Gul (design)
Encyclopedia
Weaving
Weaving is a method of fabric production in which two distinct sets of yarns or threads are interlaced at right angles to form a fabric or cloth. The other methods are knitting, lace making and felting. The longitudinal threads are called the warp and the lateral threads are the weft or filling...
carpets associated with Central
Central Asia
Central Asia is a core region of the Asian continent from the Caspian Sea in the west, China in the east, Afghanistan in the south, and Russia in the north...
and West Asia. They usually feature either twofold rotational symmetry or left/right (and perhaps also up/down) reflection symmetry
Reflection symmetry
Reflection symmetry, reflectional symmetry, line symmetry, mirror symmetry, mirror-image symmetry, or bilateral symmetry is symmetry with respect to reflection. That is, a figure which does not change upon undergoing a reflection has reflectional symmetry.In 2D there is a line of symmetry, in 3D a...
. Some are octagonal, or suggest approximations of octagons. Cloverleaf
Four-leaf clover
The four-leaf clover is an uncommon variation of the common, three-leaved clover. According to tradition, such leaves bring good luck to their finders, especially if found accidentally...
and elephant's-foot motifs constitute a variety of guls.
The Flag of Turkmenistan
Flag of Turkmenistan
The flag of Turkmenistan was adopted on January 24, 2001.It features a green field with a vertical red stripe near the hoist side, containing five carpet guls stacked above two crossed olive branches similar to those on the flag of the United Nations; a white waxing crescent moon, typical of...
features five traditional tribal guls, and many Turkmenistan
Turkmenistan
Turkmenistan , formerly also known as Turkmenia is one of the Turkic states in Central Asia. Until 1991, it was a constituent republic of the Soviet Union, the Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic . Turkmenistan is one of the six independent Turkic states...
sources of carpets emphasize the ethnic Turkmen
Turkmen people
The Turkmen are a Turkic people located primarily in the Central Asian states of Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, and northeastern Iran. They speak the Turkmen language, which is classified as a part of the Western Oghuz branch of the Turkic languages family together with Turkish, Azerbaijani, Qashqai,...
traditions of carpet design and production, and may describe a process of confusion where such work has been imported, especially through Bukhara
Bukhara
Bukhara , from the Soghdian βuxārak , is the capital of the Bukhara Province of Uzbekistan. The nation's fifth-largest city, it has a population of 263,400 . The region around Bukhara has been inhabited for at least five millennia, and the city has existed for half that time...
, Uzbekistan
Uzbekistan
Uzbekistan , officially the Republic of Uzbekistan is a doubly landlocked country in Central Asia and one of the six independent Turkic states. It shares borders with Kazakhstan to the west and to the north, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to the east, and Afghanistan and Turkmenistan to the south....
, and misunderstood as deriving from Uzbekistani culture; the featuring of guls is sometimes described as typical of supposed Bukhara designs.
Western authors used comparison of the "design vocabulary" of tribal guls, reproduced on traditional rugs, in studying the ethnogenesis
Ethnogenesis
Ethnogenesis is the process by which a group of human beings comes to be understood or to understand themselves as ethnically distinct from the wider social landscape from which their grouping emerges...
of Asian peoples.
Further reading
- Louise W. Mackie, Jon Thompson (1980). Turkmen, tribal carpets and traditions. Textile MuseumTextile MuseumThe Textile Museum is a private museum located in the Kalorama neighborhood of Northwest Washington, D.C., USA. The museum was founded by collector George Hewitt Myers in 1925 and is housed in two historic buildings: the Myers family home, designed by John Russell Pope, and an adjacent building...
.