught his eye too.
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It is, as he explains, a hand-loomed symphony of lore carried on down from a distant time, offering promises of fertility and hopes for good luck. But the world is not always a good place and so there are small hooks everywhere that are meant to keep the evil eye away.
Here, he says, running a hand along the rug’s border is the su yolu, which can be loosely translated from Turkish as running water. There is no life without water, the tradition goes, and travelers should go and come back on their journeys as smoothly as water flows.
Here, he says, is the yin-yang, the symbol that shows the balance between man and woman, and life’s eternal motion. Here is the ram’s horn, which, he says, shows masculinity, man’s power, and a woman’s hope for a strong man. Here is a scorpion meant to protect one in a world of wild animals.
On the two sides of the rug are small figures of animals and men and women, and because the humans are different in size and shape, he thinks they are two families gathered for a wedding, which would make the rug a dowry gift.
This is the secret magic of nomadic rugs that are still made from Turkey eastward through the Caucuses and Central Asia. Some of the time you can decipher their meanings, sometimes you can only guess, and sometimes you let your fantasy lead you.
When Multu saw the rug in Istanbul, carried there by an occasional trader from Azerbaijan, he was drawn by its uniqueness. It has sat, however, for some time now in a lonely corner in his small rug store on Belmont Avenue in Chicago. But Multu, who began learning about such things as a youngster working in Istanbul rug stores, is not worried.
“Every rug’s fate is different,” he calmly explains.
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— Stephen Franklin; [email protected]