The “Memling” gul is one of the most familiar motifs encountered in rugs and textiles. Walter Denny describes it as “…perhaps the most popular of all of the classical Anatolian rug motifs to have survived in Anatolian weaving…”
It is commonly believed that the main ornament of Memling's design carries the symbol of the sun. The multiple repetition of the sun motif in the rug's composition, as well as the stylized floral patterns of the borders, carry the meaning of the perpetuity of life.
The adjective “Memling,” refers to Hans Memling(1430 -1494), a 15th century, German-born, Netherlandish painter who sometimes used rugs in his paintings with this motif in their fields. This kind of gul can be found in Anatolian, Caucasian, Shasavan and Central Asian rugs. In Central Asian carpets, it has local names, while in Caucasian carpets, it is called Moghan, which derives from the name of the historical Mogah region of Artsakh, an area that was under the rule of the Moghants, an Armenian noble family.
Perhaps the oldest rendition of the Memling gul in an existing carpet is estimated to have been woven in the 15th century, the same one in which Memling placed rugs with this design in his paintings.
The wonderful fragment of another Memling rug can be seen at the Konya rug museum. This piece is another of the oldest examples of a Memling gul “in the wool” that we currently have. It is estimated to have been woven in the 16th century in the Canakkale area.
If we include the possible gul created by the negative space usages in the Konya rug museum fragment, there are six different oldest guls to be compared.
The internal instrumentation of the center one of the gul’s is one of the most frequently seen. Inside the red-ground stepped medallion is a multi-color, eight-pointed star form with a white diamond form at its center. This diamond is decorated with a red “dot.” Notice that while the colors of the triangles that make up the star vary, they do not do so in a way that obscures our ability to see the “star” of which they are a part. The look of this center instrumentation is simple and spacious.
The center instrumentation of another, major Memling gul, has four white-ground double ram’s horn devices joined at their base to form a cruciform motif. This motif is embossed with a dark line that is punctuated at its top, bottom, both sides and center by small diamond forms, each with a dot of different color at its center.
It is important to note that for the Memling carpet types woven in Konya, yellow was primarily used as the background color, in contrast to Armenian Memlings, where red and blue dominate the background.
Overall, the Memling style had a pan-Armenian spread, but the majority of the samples were woven in Western Armenia.
Source: Armenian Carpet Art, XVII-XX cc., History Museum of Armenia.
R.John Howe, The “Memling” Gul Motif, The Pieces Brought In TM Symposium Show and Tell, 2010.