Gul-i-Gul

An Afghan Turkoman Tekke Gul-i-Gul rug, knotted by hand with hand-carded, hand-spun, vegetable-dyed wool, woven by master weavers in northern Afghanistan.

The Tekke were historically the dominant of the major Turkoman tribes of Central Asia, and became renowned for their highly accomplished carpet weaving and distinctive repeating medallion designs. The octagonal medallions are known as guls, from the Persian gol, meaning “flower,” and traditionally served as distinctive emblems within the weaving cultures of the Turkoman tribes of Central Asia. Related geometric medallion forms appear in fifteenth-century Timurid and Anatolian carpet traditions, including the celebrated “Holbein” carpets later depicted in Renaissance paintings, but the surviving evidence is too fragmentary to determine their precise relationship to the Turkoman gul. These bold repeating gul designs have remained among the most recognizable and enduring expressions of Turkoman weaving for centuries.