Glorious paintings under our feet:

The Persian carpet story

Maryam Ala Amjadi

Nothing enhances human talent like beauty. And the perception of that beauty is primarily earned by engaging our physical senses, by paying attention to details and cherishing the subtleties, by responding to pleasure and harmony as it is synchronized to the capacity of our individually experienced hearts and minds and then perhaps moderated through our communal perception of what we believe to be ‘beauty’.

We cannot be passive and claim that we are capable of perceiving splendor, for we can only create beauty by being a part of it. Beauty is like a circle of energy. When we contribute to it, we can always be sure that this circle will end where it once began and reward us by returning to us at that point. Moreover, beauty when integrated into the space we occupy, colors the ambiance with a sense of hope, a hope to return to that place, to get back to the structure we may dare to call “home”. And of course, there is a touch of curiosity, a sense of wonder about its durability, perhaps even a sense of fear of losing it. Nevertheless, beauty and harmony always manage to award the sagacity of safety and calm to the beholder as they seem to respond to a sense of familiarity within us.

Persian carpets, renowned worldwide for their beautiful and artistic designs, do indeed rise to and sometimes even above the expected definitions of beauty. Aesthetics and purpose are manifest in the framework and content of the Persian rug. In fact, you will rarely find a Persian home without carpet. While they beautify the interior space of a household, carpets are considered both a property and an investment.  The number of carpets spread on the floor, their quality and texture is a sign of a family’s wealth and prosperity. Moreover, the Persian rug is a precious possession that could be sold and traded like gold in time of need. “Even if I have to sell the carpet under my feet, I will… (For instance, pay my debt)”, is a saying in the Persian language that shows how essential carpets are to the Persian household and economic status. Persian rug is indeed an indispensable element of the Iranian everyday culture. Even our childhood stories, like Alaadin and the tale of Solomon’s rug had accounts of magic and flying rugs.

The Persian rug is the soul of the room with its range of colors which can layer the colors of the space. Its patterns and textures differ depending on the region in which and the layout and material from which it is woven.  If someone wants to flatter a woman who ages beautifully, they would likely say, “You are like a Kerman carpet, the older it gets, the more beautiful it becomes.” Kerman is a province in the central south of Iran, famous for exquisite silk carpets which gain more value by age.

But the Persian carpet is more than just an item of beauty or a property for trade.  One could also say that it is the illustrative history of the art and the culture of a nation as the carpets of each period reflect various patterns and elements of their time. Moreover, the carpet industry annually creates a range of employment opportunities, brings about export currency, national self-reliance and also spreads Iranian art and culture in the world.

Though much of carpet production today is mechanized, hand-woven carpets are still in demand and of course they fall in a higher price range. The intricate designs of the Persian carpet and its range of harmonious colors is the result of a laborious process under dedicated hands and minds of mostly village women whose lives are entwined with art from their very childhood, women who cannot possibly even afford the rugs they themselves weave.

When one looks at the elaborate outline of the Persian rug and runs hands of appreciation over its sophisticated texture, it is the technique, harmony, love, eternity, beauty and all that is dexterously breathed into the life of the carpet that seem to emerge from its core and impress us. And if we look closer, we see poetry and painting, we see eyes that have spent their light and shoulders that have endured the ache of time to create this beauty, even for a mere financial purpose as their primary intention. The Persian word for carpet is ‘Farsh’ which literally means ‘spread’. Sometimes, when I marvel at the mesmerizing patterns and its colorful splendor, I feel we are quite oblivious that the Persian Carpet is indeed an eternal and magnificent painting spread and trampled under our feet. 

 

Women and the life of the carpet

The image of a woman sitting before a loom, spinning or weaving is almost a universal concept in all cultures and folk tales. In fact, in some mythical stories, the act of weaving is symbolic of telling (weaving) a story and working on the thread.  Others have compared the hued yarn to the cord of life and the working woman as the omnipresent of the story who can shorten and lengthen the lives of the characters by cutting or spinning the yarns.

In Iran, the art of weaving carpets is mostly associated with women, the majority of whom are villagers. These women are mostly workers who are hired by a firm or a community manager and they all work in groups. Of course, there are individual women artists who can plan and weave a challenging but beautiful carpet through a long process on their own, artist or avid carpet lovers who may have studied weaving carpets and carpet patterns at the university or Arts institutes. For village women, however, weaving carpets more than anything is a source of income and a way of helping out their family. Iranian women have a long tradition of working shoulder to shoulder with their men, particularly in rural areas.

Not so long ago, in the traditional pre-marriage meeting of parents and youth known as ‘Khastegaari’ (literally meaning demanding a bride), young girls who could weave carpets were lauded. Even keeping and cleaning a carpet was an art. In fact, our grandmothers recall a time when the mother of young eligible bachelor would go to the family of a young eligible girl to drink a cup of tea and set forth the proposal of her son. If she had a chance to find herself momentarily alone in the hall, she would quickly turn the corner of the rug in the room and run her finger on the back to see if dust had found home there. She would then grade her future daughter-in-law on her housekeeping and cleanliness. After the wedding ceremony, the bride’s family would also give her one or more carpets as a part of her Jahiziyeh (dowry which would include basic home appliances and furniture).

For women weavers who are mostly illiterate, however, the story of the carpet is a little different.  It is said that in early stages of the carpet weaving tradition, probably when people still lived in tents, the patterns were transferred orally from mother to daughter as they would work together. The carpet then was used as a spread on the ground against the cold or was traded for other goods and sometimes it was also given away as a gift. Women were inspired by the scenes of nature that they could see from their tents, like a tree or a deer. This was perhaps one of the many ways as to how nature found its way into the Persian carpet design.

The process of weaving is a long one and weaving a batch of rugs is a challenging and tedious procedure. Depending on the quality and size of the rug, it may take anywhere from a few months to several years to complete. That is perhaps another reason why women weave in groups and sing songs while their hands are at work. Some of these songs are popular and have long become a part of folk literature. These women work from early morning after doing most of the housework while their newborns are tied to their backs or lie in their laps and their lunch and dinner simmers somewhere on the stove. These workers are indeed dexterous artists who breathe life into the texture of the rug; even if their hands get corns and calluses in the process and other predictable health issues arise. The government plans to provide health insurance for women weavers in the near future.

 

Carpet culture and customs

Since carpet is an integral part of the Persian home decoration, its maintenance and cleaning is also an inevitable process. In fact, a house is not considered clean if the carpets do not look spick and span. For their spring cleaning known as khaaneh tekaani (literally meaning, shaking the house), Iranian families see carpet cleaning as a must. This ritual is done annually sometime before the 21st of March which is the date for the Persian New Year known as Norouz (literally meaning, New Day). The house is swept and cleaned from top to bottom and everything in it (including the carpets) is either washed, polished or renewed according to the family’s income. Some families hire workers who use shampoo to wash the rugs. Others send their carpets to carpet washing companies and have them cleaned and delivered before the New Year or simply attempt at washing them on their own by using their feet. During this period, one can see carpets and rugs hanging from balconies or spread on rooftops to dry.

There is also another event related to carpet washing which is also considered an autumn festival. Every second Friday of the month of Mehr (the first month of autumn), Mashad Ardehal village located 42 kilometers to the west of Kashan is a witness to the annual Ghalishouyan (or carpet washing) ceremony. The first Friday is also known as the jome’eh jar (Friday of the call) when people are called out and officially invited to next week’s ceremony. The day marks the death anniversary of Sultan Ali, a descendant of Imam Mohammad Bagher (AS) of more than 12 centuries ago. On this day, after mourning songs and speeches by benefactors of Sultan Ali’s shrine, a group of young men carry  the carpet in which he was allegedly wrapped and carried at the time of his death to the nearby stream while another group follows them with wooden sticks in their hands. They wave the wood in the air as they symbolically demand revenge from the murderer. The carpet is then laid down to be washed ritualistically by the stream. 

After that, the carpet is ceremoniously taken back into the shrine as the groups of stock holders follow it with their sayings and chants. Before returning home, people have a feast at noontime. Only people of the Fin village can take part in the ritual and other people are strictly spectators as sultan Ali resided mostly in Fin but had temporarily shifted to Ardehal a little before his death. This is perhaps the only Islamic event that is scheduled according to the Persian solar calendar.

The sidelines of the event are also interesting. Many people park their cars along the streets and some may have been waiting there days ahead. Some bystanders will engage in shopping for home appliances (including rugs and carpets) for young eligible girls who are of marriage age as this day is considered auspicious. The ceremony has been listed as a national spiritual heritage event in the country.

Nature & Art: The Persian garden carpet

In old Iranian culture, Persian garden with its unique structure was a symbol of the perennial and eternal garden of Paradise. One could say that the garden was a human attempt to foster the celestial calm and beauty of the heavens on the earth. Traditionally, the garden was divided into four parts that aesthetically connected in the center. For example, there were brooks that ran along the passages and corners and then flowed into a central pool. And of course, flower buds, petals, leaves and fruits like tangerines were the main elements of the Persian garden. All these structures are manifest in the layout of classic Persian carpet which is known as the garden style. Nature is indeed reflected in a range of colors in the Persian carpet. History says this art was at its peak during the Safavid period when carpet artists would get together and trade ideas and impact each other’s work.  In fact, it was during this period that weavers came up with the idea of the “Shah Abbas flower”, a pattern which soon became popular and to this day with a few more or less petals, 50 types of Shah Abbas flowers are woven.  If Persian carpet is replete with various elements of nature, it is also because its weavers are of different origins. For instance, the nomadic tribal patterns are different from the designs by villagers and weavers in the city. While tribal weavers reflect nature in all its simplicity in more straight lines as they see it in their everyday lives, others use more complex designs and curves. Even the durable colors of Persian carpet come from the bounty of nature. In addition to chemical hues, walnut skin, pomegranate, vine leaf and Sumac are used as the base for natural colors in the art of weaving.

 

Facts

1- The art of carpet weaving existed in Iran in ancient times, according to evidence such as the 2500-year-old Pazyryk carpet, dating back to 500 B.C., during the Achaemenid period.

2- Iran is the world’s largest producer and exporter of handmade carpets, producing three quarters of the world’s total output.

3- In 2008, Iran’s exports of hand-woven carpets were $420 million or 30% of the world’s market.

4- Iranian carpets from Kerman, Shiraz, Kashan, Mashad, Tabriz and Isfehan are very famous. All regions of Iran produce rugs and each one has its own originality.

5- There is an estimated population of nearly five million workers who are engaged in the Iranian carpet industry, making it one of the biggest enterprises in the country. Weavers in Iran produce carpets for domestic markets and international export.

6- Iran is also the maker of the largest handmade carpet in history, measuring 60,546 square feet (5,624.9 square meters).

7-  Iran exports carpets to more than 100 countries, as hand-woven rugs are one of its main non-oil export items. The country produces about five million square meters of carpets annually—80 percent of which are sold in international markets. In recent times Iranian carpets have come under fierce competition from other countries producing reproductions of the original Iranian designs as well as cheaper substitute

8- Persian carpets can be divided into three groups; Farsh / Ghali (sized anything greater than 6×4 feet), Ghalicheh (meaning rug, sized 6×4 feet and smaller), and nomadic carpets known as Gelim (including Zilu, meaning rough carpet). In this use, Gelim includes both pile rugs and flat weaves (such as Gilim and soumak).

9- There are a number of patterns which are found in Persian and Oriental rugs called ‘motifs’. These designs have different meanings and tend to be used depending on the area the rug was woven although it is not unusual to find more than one motif in a single rug. Some of the more common motifs are: Boteh, Gol, Herati, Mina-Khani, Rosette, Shah Abbasi, Azari Kharchang and Islimi Floral.

 

Bizarre Buzz!: World’s oldest carpet with Persian design

Known as the ‘Pazyryk Carpet’, the world’s oldest carpet was discovered by Russian Professor Sergei Rudenko in a unique archaeological excavation in 1949 among the ices of Pazyryk Valley, in Altai Mountains in Siberia. The carpet was found in the grave of a Scythian prince located in an area known as ‘Pazyryk’. Radiocarbon testing indicated that the Pazyryk carpet was woven in the 5th century BC. This carpet is 283 by 200 cm (approximately 9.3 by 6.5 ft.) and has 36 symmetrical knots per cm² (232 per inch). The advanced weaving technique used in the Pazyryk carpet indicates a long history of evolution and experience in this art. Its central field is a deep red color and it has two wide borders, one depicting deer and the other Persian horsemen. It is believed that the carpet from Pazyryk is not likely a nomadic product, but a product of the Achaemenid period. According to Rudenko, the carpet was a gift from the Persians to the Scythian Prince. It is now kept in the Heritage Museum of Leningrad.

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