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Portraits, Photographs, and Politics inthe Carpet Medium: Iran, the SovietUnion and BeyondVera-Simone Schulza

a Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut, ViaGiuseppe Giusti 44, 50121 Firenze, ItalyPublished online: 03 Oct 2014.

To cite this article: Vera-Simone Schulz (2014) Portraits, Photographs, and Politics in the CarpetMedium: Iran, the Soviet Union and Beyond, Konsthistorisk tidskrift/Journal of Art History, 83:3,244-265, DOI: 10.1080/00233609.2014.942751

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00233609.2014.942751

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Portraits, Photographs, and Politics in the

Carpet Medium: Iran, the Soviet Union and

Beyond

Vera-Simone Schulz

»The finest silk rug I have seen was the onespread before the famous peacock throne inthe audience hall of the Shah, inwoven withpearls.«1 When the envoy of the USA S. G. W.Benjamin arrived in Iran in 1883, he did nottire of describing the objects, paintings, andfurnishing elements in the palaces he visited,nor of commenting on their ceremonial use,for example, how the Shah »seats himself onthe carpet of pearls before the peacockthrone«.2 Carpets were ubiquitous in the royalpalaces of 19th-century Iran, where they didnot only embellish rooms, but also structuredthem by clearly delineating spaces of power,and where they served to visualize anddetermine political and social hierarchies. Atthe court of Husayn Alī Mirzā in Shiraz, thedelegates of the British embassy had to sit»according to rank on nammeds [felts] laidclose to the wall, over the splendid carpet ofthis room,«3 and even at the court of thecrown prince Abbās Mirzā, where the rulesof etiquette were less strict, George Fowlerdescribed the room as »richly carpeted, andnummeds were laid on each side, for thevisitors to range themselves according to theirrank.«4

The space differentiating and honoringfunction of rugs is well known from thepractice of rolling out a red carpet in front

of a head of state or a distinguished guest.5

Historically, this role of carpets marking»forbidden« or privileged territory reachesback to pre- and early Islamic times,6 but itwas also taken up by Western rulers, such as,for example, at the court of Louis XIV.7 InVersailles, a complicated carpet protocol wasfollowed and, as Élisabeth Charlotte d’Or-léans described, »those of the royal familyhave no privileges above the other Dukes,excepting in their seats and the right ofcrossing over the carpet, which is allowed tonone but them.«8

Whereas to date, scholarship has mainlyanalyzed the political role of Oriental carpetscovering the ground, by introducing pictorialrugs with large-scale human figures into thediscussion, this study seeks to show that thepolitical notion of carpets is not onlyrestricted to their use and placement, butrelates also to the design of the actual objectsthemselves. While this has already beenobserved regarding certain motifs like coats-of-arms on Oriental carpets,9 the carpet as amedium for the representation of the humanfigure has been mostly ignored. In the 19thand early 20th century, the reception ofpaintings, lithographs, and specifically photo-graphs led to a high number of experimentswith portraits in the carpet medium,

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particularly in Iran and in the Soviet Union.Rather than only enjoying the privilege ofstepping onto a carpet connoting power, somepersons were actually represented in the centralfield of a rug. Numerous portrait carpets ofrulers are preserved from both regions, a selec-tion of which serves as the basis for this study.

Oriental carpets have long been connectedwith the portrait genre, albeit generally as apictorial element within a painting. Thetradition of studying Oriental carpets inEuropean art, for example, in the portraitpaintings by Lorenzo Lotto, Hans Holbein, orAnthony van Dyck, where rugs coverbenches, tables and floors, is well estab-lished.10 Since the middle ages, painters havebeen intrigued by Oriental rugs, when theysought to explore the boundaries of the use ofperspective, color, and the representation ofdifferent materials in their artworks. Thispaper, however, questions a different process,namely, the specific challenges which rugweavers »faced« when representing portraitson carpets, and the multi-»faceted« andcreative solutions they found. Just like pic-tures or any kind of material objects, carpetshave specific qualities prior to their use asimage carriers which determine their percep-tion, and they relate to and interact withother media.11 The aim of this study is hencethreefold: to interrogate the artistic interme-dial processes when translating portraits ontocarpets, to shed new light on their multipletemporalities, and on the political dimensionsof portrait rugs.

»Rugs with faces«: 19th- and early

20th-century Iran

When thinking of Oriental carpets, motifslike geometrical and vegetal ornament, hunt-ing scenes, paradisiacal gardens, or perhaps

Portuguese ships arriving at the »shore« of acarpet’s central medallion come to mind.Parviz Tanavoli’s seminal analysis of large-scale portraits in the carpet medium fromIran, in contrast, has found few followers.12

One of these so-called »rugs with faces«(qālīchaha-ya sūrati) is a portrait carpet ofRezā Shāh (217 × 143 cm), which was knottedin Iran in the Abadeh area (Fig. 1). Tanavoliidentified the inspirational photograph(Fig. 2), taken when Rezā Khān was still anofficer in the army (1921–1925) and dated it tothese years.13 When compared to the photo-graph, Rezā’s portrait appears mirror-inverted on the carpet and seems to echothe photographic technique of reversingimages.14 However, numerous differences arenotable. The officer’s small black and whitephotograph is monumentalized in the centralfield of the rug and rendered in a kaleido-scopic range of colors. In contrast to theslender figure shown on the photograph,Rezā’s body appears rather clumsy and highlystylized on the carpet. While his figure isseparated from the dark ground in the centralmedallion by a light contour line, his pale facewith angularly, but nonetheless finely wovenfeatures dominates the upper part of the rug.The design and surface of his military uni-form in Western style is represented ingreatest ornamental detail and hence reducesthe contrast between figure and ground.Furthermore, the medal on his chest, hisepaulettes indicating his rank, and the markon his hat take on a floral appearance andthus recall the blossoms that surround him.The weaver paid particular attention to thedifferent materials and chose diverse ways toevoke their visual effects. While the shinysurface of the officer’s polished boots isindicated by large diagonal stripes of red,blue, and white wool, smaller, horizontal

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Fig. 1. Portrait carpet of Rezā Khān, 217 × 143 cm, Abadeh area, Iran, early 20th century. Private collection.

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stripes suggest his metallic saber. The onlysurface, which is neither differentiated by theuse of different colors nor assimilated to thecarpet’s ornamentation, is Rezā’s skin. This iswhy – although the outline of his lower jawand chin clearly takes up the border of thecentral medallion in its diagonal shape – his

face and neck stand out and appear particu-larly »alien« to the carpet.

This solution differs categorically from theone employed by a weaver in Dorokhsh inEastern Iran for a late 19th-century portraitcarpet of Nās

˙ir al-Dīn Shāh, which was also

based on a photograph (Fig. 3), a 19th-centuryIranian »Andy Warhol« in the carpetmedium.15 Here, instead of enlarging theruler’s portrait, we have the impression thatthe original photograph had been »trans-ferred« onto the carpet in its exact formatand size. The artisan tried to compensate forits smallness by using the traditional Iranianrug design of naqsh-e mokarrar (an all-overrepeat pattern), thereby covering the entirerug with portraits of the Shāh.16 On the areaof 222 × 137 cm, the small portraits arepositioned in niches or windows in a grid-like arrangement and repeated 96 times. Theartifact hence negotiates both the qualities ofthe medium of photography with its dupli-cated images and of the carpet mediumconsisting of repetitious motifs in a poten-tially endless structure of warp, weft, andknotted pile. The portraits and the structureof the carpet are in fact entangled since byweaving and knotting the carpet both comeinto existence simultaneously rather than onebeing applied on the other – as a paintingwould have been on a pre-existing pictureplain. Yet, as Tanavoli pointed out, monotonywas carefully avoided by alternately turningthe figure of the Shāh to his left or right andby changing the colors; the use of only threecolors and the contrasts of light and shadowseem to allude to the restricted color range ona black and white photograph.17 While theruler is set against a light red background inthe center, the border shows him on an ivoryground. This way, not only the Shāh’s imagesreceived architectural framing devices with

Fig. 2. Photograph of Rezā Khān, 1921–1925. Privatecollection.

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Fig. 3. Portrait carpet of Nās˙ir al-Dın Shah, 222 × 137 cm, Dorokhsh, Iran, late 19th century. Private collection.

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illusionistic arcades: by changing the border’scolor scheme, the weaver also created a framewithin the carpet.

After photography had been invented inEurope, cameras arrived in Iran as gifts to theShāh, where they were initially used byEuropeans, but soon also by Iranians.18

Nās˙ir al-Dīn Shāh himself showed a keen

interest in the craft and spent much of histime taking photographs, above all portraitsand self-portraits. As had been already com-mon practice with regard to ruler portraits ina variety of media in European and Islamiccourt cultures for centuries,19 also officialphotographs of the Shāh were reproducedand distributed among the government,where they were received as precious giftsand highly honored. According to Tanavoli,this custom was one of the main reasons forthe popularity of portrait carpets of the rulingShāh in the provinces. Since, from a technicalpoint of view, duplicating photographs wasstill immensely difficult, especially in the ruralparts of the country, »one of the easiest waysto make these images accessible was toreproduce them on rugs«,20 – a process,which one is tempted to call Photographieim Zeitalter ihrer geknüpften Reproduzierbar-keit (»photography in the age of knottedreproduction«).

However, the story is not that simple. Fornot only carpet weavers, but also othercraftsmen responded to photography. In the19th century, the ancient technique of tile-work was undergoing a revival, and ceramicrevetments clad buildings such as the dadolining the vestibule of Nās

˙ir al-Dīn Shāh’s

dīvānkhānah in the Gulistan Palace in Teh-ran. Underglaze tiles based on lithographsand photographs were painted in shaded andhatched black or sepia and positioned alongthe walls, such as we see in a tile depicting the

ruler attending a piano recital (Fig. 4).21 Incontrast to the colorful portrait carpets, themonochrome color range of this tile wasclearly intended as a reference to the originalphotograph. And unlike the rugs that incorp-orate the portraits into their medium offlatness the eight-pointed star tile opens upto an illusionistic view of a courtyard filledwith people and dominated by the perspectivedynamics of the strongly aligned lines. Whilethe tile evokes a photograph permanentlyattached to, »merged« with the wall, portraitcarpets were mobile, transportable items. Inboth cases, however, the fragility of theoriginal photographs was avoided throughthe use of less ephemeral media – ceramicwall revetments and bulky carpets. Moreover,both – rugs covering walls and floors as wellas tiles evoking the palace environment intheir decoration – create an intriguing rela-tionship between photography, its receptionin other media, and architectural space.

Tilework had been known since the Achae-menid period as a medium for architecturaldecoration. In fact, equally important to theuse and reception of modern media such asphotography were references back to theglorious pre-Islamic Persian past, predomi-nantly to the Sasanian kingdom (3rd–7thcentury CE). While such references havebeen often stressed for the choice of certainmedia like rock reliefs or of specific motifslike Persepolis or depictions of Sasanianrulers,22 portrait carpets must also be empha-sized in this regard. According to the Arabhistorian and geographer al-Mas’ūdī, thetreasury of the Abbasid caliph al-Muntas

˙ir

(861–862) included a legendary carpet:

The large carpet was edged with medallionsenclosing pictures of men and an inscriptionin Persian – a language I read fluently. Now,to the right of the small prayer rug, I sawthe portrait of a king with a crown on his

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head, shown in the posture of one whospeaks. I read the inscription, which was asfollows: This is the likeness of Shirawaih,murderer of his father, King Parwiz. Hereigned six months. I then noticed a numberof other portraits of kings and to the left ofthe small prayer rug, in the last place, was afigure with above it the following words:Portrait of Yazid ibn al-Walid ibn abd al-Malik, murderer of his cousin Walid ibnYazid ibn Abd al-Malik. He reigned sixmonths.23

This carpet, which as an object gained a»face« through its fame and biography,24

was commonly thought to have been wovenin the Sasanian period and completed in earlyUmayyad times.25 It bore the portraits of

kings, and the ruling caliph, enthroned liter-ally upon it, thus would have appearedsurrounded by his ancestors. Tanavoli haspublished a number of pictorial rugs from19th- and early 20th-century Iran that derivedfrom traditional and newly invented Sasanianimagery.26 Al-Mas’ūdī’s account of a Sasanianportrait carpet indicates that also the mediumof the portrait carpet itself might have beeninterpreted as referring to an ancient era.

As noted, in 19th- and early 20th-centuryIran, none of the photographs was directly»copied« onto the rug; on the contrary, whenthey served as models for portrait carpetsconsisting of warp, weft and knotted pile,

Fig. 4. Tile derived from a photograph of Nās˙ir al-Dın Shah listening to a piano recital. From a frieze in the Gulistan

Palace, Tehran, installed in 1887.

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their size, layout, colors, and design wereconsiderably altered. Moreover, this transla-tion process was not restricted to the relationbetween photography and carpets only, butnumerous other media were involved. Litho-graphs and paintings functioned as sources forpictorial rugs as well,27 and weavers drewadditional inspiration from local wood-blockprinted or painted qalamkar curtains, where thefigures – often in an all-over pattern compar-able to the one on Nās

˙ir al-Dīn Shāh’s portrait

carpet – were already rendered in a textilemedium.28 In fact, the ruler’s likeness appearedin a variety of media, painted on items such asporcelain and pocket watches, and in paintings,rock reliefs, portrait busts, an equestrian statue,and even banknotes – different media that donot only all have their own specific qualitiesprior to their use as image carriers, but whichalso have their own history, temporalities, andsemantic connotations.29

19th- and early 20th-century Persian por-trait carpets bear witness to this highlyexperimental and creative phase regardingthe artistic interaction of various media andthe portrait genre. Furthermore, notions oftime were a particularly significant aspect inthis period, characterized by a complexentanglement of visions of the future, present,and past, in which the »newest form ofrepresentation, i.e. photography«30 played acrucial role. Yet, as we have seen, so too didthe ancient Iranian past.

»As if it were alive«: portrait carpets in

the Soviet Union

Let us now shift attention to another region.In 1925, the first Soviet portrait carpet waswoven in Cheleken, now Chasar, on the shoreof the Caspian Sea in Turkmenistan inCentral Asia, in the newly founded Turkmen

Soviet Socialist Republic (TSSR) (Fig. 5).31

This rug, measuring 100 × 70 cm, representedLenin (Fig. 6).32 The model for the Turkmenweavers was clearly a Russian lithograph ofLenin’s portrait issued after his death in 1924

(Fig. 7), which itself was based on a photo-graph taken in 1920 (Fig. 8). While thelithograph shows Lenin in front of a land-scape, which seems to be burning because ofthe factory smokestacks, and set in a framedecorated with spinning baroque rollwerkornament, both elements are barely recogniz-able in the carpet. The frame was evenreinterpreted and abstracted into traditionalborder decoration known from rugs woven inthis region. The lithograph’s Russian inscrip-tion, however, is clearly legible on the carpet:Lenin umer, no delo ego zhivet (»Lenin died,but his cause lives on«). It corresponds withthe motif of the »burning landscape«, as ifalluding to a phoenix arisen from the ashes.

After his death, Lenin’s images gained anicon-like status,33 and even literally replacedicons in the so-called »Lenin corners«, a termderived from krasnyj ugolok, the icon cornerin Russian houses.34 Lenin also became aprincipal figure in Soviet Central Asia, wherefolktales described him as the immortal sonof the moon and the stars,35 and where, in1927, the newspaper Kyzyl Uzbekistan dis-puted if Lenin could be called a prophet(agreeing, finally, that he could) and what hisposition was in comparison to Jesus andMuhammad.36 In fact, by changing the pat-tern to figurative portraits and by taking thecarpets from the floor and putting them onthe wall, they now resembled political icons,»carpet pictures« framed by traditional borderornaments, a notion, which is enhanced bythe carpet’s traditional role in both Christianand Muslim contexts of indicating a sacredsurface.37

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Fig. 5. Portrait carpet of Lenin, woven by Baili Sharapov and Sapargul’ Sharapova, 100 × 70 cm, Cheleken (Chasar),

Turkmenistan, 1925. National Carpet Museum, Ashgabat.

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However, one quality related to sacredimages (in a textile medium) was notadopted: According to a signature claimingauthorship at the upper end of the Lenin rug,Baili Sharapov and Sapargul’ Sharapova hadwoven it in Cheleken in 1925. The weavers’signature clearly specifies the portrait carpetas a manufactum.38 In the 1930s, when Stalinreplaced Lenin as the most prominent figurein the Soviet Union, his portrait became thefavorite subject for carpets, as we see, forexample, on a pictorial rug in the WolfsonianCollection in Miami dated 1936 (Fig. 8).39

This artifact also bears the signatures of itstwo Turkmen weavers, Durli Gusel’ Annaand Dursun Anna Klytsh, a fact which isparticularly remarkable since a written

account is preserved, in which the formerdescribes the weaving of a Stalin carpet:

Everyday I bend over the frame. Alreadyabout a third of the rug is ready. My elderlyhands have woven many rugs over the lastthirty years, but I have never done anythinglike this. It shines with different colors –azure, tender-white, purple. This is theframe. And above it already transpires thegreen service jacket, the oval of the face…–Stalin. Together with my daughter DursunAnna Klytsh, my always-radiant-with-laughter daughter, I am working on theportrait of the biggest, wisest man – Stalin.We used his portraits and busts to studyevery detail of his face, so that we couldcopy it precisely onto the rug, and so thatthe rug portrait looks as if it were alive.40

Socialist realism had come along with areordering of artistic genres, and portraiture,

Fig. 6. Lithograph of Lenin, 1924. Private collection.Fig. 7. Photograph of Lenin, 1920. Private collection.

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chiefly leader portraits were established at thetop of the hierarchy. As outlined by JanPlamper, the participants of artist unionmeetings discussed the »portrait« or the

»image of the leader« (obraz vozhdia), andhow to represent Lenin and Stalin, questionswhich were further dealt with in journals suchas Iskusstvo [Art] and Sovetskoe iskusstvo

Fig. 8. Portrait carpet of Stalin, woven by Durli Gusel’ Anna and Dursun Anna Klytsh, Turkmenistan, 1936.

Wolfsonian Museum, Miami.

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[Soviet Art].41 Durli’s account was in factpublished in Iskusstvo in 1937, one of manyarticles on Soviet portrait carpets in thisjournal in the 1930s. On the one hand, thefact, that she was given a voice, correspondswith the attention for Central Asian andCaucasian women, who were thought tohave been liberated from male Muslim dom-inance in the Soviet Union.42 They, too, werenow creative masters of their craft, takingpart and contributing to the Empire’s wealthand well-being. On the other hand, these textsshow that rugs depicting Lenin, but moreimportantly Stalin, played a crucial role in thescholarly and artistic discourse at that time.Since the declared aim was to support the artsin all regions of the Soviet Union,43 portraitcarpets (kovry-portrety) were celebrated as themedium with which Turkmen and otherpeople at the margins of the Soviet empirecould contribute to the newly establishedprimary genre: In the periphery of the SovietUnion, they did not excel in painting Stalin’slikeness, they wove it. And even Westerntopoi of portraiture were at play when –through studying Stalin’s face via differentmedia – they created a rug portrait to appear»as if it were alive«.44

As proclaimed in publications of the time,these portrait carpets were »new, national intheir form and socialist in their content«.45

Turkmen weavers such as Durli Gusel’ Annaand Dursun Anna Klytsh were celebrated fortheir national craftsmanship apparent in thetraditional ornaments as well as for masteringthe new challenges related to figurative rep-resentation. Traditional ornamentation onthese rugs was not only tolerated, on thecontrary, it was explicitly welcome,46 andsuccessful and creative combinations of figureand ornament were particularly praised.47

Such portrait carpets were frequently

produced as gifts to be sent to the capital.For example, at the exhibition of Stalin’sbirthday gifts an enormously large pictorialcarpet »from the toiling masses of Azerbai-jan« was on display. Measuring 70 m2 andweighing 167 kg, the gigantic artifact, whichconsisted of yarn of »250 colors and 600

shades«, featured »about 70 pictorial narra-tives and 300 ornamental motifs«.48 Thiscarpet with a portrait of Stalin at centermore than 3.5 m high was celebrated in the1949 Russian newspaper Ogonek as »the mostoutstanding achievement of the people’sapplied art, worthy of the greatness of Stalin’sera, and with no equivalent in the history ofrug weaving in the whole Near East«.49

Nikolai Ssorin-Chaikov and Olga Sosninahave argued that Turkmen portrait carpets»evoked, in the socialist global chronotope,the legacy of the Russian Empire receivingtributary gifts from its Oriental subjects«.50

This interpretation can be supported throughstudying earlier carpet gifts. In fact, neitherthe phenomenon of portrait carpets in gen-eral, nor of those depicting Russian rulers wasnew. After their coronation in 1883, TsarAleksandr III and his wife Maria Feodorovnareceived a portrait rug as a gift from weaversof Azerbaijan in the Caucasus (Fig. 9), aregion which had been part of the RussianEmpire since the beginning of the 1800s.51

Framed by traditional Marasali border design,the royal couple – based on a coloredlithograph – appears in coronation regalia inthe lower part of the central field, whereas,above them, one of the most sacred icons ofthe Russian Orthodox Church, the Yaroslavs-kaya Oranta, is represented. The fields areseparated through an inscription in pseudo-Cyrillic script. While the weavers’ witty andcreative interplay of Christian symbols suchas the crosses, Mary’s stars or the form of the

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halo with traditional motifs in the upper fieldare notable, the Virgin, with her raised arms,resembles an outstretched Muslim praying ona rug.

Bilderflugzeuge and geopoetics: the

flying (portrait) carpet

Durli Gusel’ Anna and Dursun Anna Klytsh’sStalin carpet reveals a highly complex

interaction between figurative and non-figur-ative elements as well (Fig. 8). At first sight,the painting-like composition of the carpet isremarkable: Stalin is represented in the cent-ral field surrounded by a border with aWestern pattern resembling a picture frame.His face, hair, and green jacket are modeledby a careful play of light and shadows whichemphasizes the uneven surface of his wornuniform and the three-dimensionality of his

Fig. 9. Portrait carpet of Tsar Aleksandr III and his wife Maria Feodorovna with a representation of the icon

Yaroslavskaya Oranta, Azerbaijan, after 1883. Private collection.

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body. He seems to stand behind a balustradecovered with a rug featuring intricate tradi-tional ornament. His representation thusrecalls a portrait type which was well knownin Europe and – since the 15th-centuryportrait of the Ottoman Sultan Mehmet IIattributed to Gentile Bellini (Fig. 10) – hadalso been employed to depict Islamic rulers:52

The window or baldachin with a balustradeunderlines the notion of depth in the com-position; it keeps the »sitter» at a respectfuldistance, while the richly decorated carpet ortextile hanging functions as a mark ofdistinction.

The different temporal layers in the carpetare conspicuous. On the one hand, newlyintroduced motifs such as Stalin’s portraitand the border decoration dominate thecomposition. On the other hand, the

traditional Turkmen ornamentation refers toa centuries-long history of meanings of itsown. Third and last, the diagonal multi-colored stripes in the background are remin-iscent of early 20th-century experiments withabstract painting. The gradation of the colorsreaching from the margins to the center fromred, violet, and various shades of blue towhite further accentuates Stalin’s eyes and thedirection of his gaze: the right part of hisforehead and his right eye are the mostilluminated zones of his face. This postulatedclarity of vision, supported by the dynamicsachieved through the diagonal lines alsocorresponds with a trope omnipresent inStalin’s personality cult: Stalin as a repres-entation of the sun or light itself and rays oflight emanating from his figure.53

However, Stalin is not represented in themedium of painting, but on a rug. While thecompartment with traditional Turkmen orna-mentation in the inner field – though wovenand consisting of colored wool – recalls therepresentation of an Oriental carpet in por-trait painting, this effect is counterbalancedby the lower band with Turkmen ornamentsreaching from edge to edge. Together withthe long white fringes, this horizontal com-ponent undermines the illusion of a picture.The over-all composition of the artifact infact creates the visual effect of oscillationbetween picture and rug. In this regard, DurliGusel’ Anna Klytsh’s cited statement becomesclearer: It is not Stalin or his portrait thatshould look »as if it were alive«, but the rugportrait (kovrovyi portret). What at firstglance might have only reminded one ofWestern concepts of portraiture and thelook through Alberti’s window, is in factalso deeply connected to the medium of thecarpet.

Fig. 10. Portrait of Mehmet II, attributed to Gentile

Bellini, 1480. The National Gallery, London.

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In his poem »The Wonderful Carpet«(Chudeznyj Kover, 1949), the poet PlatonVoronko advanced this notion even further.54

Deep in the Carpathian Mountains, Gutsulkais weaving a carpet featuring Stalin’s likeness,while her daughters cannot take their eyes offof him. Both the features of Stalin’s face andthe rug’s vivid colors trigger the girls’ ima-gination; they get the impression of flying onthis carpet across rivers, meadows, even flyingover Moscow’s Red Square. Once the weavingis finished, the Stalin carpet actually takes offand carries both girls around the SovietUnion.

In his famous speech at the Soviet Writers’Congress in 1934, Samuil Marshak had citedthe »flying carpet« (kover samolet) as theperfect choice of material for a »Soviet fairytale« (sovetskaia skazka):

The good thing about the tale of the flyingcarpet is not that a person can fly throughthe air on it. That would just make it somekind of Wunderbuch [book of strangeevents] and no more. The point is that aperson who flies on a carpet has goodreasons to do so. Without a flying carpetyou can’t get to the twenty-seventh kingdomon time, and that’s what he badly needs todo. The carpet, though, lets him get to aplace where no human foot has ever trod, itlets him overtake time itself.55

As Catriona Kelly outlined, the Russianexpression »flying carpet» (kover-samolet)can be also literally understood as »carpetairplane« (in the Stalin years, samolet becamethe new term for airplane which had pre-viously been called aeroplan), and the »tradi-tional motif from folklore is turned into aninstrument of Soviet time and motion à laFord […], invoking colonial exploration,technological progress, and national unity«.56

It is intriguing to consider the girls’ flightacross the Soviet Union on a Stalin carpet inthe context of – what has been called – »the

spatial poetics« of Stalin’s personality cult and»the landscape of Stalinism«.57 After a per-sonal meeting with the party leader in 1933,the artist Evgeny Katsman wrote:

Stalin has enchanted us all. What a colossalman! To me he seems as huge and beautifulas nature. I was on the top of Mount Tupik[sic!] in Dagestan during sunset. The moun-tains radiated like bright gems, I couldn’ttake my eyes off this, and wanted toremember everything for the rest of mylife. Stalin is just like that: I looked at him,wanted to look at him forever and couldn’t.I wanted to remember Stalin and couldn’t.He very much resembles nature – theoceans, the mountains, the forests, theclouds. You wonder and are amazed andfascinated, but you know that this is nature.But Stalin is the peak of nature – Stalin isthe oceans, mountains, forests, clouds,coupled with a powerful mind for theleadership of humanity.58

In the same year, the newspaper Pravdapublished a photograph of the CaucasianMount Kazbek, where 51 combined operatorsand tractor drivers had formed Stalin’s nameon the snow-covered peak with their rows.59

In fact, as Jan Plamper states, »Stalin’s com-ing to power ushered in a toponymicalrevolution. Villages and cities, channels androads, mountains and islands began to bearhis name. Movement through Soviet spacewithout encountering Stalin coordinatesbecame impossible«.60

In Voronko’s poem, Gutsulka’s daughtersthus experience Stalin in multiple ways –through the medium of his portrait on thecarpet, which protects them and, made ofwool, gives them warmth up in the air, as wellas through their flight across the SovietUnion and all the elements of nature thereinbearing his name. The pliable and easilytransportable carpet, once woven and usedby nomadic tribes, recalling the tales of OneThousand and One Nights, has not only

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received a »face«, but an agency of its own.Rather than being only a material imagecarrier (Bildträger), a Warburgian Bilderfahr-zeug or in this case Bilderflugzeug, it is nowitself capable of carrying people, and rug,space and mobility are entangled in a widersense.61

Bringing the threads together

The 19th and early 20th century was theheyday of carpet collecting.62 Oriental rugsthat made their way to the West were used tocover floors, to upholster Russian, European,and Northern American furniture, or theywere hung up on walls as precious collectors’items.63 However, when Europe and the USA»rediscovered» the Oriental carpet in exhibi-tions, the interior, painting, literature, andalso scholarship, the rugs they focused onwere those featuring traditional designs. The»myth of the Oriental carpet« left no roomfor carpets with large-scale representations ofhuman figures, let alone with portraits.

This study sought to draw attention to thehighly active and creative production ofportrait carpets in Iran and in the CentralAsian periphery of the Soviet Union in the19th and early 20th century. Weaversresponded to portraits rendered in differentmedia, among these photography, and experi-mented with different approaches whenrepresenting them on rugs. The representa-tion of portraits and photographs on variouskinds of objects had been common in Eur-ope,64 however, rendering portraits in thecarpet medium was a particularly polyvalentprocess.

On the other hand, Iranian and Sovietportrait carpets can be interpreted in relationto Western tapestries. Tapestries featuringruler portraits had been highly expensive

commissions and had played a distinguishedrole at the various European courts forcenturies, also in Imperial Russia; the politicalsignificance of ruler portraits in the textilemedium was hence well established.65 Just asWestern tapestries relied on preliminary draw-ings, paintings, and cartoons, Iranian and Cent-ral Asian artisans took their inspiration fromvarious media, several of them – such as photo-graphy – newly introduced from the West.

On the other hand, these transfer processesshould not be understood as a mere Wester-nization, nor as a modernization of carpetdesigns. First, the close cooperation of rugweavers and miniature painters in 16th- and17th-century Iran is well known, intermedialprocesses were hence not new regarding thecreation of carpets.66 Furthermore, the ana-lysis of 19th- and early 20th-century Iranianportrait rugs has shown the various temporallayers of these artifacts comprising both refer-ences to the newly introduced medium ofphotography as well as to Iran’s antiquity,especially the Sasanian past. Also, the intro-duction of large-scale portraits did not sup-plant traditional carpet ornaments, andweavers achieved complex results whenexperimenting with figure and ornamentation.

The latter became a crucial aspect in thescholarly and political discourse with regardto portrait carpets in the Soviet Union, aspublications of that time revealed. Here,portrait carpets could not only replace aris-tocratic tapestries, they were also a means toinvolve and engage artists and craftsmen atthe periphery of the Empire in the creation ofa multiethnic and multicultural Soviet visualand material culture. And although Sovietcarpet manufacturers were soon collectivizedand the tribal context was given up,67 certainassociations connected with the medium

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itself, such as the notion of the flying carpet,remained and underwent new interpretations.

In the last decade, more and more pictorialcarpets received worldwide attention: Afghanwar rugs showing repetitious depictions ofairplanes, tanks, machine guns, and artilleryshells within traditional geometric and floralornaments, representing human figures, or airplanes crashing into the Twin Towers;68 aswell as pictorial carpets created by contem-porary artists like Goshka Macuga whonegotiates both the political dimension ofrugs and the relationship between knottedpile carpets and the pixels of digital photo-graphy, or artworks comprising Soviet por-trait carpets like those by Michel Aubry. Thisnew attention to carpets which deviate fromthe traditional »picture« of the Oriental car-pet, gives rise to the hope, that also Iranian,Caucasian, and Soviet portrait carpets willreceive more scholarly consideration.

From May 19 to August 31, 2012, Sovietportrait carpets were on display at the StateMuseum of Political History of Russia in St.

Petersburg in the exhibition Pod Kovrom(»Under the Carpet«).69 The curators’ choiceto exhibit the rugs flying up in the air doesnot only recall different metaphorical, polit-ical, and literary narratives related to themedium of the carpet. It also emphasizes thefact that our encounter with rugs is a spatialone and that it is always connected with thebody. Carpets determine the body’s move-ment through space. However, once theythemselves represent bodies, notably a royalbody or the body of a ruler, the interactionbetween the carpet medium, the representedbody, and the body of the beholder isentwined in highly complex ways and alwaysat risk of becoming unstable.70 Roles mayshift, the beholder may turn into a »betrod-der«, – when the portrait rug returns to thefloor, when it is used as a bathroom mat likea portrait carpet depicting Muammar al-Gaddafi in a photograph taken by C. J.Chivers of a prison camp directed by rebelsin Libya and published in the New YorkTimes in May 2011 (Fig. 11).

Fig. 11. Photograph taken by C.J. Chivers, published in the New York Times in May 2011.

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Acknowledgements

I would like to warmly thank JohannaRosenqvist, Martin Sundberg, Gerhard Wolfand my anonymous reviewer for their valu-able comments and constructive suggestions.My thanks also go to Jessica Richardson andSean Nelson for their thorough and criticalreading of this text.

Endnotes

1. S. G. W. Benjamin, Persia and the Persians, London,1887, p. 426.

2. Benjamin, 1887, p. 199. For the role of carpets asfurnishing elements in 18th- and 19th-century Iran seeHadi Maktabi, »Under the Peacock Throne: Carpets,Felts, and Silks in Persian Painting, 1736–1834«,Muqarnas, No 26, 2009, pp. 317–347.

3. Sir William Ouseley, Travels in Various Countries of theEast. More Particularly Persia, 3 vols., London, 1823, vol.2, p. 12.

4. George Fowler, Three Years in Persia: With TravellingAdventures in Koordistan, London, 1841, p. 317. ThePersian word for felt is spelled variously as nummed,nammed or nemmed by different authors.

5. Costanza Caraffa and Avinoam Shalem, »Hitler’s Carpet:A Tale of One City«, Mitteilungen des KunsthistorischenInstitutes in Florenz, No 55, 2013, pp. 119–143.

6. Caraffa and Shalem, 2013, pp. 126–132; AvinoamShalem, »Forbidden Territory. Early Islamic Audience-Hall Carpets«, Halı, No 99, 1998, pp. 70–77.

7. Wolfgang Brassat, »Monumentaler Rapport des Zere-moniells. Charles Le Brun ›tenture de l’Histoire du Roy«,in Zeremoniell als höfische Ästhetik in Spätmittelalter undFrüher Neuzeit, ed. by Jörg Jochen Berns and ThomasRahn, Tübingen, 1995, p. 364; Alberto Boralevi, »TheCarpets of ›Le Roi Soleil«, Halı, No 6.1, 1983, pp. 38–39;A. Varron, »Der Teppich als Kennzeichen der Macht«,Ciba-Rundschau II, No 21, 1938, pp. 738–740. See alsoEdith Appleton Standen, »A King’s Carpet«, The Metro-politan Museum of Art Bulletin, No 13.9, 1955, pp.257–265.

8. Élisabeth Charlotte d’Orléans, Secret Memoirs of theCourt of Louis XIV and of the Regency Extracted from theGerman Correspondence of the Duchess of Orleans,Mother of the Regent, London, 1824, p. 418.

9. Kurt Erdmann, Seven Hundred Years of Oriental Carpets,Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1970, pp. 207–209.

10. Wilhelm von Bode, Vorderasiatische Knüpfteppiche ausälterer Zeit. Mit Beiträgen von Ernst Kühnel, Leipzig,1914; Kurt Erdmann, Europa und der Orientteppich,Berlin and Mainz, 1962; The Eastern Carpet in the

Western World: From the 15th to the 17th Century,exhibition catalogue, ed. by Donald King and DavidSylvester, London, 1983; Rosamond Mack, »Lotto as aCarpet Connoisseur«, Lorenzo Lotto. Rediscovered Masterof the Renaissance, exhibition catalogue, ed. by DavidAlan Brown, Peter Humfrey, and Mauro Lucco, Wash-ington, 1997, pp. 59–68; Mack, Bazaar to Piazza: IslamicTrade and Italian Art, 1300–1600, Berkeley, 2002, pp.73–93; Maria Ruvoldt, »Sacred to Secular, East to West:The Renaissance Study and Strategies of Display«,Renaissance Studies, No 20.5, 2006, pp. 640–657; MarcoSpallanzani, Oriental Rugs in Renaissance Florence, Flor-ence, 2007.

11. For in-depth discussions of the terms image carrier,media, and intermediality see Hans Belting, An Anthro-pology of Images: Picture, Medium, Body, Princeton,2011; Belting, »Image, Medium, Body: A New Approachto Iconology«, Critical Inquiry, No 31.2, 2005, pp. 302–319; Gottfried Boehm, »Vom Medium zum Bild«, in Bild– Medium – Kunst, ed. by Yvonne Spillmann andGundolf Winter, Munich, 1999, pp. 165–178; JamesElkings, The Domain of Images, Ithaca, 1999; William J.T. Mitchell, Picture Theory: Essays on Verbal and VisualRepresentation, Chicago, 1994.

12. Parviz Tanavoli, Kings, Heroes and Lovers. Pictorial Rugsfrom the Tribes and Villages of Iran, London, 1994;Tanavoli, »A Celebration of the Human Figure«, Halı,No 80, 1995, pp. 88–96. A compelling in-depth study ofan early 20th-century Persian portrait carpet has beenrecently presented by Charles Kurzman, »Weaving Iraninto the Tree of Nations«, International Journal ofMiddle Eastern Studies, No 37, 2005, pp. 137–166.Notable in this respect are also discussions of Jewishfigurative carpets, cf. Anton Felton, Jewish Carpets: AHistory and Guide, Woodbridge, 1997; Felton, »JewishPersian Carpets« Esther’s Children: A Portrait of IranianJews, ed. by Houman Sarshar, Philadelphia, 2002, pp.295–309.

13. Cf. Tanavoli, 1994 (note 12), pp. 174–175 and Tanavoli,»Royal Exposure« Halı, No 80, 1995, pp. 97–101, here p.100. See also Reza Sheikh and Farid Fadaizadeh, »TheMan who Would be King: The Rise of Rezā Khān (1921–25)«, History of Photography, No 37.1, 2013, pp. 99–116.

14. On the medium of photography see, for example,Ordnungen der Sichtbarkeit: Fotografie in Wissenschaft,Kunst und Technologie, ed. by Peter Geimer, Frankfurtam Main, 2002; Geimer, Theorien der Fotografie zurEinführung, Hamburg, 2010; L’évidence photographique:La conception positiviste de la photographie en question,ed. by Herbert Molderings and Gregor Wedekind, Paris,2009; Elizabeth Edwards, Photographs, Objects, Histories:On the Materiality of Images, London, 2004; Lynda Nead,The Haunted Gallery: Painting, Photography, Film, c.1900, New Haven, 2007.

15. Cf. Tanavoli, 1994 (note 12), pp. 158–159, for thephotograph see Tanavoli, 1994, Fig. 26.

16. Cf. Tanavoli, 1995 (note 13), p. 100.

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17. Cf. Tanavoli, 1994 (note 12), p. 158.

18. For the role of photography in Qajar Iran see The FirstHundred Years of Iranian Photography, guest ed. by RezaSheikh and Carmen Pérez González, History of Photo-graphy, No 37.1, 2013 with further literature, particularlyLayla S. Diba, »Qajar Photography and its Relationshipto Iranian Art: A Reassessment«, History of Photography,No 37.1, 2013, pp. 85–98; Ali Behdad, »The Power-FulArt of Qajar Photography: Orientalism and (Self-)Orientalizing in Nineteenth-Century Iran«, IranianStudies, No 34.1–4, 2001, pp. 141–151; Sevruguin and thePersian Image: Photography of Iran, 1870–1930, ed. byFrederick N. Bohrer, Washington, Seattle, 1999, pp. 79–98. Elahe Helbig is preparing a PhD thesis on earlyIranian photography.

19. For European contexts cf., e.g. Louis Marin, Le portraitdu roi, Paris, 1987; Sergio Bertelli, The King’s Body:Sacred Rituals of Power in Medieval and Early ModernEurope, University Park, PA, 2001; Christiane Hille,Visions of the Courtly Body: The Patronage of GeorgeVilliers, First Duke of Buckingham, and the Triumph ofPainting at the Stuart Court, Berlin, 2012; MarciaPointon, »›Surrounded with Brilliants‹: Miniature Por-traits in Eighteenth-Century England«, The Art Bulletin,No 83, 2001, pp. 48–71; The Beautiful and the Damned.The Creation of Identity in Nineteenth Century Photo-graphy, exhibition catalogue, ed. by Peter Hamilton andRoger Hargreave, London, 2001. For ruler portraits inSafavid Iran see Kishwar Rizvi, »The Suggestive Portraitof Shah Abbas: Prayer and Likeness in a SafavidShahnama«, The Art Bulletin, No 94.2, 2012, pp. 226–250; Priscilla Soucek, »The Theory and Practice ofPortraiture in the Persian Tradition«, Muqarnas, No. 17,2000, pp. 97–108; Ernst J. Grube and Eleonor Sims, »TheRepresentations of Shah Abbas I«, in L’arco di fango cherubò la luce alle stelle: Studi in onore di Eugenio Galdieriper il suo settantesimo compleanno, ed. by MicheleBernardini, Lugano, 1995, pp. 177–208. At the Safavidcourt, rulers were also portrayed in the carpet medium,cf. Károly Gombos, »The Esterhazy appliqué Carpet inBudapest«, in Halı, 3.3, 1981, pp. 217–219.

20. Tanavoli, 1995 (note 13), p. 100.

21. Cf. Jennifer M. Scarce, »The Architecture and Decorationof the Gulistan Palace: The Aims and Achievements ofFath Ali Shah (1797–1834) and Nasir al-Din Shah(1848–1896)«, Iranian Studies, No 34.1–4, 2001, pp. 103–116; Scarce, »Ancestral Themes in the Art of Qajar Iran,1785–1925«, in Islamic Art in the 19th Century. Tradi-tion, Innovation, and Eclecticism, ed. by Doris Behrens-Abouseif and Stephen Vernoit, Leiden and Boston, 2006,pp. 231–256, here 242–246; Scarce, Domestic Culture inthe Middle East, Edinburgh, 1996, pp. 54–55.

22. Cf., e.g. J. P. Luft, »The Qajar Rock Reliefs«, IranianStudies, No 34.1/4, 2001, pp. 31–49; Scarce 2006(note 21).

23. Cf. Meadows of Gold, trans. and ed. by Paul Lunde andCaroline Stone, London and New York, 1989, pp.268–269.

24. Igor Kopytoff, »The Cultural Biography of Things:Commoditization as Process«, in The Social Life ofThings. Commodities in Cultural Perspective, ed. by ArjunAppadurai, Cambridge, 1986, pp. 64–91; Avinoam Sha-lem, »Objects as Carriers of Real or Contrived Memoriesin a Cross-Cultural Context. The Case of MedievalDiplomatic Presents«, in Migrating Images. Producing…Reading… Transporting… Translating…, ed. by PetraStegmann and Peter C. Seel, Berlin, 2004, pp. 36–52.

25. As suggested by Arthur U. Pope, A Survey of Persian Art,London and New York, 1939, vol. 6, p. 2277; see alsoShalem, 1998 (note 6), pp. 74–75; Caraffa and Shalem,2013 (note 5), pp. 129–130.

26. Tanavoli, 1994 (note 12), pp. 19–24.

27. Annette Ittig, »Paintings in Carpets. Qajar Roccoco«,Halı, No 27, 1985, p. 35; Jennifer M. Scarce, »The Role ofCarpets within the 19th Century Persian Household«, inHalı, No 6.4, 1984, pp. 394–400: 398.

28. Tanavoli, 1994 (note 12), p. 10 and Tanavoli, 1994, Fig.3; Tanavoli, 1995 (note 13), p. 101.

29. The artistic reception of photographic images, alsophotographic portraits in other media had been alreadycommon in Europe cf. Jean-Michel Braive, »La photo-graphie dans le mouvement artistique actuel«, Connais-sance des arts, No 165, 1965, pp. 88–97; Heinz K.Henisch and Bridget A. Henisch, The Painted Photo-graph, 1839–1914: Origins, Techniques, Aspirations, Uni-versity Park, 1996. For ruler images in Iran in differentmedia, some of them referring to European models seeRoyal Persian Paintings: The Qajar Epoch 1785–1925, ed.by Layla S. Diba and Maryam Ekhtiar, New York, 1999;Luft, 2001 (note 21); Klaus Kreiser, »The EquestrianStatue of the Qajar Ruler Nās

˙ir al-Dīn Shāh in Teheran

(1888)«, in Iran und iranisch geprägte Kulturen. Studienzum 65. Geburtstag von Bert G. Fragner, ed. by MarkusRitter, Ralph Kauz, and Birgitt Hoffmann, Wiesbaden,2008, pp. 389–398, for the banknotes see Kreiser, 2008,p. 392.

30. Behdad, 2001 (note 18), p. 141.

31. There is no elaborate study on Soviet portrait carpets, cf.Adrienne Edgar, »Portrait of Lenin. Carpets and NationalCulture in Soviet Turkmenistan«, in Picturing Russia.Explorations in Visual Culture, ed. by Valerie A. Kivelsonand Joan Neuberger, New Haven, 2008, pp. 181–184;Aygul Ashirova, Stalinismus und Stalin-Kult in Zentra-lasien: Turkmenistan 1924–1953, Stuttgart, 2009, pp. 60–61, 281–283.

32. Edgar, 2008, p. 60, 281; Galina I. Saurova, IskusstvoTurkmenskoj SSR. The Art of Soviet Turkmenia, Lenin-grad, 1972, Fig. 10; Istorija kul’tury sovetskogo Turkme-nistana (1917–1970) [Cultural History of SovietTurkmenistan], ed. by A. Karryev, Ashkhabad, 1975, p.74; Kovry i kovrovye izdelija Turkmenistana [Carpets andCarpet Products of Turkmenistan], ed. by N. Chodzha-muchamedov and N. Dovodov, Ashkhabad, 1983, p. 73.

33. Nina Tumarkin, Lenin Lives! The Lenin Cult in SovietRussia, Cambridge and London, 1997; Tumarkin,

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»Religion, Bolshevism, and the Origins of the LeninCult«, The Russian Review, No 40.1, 1981, pp. 35–46;Berthold Hinz, »›Iljitsch ist tot, aber Lenin lebt‹. Parabelund Parameter«, in Radical Art History. InternationaleAnthologie. Subject: O. K. Werckmeister, ed. by WolfgangKersten, Zurich, 1997, pp. 203–211.

34. See also Kliment Red’ko’s painting Vosstanie (Resurrec-tion), 1925, referring to the icon type Spas v silach(Christ the Redeemer), and Evgenija Petrova, »Fontireligiose nell’arte del Realismo socialista«, in Realismisocialisti. Grande pittura sovietica 1920–1970, exhibitioncatalogue [Rome, Palazzo delle Esposizioni], ed. byMatthew Cullerne Brown and Faina M. Balachovskaja,Milan, 2011, pp. 161–165; Larisa A. Andreeva, Religija ivlast’ v Rossii. Religioznye i kvasireligioznye doktriny kaksposob legitimizacii politicheskoy vlasti v Rossii [Religionand Power in Russia. Religious and Pseudo-ReligiousDoctrines as Method to Legitimate Political Power inRussia], Moscow, 2001.

35. Cf. Otto Unger, Lenin-Märchen: Volksmärchen aus derSowjetunion, Berlin, 1929, pp. 32–34; A. V. Piaskovskii,Lenin v russkoi narodnoi skazke i vostochnoi legende[Lenin in the Russian Folktale and Oriental Legend],Leningrad, 1930; Alexander A. Panchenko, »The Cult ofLenin and ›Soviet Folklore«, Folklorica, No. 10.1, 2005,pp. 18–38; see also John MacKay, »Allegory andAccommodation: Vertov’s Three Songs of Lenin (1934)as a Stalinist Film«, Film History, No 18.4, 2006, pp. 376–391, esp. p. 383.

36. Cf. Ashirova, 2009 (note 31), p. 59. For the time underRussian dominion prior to the Soviet Union see RobertD. Crews, For Prophet and Tsar: Islam and Empire inRussia and Central Asia, Cambridge, MA, 2006.

37. Patimat R. Gamzatova, »The Oriental Carpet in theMaking of Sacred Spaces«, in Ierotopija: Issledovaniesakraln’nych prostranstv, ed. by Aleksej Lidov, Moscow,2004, pp. 177–181.

38. Gerhard Wolf, Schleier und Spiegel: Traditionen desChristusbildes und die Bildkonzepte der Renaissance,Munich, 2002.

39. John E. Bowlt, »Stalin as Isis and Ra: Socialist Realismand the Art of Design«, The Journal of Decorative andPropaganda Arts, No 24, 2002, p. 35–63: 43 and Fig. 7.

40. V. Chepelev, »O novoi tematike v narodnom tvorchestve[On the New Theme in National Heritage]«, Iskusstvo,No 6, 1937, pp. 121–128, here 124–125. The Englishtranslation is cited after Cf. Nikolai Ssorin-Chaikov andOlga Sosnina, »The Faculty of Useless Things: Gifts toSoviet Leaders«, in Personality Cults in Stalinism, ed. byKlaus Heller and Jan Plamper, Göttingen, 2004, pp. 277–300: 289.

41. Jan Plamper, The Stalin Cult: A Study in the Alchemy ofPower, New Haven, 2012, p. 24. See also Victoria E.Bonnell, Iconography of Power: Soviet Political Postersunder Lenin and Stalin, Berkeley, 1997; Red Star overRussia. A Visual History of the Soviet Union from 1917 tothe Death of Stalin. Posters, Photographs and Graphics

from the David King Collection, exhibition catalogue, ed.by David King, London, 2009.

42. Karen Kettering, »Domesticating Uzbeks: Central Asiansin Soviet Decorative Arts of the Twenties and Thirties«,in Colonialism and the Object. Empire, Material Cultureand the Museum, ed. by Tim Barringer and Tom Flynn,London, 1998, pp. 95–110; Adrienne L. Edgar, »Eman-cipation of the Unveiled: Turkmen Women under SovietRule, 1924–29«, The Russian Review, No 62, 2003, pp.132–149; Jörg Baberowski, »Stalinistische Kulturrevolu-tion im sowjetischen Orient«, in Kultur in der GeschichteRusslands. Räume, Medien, Identitäten, Lebenswelten, ed.by Bianka Pietrow-Ennker, Göttingen, 2007, pp.278–293.

43. Cf. Jan Plamper, »Georgian Koba or Soviet ›Father ofPeoples‹? The Stalin Cult and Ethnicity«, in The LeaderCult in Communist Dictatorships. Stalin and the EasternBloc, ed. by Apor Balázs, Basingstoke, New York, 2004,pp. 123–140; Yuri Slezkine, »The USSR as a CommunalApartment, or How a Socialist State Promoted EthnicParticularism«, Slavic Review, No 53.2, 1994, pp.414–452.

44. The topos of lifelikeness of a portraited figure is alsofamiliar in the Islamic world. In the late 16th century, theSafavid poet and painter Sadeqi Beg »claims that somepaintings are so lifelike that all they lack is speech«,Soucek, 2000 (note 19), p. 106.

45. A. Gruzhshi, »O narodnom iskusstve [On the Art of thePeople]«, in Iskusstvo, No 6, 1937, pp. 107–120: 110.

46. See for instance Chepelev’s detailed and ideologicallygrounded explanation on the usefulness of traditionalornament in these works, Chepelev, 1937 (note 40), pp.122–123.

47. Lev M. Levin, Irino S. Leoshkevich, and Suren E.Saruchanov, Khudozhestvennye kovry SSSR [Artistic Rugsof the USSR], Moscow, 1975, p. 53. For the role of»folklore« considered ornament in Central Asian archi-tecture cf. Greg Castillo, »Soviet Orientalism: SocialistRealism and Built Tradition«, Traditional Dwellings andSettlements Review, No 8.2, 1997, pp. 33–47: 38–39.

48. Ssorin-Chaikov and Sosnina, 2004 (note 40), p. 290.Nikolai Ssorin-Chaikov, »On Heterochrony: BirthdayGifts to Stalin, 1949«, Journal of the Royal Anthropolo-gical Institute, No 12, 2006, pp. 355–375; Dary Vozh-diam/Gifts to Soviet Leaders, exhibition catalogue, ed. byNikolai Ssorin-Chaikov, Moscow, 2006.

49. Ogonek 50, 1949, p. 10. The English translation is citedafter Ssorin-Chaikov and Sosnina, 2004 (note 40), pp.290–291.

50. Ogonek 50, 1949, p. 289. For studies of Russian»Orientalisms« cf. Daniel R. Brower and Edward J.Lazzerini, Russia’s Orient: Imperial Borderlands andPeoples, Bloomington, 1997; David Schimmelpfennig vander Oye, Russian Orientalism: Asia in the Russian Mindfrom Peter the Great to the Emigration, New Haven,2010; Vera Tolz, Russia’s Own Orient. The Politics of

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Identity and Oriental Studies in the Late Imperial andEarly Soviet Periods, Oxford, 2011.

51. Cf. Simon Baker, »A Romanov Coronation Rug«, Halı,No 95, 1997, pp. 90–91.

52. Cf. Elizabeth Rodini, »The Sultan’s True Face? GentileBellini, Mehmet II, and the Values of Verisimilitude«, inThe Turk and Islam in the Western Eye, ed. by James G.Harper, Farnham, 2011, pp. 21–40. The type is frequentlyfound in Mughal miniature painting, cf. John Seyller,»Payag«, in Masters of Indian Painting, 2 vols., vol. 1,1100–1650, ed. by Milo C. Beach, Eberhard Fischer, andB. N. Goswamy, Zurich, 2011, p. 332, Fig. 9.

53. Cf. Bowlt, 2002 (note 39).

54. Platon Voronko, Stikhotvoreniya i poemy [Poems andDramatic Poems], Moscow, 1953, pp. 205–206.

55. Samuil Y. Marshak, »Sodoklad«, in Pervyi vsesoiuznyis’ezd sovetskikh pisatelei 1934: stenograficheskii otchet [1stSoviet Writers’ All-Union Meeting 1934: StenographicAccount], Moscow, 1934, pp. 20–38: 27. The Englishtranslation is cited after Catriona Kelly, »Riding theMagic Carpet: Children and Leader Cult in the StalinEra«, Slavonic and East European Journal, No 49.1, 2005,pp. 199–224: 218.

56. Marshak, 1934, pp. 218–219. In contrast, in Englishchildren’s literature, carpets are compared to »expresstrains, only in trains you never can see anything becauseof grown-ups wanting the windows shut; and then theybreathe on them, and it’s like ground glass, and nobodycan see anything« in Edith Nesbit’s 1904 novel ThePhoenix and the Carpet, cf. Flying Carpets, exhibitioncatalogue, ed. by Philippe-Alain Michaud, Rome, 2012,p. 58.

57. Cf. Jan Plamper, »The Spatial Poetics of the PersonalityCult: Circles around Stalin«, in The Landscape ofStalinism: The Art and Ideology of Soviet Space, ed. byEvgeny Dobrenko and Eric Naiman, Washington, 2003,pp. 19–50. For the concept of geopoetics see Susi K.Frank and Magdalena Marszalek (eds.), Geopoetiken:geographische Entwürfe in den mittel- und osteuro-päischen Literaturen, Berlin, 2010.

58. Cited after Plamper, 2003 (note 58), p. 25.

59. Plamper, 2003, Fig. 2.2.

60. Plamper, 2003, pp. 24–25.

61. See the project Art, Space, and Mobility in the Early Agesof Globalization: The Mediterranean, Central Asia, andthe Indian Subcontinent (MeCAIS) 400–1600, directedby Hannah Baader, Avinoam Shalem, and Gerhard Wolfand funded by the Getty Foundation, Los Angeles, whichaddresses also historiographies and narratives of the19th–21st centuries, cf. Gerhard Wolf, »Kunstgeschichte,aber wo? Florentiner Perspektiven auf das Projekt einerGlobal Art History II«, Kritische Berichte, No 40.2, 2012,pp. 60–68.

62. Regarding Iranian and Central Asian carpets see LeonardHelfgott, »Carpet Collecting in Iran, 1873–1883: RobertMurdoch Smith and the Formation of the ModernPersian Carpet Industry«, Muqarnas, No 7, 1990, pp.171–181; Svetlana Gorshenina, The Private Collections ofRussian Turkestan in the Second Half of the 19th andEarly 20th Century, Berlin; 2004, esp. pp. 92–94. For therelationship between Russia and Central Asia at that timesee Seymour Becker, Russia’s Protectorates in CentralAsia: Bukhara and Khiva, 1865–1924, London, 2004; AlexMarshall, The Russian General Staff and Asia: 1800–1917,London, 2006; Daniel Brower, Turkestan and the Fate ofthe Russian Empire, London, 2003.

63. Cf. Rodris Roth, »Oriental Carpet Furniture: A Furnish-ing Fashion in the West in the Late Nineteenth Century«,Studies in the Decorative Arts, No 11.2, 2004, pp. 25–58; G.Lownds, »The Turkoman Carpet as a Furnishing Fabric«,in Turkoman Studies I. Aspects of the Weaving andDecorative Arts of Central Asia, ed. by Robert Pinner andMichael Franses, London, 1980, pp. 96–101. Susan Day,»A connoisseur and a Gentleman. Jules Maciet and theMusée des Arts Décoratifs«, in Halı, 153, 2007, pp.92–101.

64. See note 29.

65. Cf. Wolfgang Brassat, Tapisserien und Politik. Funktio-nen, Kontexte und Rezeption eines repräsentativenMediums, Berlin, 1992.

66. Cf. Carpets and Textiles in the Iranian World 1400–1700.Proceedings of the Conference held at the AshmoleanMuseum on 30–31 August 2003, ed. by Jon Thompson,Daniel Shaffer, and Pirjetta Mildh, Oxford, Genoa, 2010.

67. Although weavers are at times known by namethroughout the history of Soviet carpet weaving, this craftwas also collectivized. The first Carpet Union wasfounded in the TSSR in 1929. In 1933, it comprisedalready 27,000 artisans (weaving both ornamental andfigurative carpets). For the social history of the weavingof portrait carpets, as well as for the cooperation betweenweavers and painters see Istorija, 1975 (note 32), pp. 181–183, 254–255, 345–346, 422–423. See also Adrienne Edgar,»Genealogy, Class, and Tribal Policy in Soviet Turk-menistan, 1924–1934«, Slavic Review, No 60.2, 2001, pp.266–288.

68. Cf. Nigel Lendon, »Beauty and Horror. Identity andConflict in the War Carpets of Afghanistan«, in CrossingCultures: Conflict, Migration and Convergence. TheProceedings of the 32nd International Congress in theHistory of Art, ed. by Jaynie Anderson, Carlton, 2009,pp. 678–683; Enrico Mascelloni, War Rugs. The Night-mare of Modernism, Milan, 2009.

69. http://www.en.polithistory.ru/vistavka/976-za-fasadom-pod-kovrom-za-kulisami?mini=calendar%2F2013-11(30.07.201310:04).

70. For the relationship between image, medium, and bodycf. Belting, 2011 (note 11). For artistic receptions of thecourtly and the royal body see note 18.

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Summary

When thinking of Oriental carpets, motifs likegeometrical and vegetal ornament, huntingscenes, and paradisiacal gardens usually cometo mind. This paper, instead, draws attentionto pictorial rugs featuring large-scale portraitsthat were made in Iran and the Soviet Unionin the 19th and 20th century. By sheddinglight on this hitherto rather neglected groupof artifacts and by interrogating the artisticpractices and challenges of translating por-traits onto carpets, this study will contribute

to discussions of artistic intermedial pro-cesses, multiple temporalities of artifacts, andthe relationship of figure and ornament.Further, it will enhance our understanding ofthe political dimensions of portrait rugs.

Vera-Simone SchulzKunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz –Max-Planck-InstitutVia Giuseppe Giusti 4450121 FirenzeItalyE-mail: vera-simone.schulz@khi.fi.it

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