Antique Tekke Torba

This Antique Tekke Torba bag face is the handknotted front face of a small nomadic storage bag used for carrying small personal items. It is an example of a weaving artistic expression in a utilitarian piece. This is a decorative bag face has an intricately handknotted pile (the reverse would have likely have been a plain kilim weave). Due to the useful size of these decorative items, on export, the backs of these bags were usually removed and their life began as a small rug. This beautiful madder mellowed tonalities of this tribal piece can be used on the floor, draped over furniture or even as a wall hanging to create a talking piece!

What is a Torba? 

A 'torba' or 'torbah' is a shallow bag that would have hung from the tent structure. This piece is the surviving decorative handknotted pile front of the torba. Different types of bags of different sizes and shapes were all necessary for nomadic life and woven by the women of the tribe. They were used for transportation of small personal items, as well as for clothes, bedding, salt and cooking utensils.

 Items as this were woven to please and not only for utilaritarian nomadic use, but also a product of an individual weaver's culture; using memory, skill and traditional knowledge within these unique concepts in their own tribe's formats for types of purposeful, but also beautiful textiles.

The Tekke Tribe

The Tekke tribe were one of the principal and powerful Turkoman Tribes in the late Nineteenth Century amongst the Ersaris, Salor and Saryk tribes. Their way of life was raising, herding and trading sheep, goats and camels. Turkoman artefacts contain numerous ranges of designsw and motifs and are renowned for harmonious colours and intricate individuality of design and characteristic features. Turkoman weavings survive from the 19th Century. With the completion of the Central Asian Railway in 1888, the Tekke Rugs were the first Turkoman Rugs to be exported in large numbers.

Design and Colours

There are principal features of identifying Tekke Pieces not only in weave and materials, but also the fact that each tribe has distinctive (and sometimes shared) guls, passed down from generation to generation, as well as secondary distinctive motif guls and geometric patterns. 'Gul' means flower and represented as recognisable and repeatable medallion motifs. This torba has two detailed turret guls, as well as geometric multiple borders.  Formats of these types of pieces and rugs would be field guls, secondary guls and multiple borders, all based on geometric patterns. 

This torba bag face has colours of madder red, pinkish terracottas, delightfully mellowed with age, with beige, nut brown and striking dark blue.

Weaving and Construction

This piece is a textile made to serve a particular purpose in a Tekke nomad's life. Because often on the move with animals and pasturing; tribal nomads created foldable, portable, strong, hardwearing (unbreakable) lightweight textiles that were ideal for nomadic life. This torba would have been woven on a horizonatal loom with age-old weaving techniques.

The wool warp threads would run the length of the piece and were the threads to which the wool knots were tied. The wool warps threads strung on the loom were the first steps in the creation of any handknotted artefact. The weft threads were woven across the width of the carpet. They hold the knots in place, serving to bind the knots into a solid foundation. The pile yarn wool which constitutes the pile and patterned is made up of individual knots tying two warp threads together. 

Key Details:

• Country of Origin: Turkestan
• Dimensions: 36 x 115cm / 1'2" x 3'9" ( the width including tassels is 52cm/ 1'9")
• Thickness : 4mm
• Pile: Wool, Handknotted
• Warp: Wool
• Age: Late 19th Century / First quarter of 20th Century
• Condition: Low pile and some small areas of historic moth damage ( images 6, 7, & 8 )