Archaic Motives in Décor of Ingush and Kazakh Felts: Comparative and Contrastive Aspect

Abstract

The following work examines stylistic peculiarities of Ingush and Kazakh felts, offers the parallels of manufacturing technology as well as traditional décor of Ingush and Kazakh original carpets. The aim of the study is to elicit mutual historically contingent stylistic features of Ingush and Kazakh felts arrangement. In the process of the study we used semantic as well as comparative and contrastive analyses aimed on iconologic method and image discrimination theory. The hypothesis of different felt methods, more archaic ornament elements as well as the technology of its creation, are in fact similar in the art of these people, not being in close kinship, finds its endorsement. These facts justify juxtaposition of the cultures of their ancestors in the beginning of Middle ages when Huns – people of Central Asia decent – took up their residence in North Caucasus. Huns, being the representatives of historical and cultural commune of the barren world, possessed similar points of view on life order. In their notion the structure of the world was controlled by Tengri – the head of God’s pantheon. In nomad’s applied arts he was depicted as a rosette. North Caucasus indigenous population (Scythian Sarmatians and Sarmatian Alans) worshipped Kuar the Sun, the notion of whom merged with the image of Tengri and stuck in well-known visual symbols, found in decorations following their world view. The elements of archaic ornament and the manufacturing technologies in accordance with the succession principle in folk arts carried on through centuries. They formed the base of stylistic peculiarities of modern felts among both Ingush and Kazakh people.