In an interview with Jan Williams, Morton Feldman described his fascination with ancient
Middle Eastern patterned rugs:
“In older oriental rugs the dyes are made in small amounts and so what happens is that there is
an imperfection throughout the rug of changing colors of these dyes. Most people feel that they
are imperfections. Actually it is the refraction of the light on these small dye batches that makes
the rugs wonderful. I interpreted this as going in and out of tune. There is a name for that in
rugs - it’s called abrash - a change of colors that leads us into pieces like Instruments III [1977]
which was the beginning of my rug idea.”