EAST TURKESTAN, EARLY 19TH CENTURY

The tomato-red field is tightly packed with three ascending columns of octagonal coffered-guls each centred with a small chrysanthemum flower from which stem four radiating kotchak, or ram's horns, positioned on the diagonal. Hans Bidder was of the opinion that the design draws close parallels with the coffered-guls of the Turkman tribes who carried the design west where it was later used in the south western Caucasus by the Tatar Kazaks, (H.Bidder, Carpets from Eastern Turkestan, Tübingen, 1964, pp.61-64). The kotchak design, whose name derives from the Turkish word koç for the male sheep, is widely considered to symbolise male virility, mirroring the form of the horns of a ram.