Old Tekke | 236 x 155 cm | Nr. Z-1205

Old Tekke

Delivery time	2 days
Origin	Turkmenistan
Dimensions	236 cm x 155 cm (= 3.66 m²)
Construction	hand-knotted
Material	Pile: wool (hand-spun, natural dyes) Weft & Warp: wool
knots	800.000
Year of manufacture	1950
Condition	pre-owned, cleaned & partially restored
Edition	one-of-a-kind piece

Origin

The Tekke are the main tribe of the Turkmen. They live in the Republic of Turkmenistan and in Afghanistan. In earlier times the Tekke were nomads and much given to raiding. Today most of them are settled and live peacefully as farmers. After the break-up of the Soviet empire, however, some returned to a nomadic way of life. The majority of the Tekke live in the now independent Republic of Turkmenistan, where they knot rugs in the cities of Ashgabat and Mary and the surrounding areas.

During the communist revolution, numerous Tekke clans migrated to the neighbouring states of Afghanistan and Iran. Others settled in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. Tekke rugs are among the celebrated Turkmen rugs, and their patterns are copied in Pakistan as well. Tekke rugs are also traded as Bukhara rugs. Bukhara (sometimes spelled Bokhara) is an oasis city in Uzbekistan on the former Silk Road. Although no rugs were ever knotted in Bukhara itself, the city gave its name to many Oriental rugs because they were traditionally exported to the West from there. These rugs were in fact knotted by Turkmen tribes such as the Yomud or the Tekke.

This Old Tekke is around 76 years old and a real collector's piece.

Material

The technique used to prepare the materials for the pile of this Old Tekke is more than 200 years old. The wool was dyed with natural dyes and spun by hand. Dyeing with natural or plant dyes is more complicated, more expensive and more time-consuming than dyeing with chemical colours. For a luminous red, for example, you need around one kilo of ground madder root as dyestuff per kilo of wool. For a strong yellow that is not too pale, it takes as much as two kilograms of weld per kilo of wool. Spinning the wool is time-consuming and labour-intensive too. On top of that, fewer and fewer people still know how to spin wool by hand.

But the effort is worth it: dyeing with natural colours allows the high-quality wool to keep its natural oil content. Wool that has been dyed with natural colours and spun by hand creates fascinating, shimmering patterns. The charm of hand-spun wool, with its slight irregularities and natural shades, comes into its own as a contrast in modern interiors, but equally in rooms furnished in a more traditional or country style.

The foundation (weft and warp threads) of this Old Tekke is made of new wool.

Condition

This Old Tekke had admirers before you. It was knotted in around 1950. It has been thoroughly cleaned and is in good, though only partly restored, condition. The fringes could do with a repair. We have not fully restored this Old Tekke, because we feel it has a special charm just as it is. If that is what you would like, we will of course carry on restoring the rug for you. We can bring almost any rug back to near-perfect condition.