Yomut Okbash

An Okbash is a unique type of Turkmen bag designed to contain the tent-poles of a yurt during migration. This mid 19th-Century Okbash was woven by a Yomut Turkmen weaver in western Central Asia. It has been opened for display but when used as a bag would have formed a cylinder with the triangular pendentive pieces joined to form a closure. Eye-dazzling abstract trees are finely drawn in the square field. Few older examples of these important ethnographic weavings have survived and even fewer in such pristine condition. This piece is a woven gem!