CHINESE RUGS
CHINESE RUGS
Monograph Number Four in The Mentor Reading Course
Length, eight feet four inches.Width, five feet seven inches.Thirty hand-tied knots to the square inch.
Length, eight feet four inches.Width, five feet seven inches.Thirty hand-tied knots to the square inch.
Length, eight feet four inches.
Width, five feet seven inches.
Thirty hand-tied knots to the square inch.
This is what is known as the “grains of rice” pattern. While the reason for this name is obvious, the design is really derived from the “cash”—the familiar Chinese coin with a square hole in the center. In old rugs, where the color has faded, it is difficult to trace the resemblance, but this derivation is vouched for on good authority. The “cash” is a symbol of good luck. It is customary not to fancy this pattern; but the fact remains that it always sells, like the equally repeating “fish pattern” rugs of Persia. It is almost certain that the reason for this is the simplicity and cheerfulness of rugs of this type. The yellow used in them is usually not of the most attractive shade, verging as it does toward the “lemon” and “pale mustard” quality. Altogether, however, it provides a most agreeable background, usually for some figure rather more ornately drawn but usually neat and clean-cut in its effect, as in this instance.
This rug was made somewhat later thanPlates IandII, and probably after the time of the Emperor Kien Lung. During that reign more or less elaborate use seems to have been made of foliate floral arrangements, drawn like those seen here in the broader border stripe. From using these patterns in small areas, such as borders or in individual bits upon a plain field, was developed the fashion of covering the entire central area with them, almost always in the same colors,—yellow and blush red. The reds were inclined to fade, and as the rugs grew older they attained wonderful delicacy of tone. Where the “grains of rice” pattern is employed there is, in most cases, a certain quantity of red or pink interpolated in some part of the rug, for the obvious purpose of showing up the somewhat cold, thin yellow, which otherwise would be too weak to be attractive. It is noticed here in the main border, the ground of the inner border with fret pattern, and in the scrolls which inclose the five floral medallions.
For some reason, probably racial, there appears in these “rice pattern” rugs far more often than in any type the “barring” of color—that is to say, a change in the ground color, usually to a lighter shade—so as to form a bar or transverse stripe across the field. This is a common practice among the Kurds in western Persia, who believe that it makes for good luck. Further illustration of this irregularity occurs widely throughout Chinese weavings in the seemingly “hit-or-miss” distribution of many colors, principally the blues in the border patterns. This peculiarity is very well shown in the present example, but is confined to the border section. In the medallions of the field every element seems to have been worked out with the greatest regularity and exactitude.
PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATIONILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR, VOL. 4, No. 2, SERIAL No. 102COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION, INC.
PLATE VOLD CHINESE TEMPLE RUG
PLATE V
OLD CHINESE TEMPLE RUG