LITMIR.BIZ

      Chilkat apron R. John Howe

      Chimayó. A town of New Mexico and a source of rugs and blankets of Navajo design. These are primarily stripes and diamonds.

      China. Rugs of China are considered to include those of Manchu ria, Mongolia, and Xinjiang. Rugs were primarily woven in northern China. A Chinese saddle blanket from Lop Sanpra was dated to about 100 B.C.E. A few pile rugs have been dated to the Ming dynasty. Domestic pile rug production in China was quite small until production for export began in about 1890. Rug-weaving centers predating rug production for export include Ningxia, Baotou, Suiyuan, and the towns of Gansu. See entries under these names.

      Commercial rug production for export began late in the nineteenth century in Beijing and about the turn of the century in Tianjin. Tianjin became the center of large-scale commercial production from about 1910 to 1930 as foreign firms came to dominate the Chinese rug industry. American firms in China included Karagheusin, A. Beshar & Co., Donchian, Avanosian, Kent-Costikyan, Elbrook Inc., Nichols Super Yarn, and Fette-Li. Throughout the early twentieth century, the United States was the largest importer of Chinese rugs. The peak period of rug production and shipment to the United States was 1925. In the early 1930s, rug production was interrupted by the Japanese invasion. Large-scale commercial production was not resumed until the 1960s.

      Chinese rugs use the asymmetric knot with occasional use of the symmetric knot in edges and ends of early examples. Chinese rugs are not finely knotted, varying between 30 and 120 knots per square inch. Some early Chinese rugs have asymmetric knots that are offset on warps or skip warps at curving borders of color changes. See “offset knots” and “packing knots.” Early rugs have no warp offset, while later rugs have offset warps, some with closed backs.

      Contemporary Chinese rugs are woven in cooperative factories. There is consistent quality in these rugs due to the use of steel looms, chrome dyes, and objective production standards. The “line” is the contemporary measure of knot density. See “line.” Woolen carpets are woven in 70, 80, 90, and 120-line qualities. Silk rugs are woven in 120 to 300-line qualities. Pile heights for wool rugs are ⅜, ½, and ⅝ inch. The pile height for silk rugs is ½ inch. The Chinese rug trade designation “Super” means a 90-line rug with ⅝ inch pile height and a closed back.

      See “Buddhist symbols,” “chair covers,” “Ch’ing dynasty,” “closed back,” “Confucian symbols,” “Fette rugs,” “fret rugs,” “k’ang covers,” “line,” “Ming dynasty,” “Nichols,” “open back,” “pillar rug,” “Taoist symbols,” “trigram,” and “yin yang.”

      See the following geographic entries: Baotou, Beijing, Gansu, Guizhou, He-bei, Jehol, Lop Nor, Lop Sanpra, Mongolia, Ningxia, Niya, Shanghai, Shantung, Suiyuan, Tianjin, Xinjiang.

      China

      chinakap, chinikap. A Turkmen cup or bowl case. This may be a bag or a bowl-shaped container with a lid and a pendant strap. It has an overall length of about one foot. Chinakaps are made of pile, embroidered cloth, wood, or leather.

      Chinakap

      Chindi drugget. A drugget made of waste fabric. See “drugget.”

      chiné. A ply of yarns of different, but similar or closely related colors.

      Chinese fret. A repeat pattern consisting of linked swastikas.

      Chinese fret

      Chinese tapestry weave. See “k’o-ssu.”

      Ch’ing dynasty. The Ch’ing or Manchu dynasty governed China from 1644 to 1912. Most of the older surviving pile Chinese carpets date from this period; large-scale rug production was introduced in about 1890. See “Ming dynasty.”

      chinikap. See “chinakap.”

      Chinle. A Navajo reservation area of east central Arizona. From the 1930s, Navajo weavers of the area wove rugs without borders and with horizontal bands in an effort to revive 19th century designs. Colors are earth tones from vegetable and synthetic dyes.

      Chinle Navajo rug Steve Getzwiller

      chintamani, badge of Tamerlane (Turk.). Ottoman court motif of a triangular arrangement of three balls above two cloudbands or waves. A repeat pattern of groups of three balls only may also be termed “chintamani.” Also referred to as the “badge of Tamerlane.” The motif was widely used in Ottoman ceramics and weavings from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century. This motif is probably of Buddhist or Chinese origin.

      Chintamani

      Chintamani Ushak. A rare group of sixteenth and seventeenth-century rugs from Ushak in Anatolia. These rugs have a white ground and an all-over pattern of the chintamani motif, a repeated figure of three balls in a pyramidal arrangement over two wavy lines or cloudbands. See “Ushak.”

      Chiprovtsi carpet. A handmade carpet of Bulgaria, the name is from the town of Chiprovtsi

Скачать книгу