Chaudor carpet

      floor covering handmade by the Chaudor (Chodor) Turkmen. Usually, they are made either in carpet size or as bag faces (the fronts of bags used for storage in tents or for baggage on camels). They are characterized by their colouring, which ranges from plum through violet-brown shades to chestnut, and by their gul, or major design motif, an oval with flattened and delicately stepped sides.

      In the carpets this gul occurs in diagonal rows, alternated with rows of a similar figure in a contrasting colour, within a fine diamond network of thin stems that connect tiny rosettes. In the bag faces, the demi-guls that appear may contain a pair of block-bodied birds facing a conventionalized tree. The alternate, or secondary, figure varies widely from bag face to bag face, and the network of stems is disconnected. Chaudors are generally asymmetrically knotted, and there is often cotton used in the weft.

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