leaf arabesque.”
Bijâr rug (detail) Jason Nazmiyal
Bijov, Bidjov. A town located near Shemakha in the Caucasus. This is a design of nineteenth-century rugs of the Shirvân region which consists of a vertical arrangement of nested bracketing elements. Rugs of this design are the most coarsely woven (averaging 94 symmetric knots per square inch) of Shirvân rugs. Bijov design rugs are also the largest of Shirvân rugs. They are woven on an all-wool foundation. See “Shirvân.”
Bijov rug (detail) Grogan and Company
Bildrev (Norwegian). Early Norwegian tapestries, often portraying biblical scenes.
Bilverdi. A town of Persian Azerbaijan west of Heriz. Rugs of Bilverdi are woven in the Heriz design, with the symmetric knot and single wefts. See “Heriz.”
binding. An edge or selvage treatment for rugs in which edge warps are wrapped with yarn to protect and strengthen them after the rug is woven. Less desirably, machine stitching may be used for this purpose. See “overcasting” and “serging.”
Binding
Biographies. See entries under these names:
Ballard, James Franklin
Beattie, May H.
Benguiat, Vitall
Bigelow, Erastus B.
Bode, Wilhelm von
Dudin, Samul Martynovich
Edwards, A. Cecil
Ellis, Charles Grant
Erdmann, Kurt
Ettinghausen, Richard
Jenkins, Arthur D.
Jones, H. McCoy
Markarian, Richard B.
Martin, F.R.
McMullan, Joseph V.
Morris, William
Moshkova, V.G.
Myers, George Hewitt
Pinner, Robert H.
Pope, Arthur Upham
Schürmann, Ulrich
Tiffany, Louis Comfort
Tuduc, Theodore
Von Bode, Wilhelm
Voysey, Charles
Yerkes, Charles Tyson
bird asmalyks. Rare Tekke asmalyks with a repeated pattern of birds within a lattice of serrated leaves. The field is red and borders are white with a meandering vine motif. See “asmalyk.”
Bird asmalyk motif
Bird asmalyk (Tekke) J. Barry O’Connell
bird head border. A border design in Kurdish and Persian tribal rugs with many variations. This same border is occasionally used as a field repeat.
Bird head border
Bird Ushak. A group of sixteenth and seventeenth-century rugs woven in Ushak, Anatolia. Their common design feature is a repeated arrangement of four leaves or “birds” radiating from a blossom on a white field. The earliest known representation is in a rug in a painting by Hans Mielich done in 1557. These rugs usually have lines of reversing wefts or “lazy lines” on the back.
Bird Ushak motif
Birjand. A city of the Qainat region of eastern Iran. Rugs were woven on a factory basis in Birjand from the beginning of the twentieth century. Most of the rugs produced before World War II were Jufti knotted with poor wearing quality. The Jufti asymmetric knot is used at a density of about 100 knots per square inch on a wool foundation. Older pieces have higher knot densities. Later rugs have a cotton foundation. See “Qainat.”
Birjand rug
birth symbol. A diamond with two in-curving arms at each end. This ancient motif is found in many weavings of Asia and the Near East. It is a common motif in Anatolian kilims.
Birth symbol
bis. See “Bhadohi.”
black. In Near Eastern weavings, this color may be produced by synthetic dyes, by vegetable dyes, or by the use of naturally black wool. As vegetable dyes, oak bark, oak galls, acorn cups, or walnut hulls were used with an iron mordant to produce black or brown. Wool so dyed is subject to etching. Naturally dark wool or dyed wool might be over-dyed with indigo to produce black. See “etching.”
black Baluchi. Refers to Baluchi rugs with a very dark palette. The designs of such rugs are not easily visible except in very bright light.
black light. See “ultra-violet light.”
black Marasalis. Marasali prayer rugs with a black or very dark field. See “Marasali.”
blanket dress. Traditional Navajo dress for women made of two identical blankets sewn at the shoulders and sides. See “Navajo rugs.”
blanket stitch, buttonhole stitch. A stitch using a single strand that loops through itself. This stitch may be used, very closely spaced, to strengthen edges or selvages or it may be used, more widely spaced, at the end of a weaving to prevent wefts from unraveling.
Blanket stitch
blankets, covers, sleeping rugs.
See the following entries:
bar
churga
colcha embroidery
farda
frach
frazada
