• Calligraphy

• Miniature

• Tazhib

• Carpet

Persian Carpets
By: G. Wilfrid Seager

The discovery of a Persian carpet in the village of Pazyrk in the Altai Mountains, in southern Siberia, shows that the art of pile-carpet weaving is probably as old as the Persian monarchy, for the Pazyrk treasures are said to date from the 5^th century BC. From the fineness of weave of this carpet-it contains some 184 knots to the square inch-and the high standard of its design, one may safely assume that the art had been practiced for some considerable period previously.

The discovery of a pile carpet of about 2,500 years of age is of importance for another reason also. The word ‘carpet’ has been used to describe fabrics seen and reported by historians and early travelers. Without the positive evidence of a piece of the material, it has been suspected that the exquisitely designed fabrics described the art of weaving pile fabrics is older even than the Pazyrk rug, which is now in the Hermitage Museum, Leningrad, in a carefully scaled case, protected against the risk of damage from climatic change. The degree of skill show in its construction and the closely executed symmetry of its balanced design, with a well covered before. 

 Among so many, a few are technically more outstanding that their fellows. If a particular example must be quoted of recent exceptional craftsmanship, one may call attention to the carpets, which came from the looms of Emogli of Mashad some thirty years ago. The superlative carpets woven by his ustads- master craftsmen indeed-in arabesque designs reminiscent of the finest carpets shown in Timurid miniatures, achieved wide fame. Many found their way into royal palaces in Tehran. Some may be seen in reception rooms in the majils and the officers’ club. 

Pazyrik rug the oldest Persian rug discovered ever

Those who have made the closest study to agree, however, that the choice must lie within half a dozen or so. There are those who could choose such a carpet as Denmark’s coronation carpet, on which Danish kings are crowned. This carpet, occasionally shown to visitors to the Rosenborg Palace in Copenhagen, consists of an all-over design on a gold ground and border. The best-known carpet, as it is also the most frequently copied, is that in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, made in 1539 by Maqsud Kashani for the shrine at Aradabil. Some experts prefer the hunting carpet in the Vienna Museum of Art and Industry; with 800 knots to the square inch it is perhaps the most closely-woven carpet left to us from the Safavid period. Yet, when we look at the incredible fineness of detail of that carpet, we should remind ourselves that the splendour of the Ardabil carpet was achieved with but 320 knots to the square inch, a miracle of perfection.

The magnificently woven carpet in the Berlin Kaiser Friedrich Museum, with its great medallion crowded with finely-drawn cranes in flight among scores of Chinese could motifs, was Dr.Martin’s shocked surprise von Bode did not choose the carpet under his own care but named the most beautiful carpet to be the so-called ‘Chelsea’ carpet. This hangs on a wall at right angles to the Ardabil carpet, which has pride of place in the Victoria and Albert Museum. Both the Berlin medallion carpet and the Chelsea carpet (so called because it was bought in field framed in a wide border with narrow guards on either side, show conclusively that the weaver was no novice.)

It is exciting to have this proof that Persian pile-carpet weaving is at least two and a half millennia old and also to learn from this carpet that thus early the convention of ground, border and guards, which has been observed ever since, had already been established. The design shows that the use of human and animal forms, pictured naturally, was already being utilized in a decorative way. This is a technique in which the Persian artistic genius excels and it reached its zenith in the 15^th, 16^th and early 17^th centuries when weavers delighted to reproduce copies of hunting scenes or stories from the shahnameh as depicted in miniatures of the period.

It is a human failing, form one generation to the next, to decay contemporary art by comparison with the allegedly superior achievements of preceding generations. A 17^th century traveler reported that the products of Isfahan looms had in some cases sunk so low that they were allowed to rot into compost to enrich the soil of the gardens outside the city. In 1892 Lord Curzon wrote of the deteriation of the Persian weavers’ craft because of their use of western synthetic dyes, at that time fast neither to light nor water. In his opinion Persian carpets were never again to attain their former excellence. ; Never’ is an awfully long time! One wonders whether travelers in the days of Shah ‘Abbas write in similarly scornful terms of contemporary carpets when compares with the Timurid carpets of a century earlier.

The truth is that the spread of culture westwards created a taste for their products, which Persian weavers struggled to satisfy. Persian carpets output had to grow to meet this increasing demand. Whereas formerly those who could afford to carpet their homes with hand-knotted floor-coverings were few in number, gradually more and more Persian carpets were sought after, for instead of the possession of carpets being confined to princely families, the nobility, or wealthy land-owners, upon whose patronage weavers depended, weavers soon found themselves compelled to produce a much wider range of qualities so that their carpets might reach a wider public of equal discernment but of more slender means.

This growth in carpet production did not imply that carpets could no longer be made as a fine in closeness of knots as those made for patrons who had no need to count the cost of production. Carpets as fine as ever could still be made. There are today a grater number of skilled craftsmen engaged in carpet weaving than ever. The less closely-woven bolder Heriz carpets from the Bakshaish weaving district in Azarbaijan, with their masculine severity and assertive designs on brick-red grounds and their ‘turtle’ or ‘samovar’ patterned borders, have an attraction all their own. They are in a different class altogether from the classic picture carpets. The latter drew their inspiration from the Timurid and Safavid miniaturists of the Herat, Tabriz and Shiraz schools of artists who delighted to illustrate hunting scenes or stories from the wealth of Persian mythology and from Firdausi’s Shahnameh tales of the kings. Miniaturists and carpet-designers both drew also upon the lyric poets for their subjects. One can at once visualize the miniature or carpet which might illustrate Sa’di’s lines:

‘O Cypress-tree with silver limbs,  
This colour and scent of thine  
Have shamed the scent of the myrtle-plant 
And the bloom of the eglanline.  
Fudge with thine eyes, and set thy foot
  In the garden fair and free,  
And tread the jasmine under thy foot, 
And the flowers of the Judas-tree.’

One cannot accurately name the artists who created the designs of particular carpets woven 400 or 500 years ago, but the meticulous detail of the carpets illustrated in their pictures surely proves that these miniatures were familiar wit the conventions of carpet designing. Illustrations of carpets appeared profusely in palaces, royal tents and in garden scenes in these miniatures. Surely one may assume that these same artists themselves drew or at least supervised the preparation of loom-drawings for the finest carpets ever   made. It would indeed be strange if this were not so.

The design of the border of the Chelsea carpet, with its distinctive interlocking crenellations, had already been used to decorate the inner frame of a table of contents of an anthology written for Baisunghur in Shiraz in 1420. This same design appeared again sixty years later, illustrating a manuscript of the Khamesh of Jami, the drawing of which were attributed to Qasim ‘Ali and Masqsud, both pupils of Bihzad himself, perhaps the greatest miniaturist of them all. It is being too imaginative to suggest that this Maqsud was the Masqsud Kashani of the Ardabil inscription, the salve of the shrine as he claimed? Surely it was not the weaver but the artist who designed the carpet.

Naturally enough, historians and travelers describe in detail only the finest examples of carpets seen by them on their travels. They make no mention of the more modest products of Persian carpet looms. Much though one admires the finest specimens yet there is great charm in the cruder, elementary designs and colors of some coarsely-woven tribal or village rug. With, or even because of, its human diversities and faults. The more highly skilled weavers would probably move with the Court from one place to another to make fine carpets for royal palaces or as princely gifts for foreign emissaries. The so-called ‘Polish’ carets in gold and silver tapestry background, with wool or silk pile for the design, were made for such purposes. In a more modest way, however, weaving was carried on in the private homes of the people, each district, tribe or village developing its own particular style of weave.

It is more difficult to differentiate between the finest weaves, particularly in the case of carpets made several hundred years ago if, as one may suppose they were made for patrons who required special designs and colors not necessarily associated with one place or another. Weavers in tribes and villages did not travel outside their own areas as distances between places of production were great and travel, until recent times, was difficult. Therefore the peculiarities of each weaving district remained recognizably by its own and justified Sir George Birdwood’s expressing this in 1892, however pompously, in his monograph entitled The Termless Antiquity. Historical Continuity and Integral Identity of the Oriental Manufacture of Sumptuary Carpets. This ‘integral identity’ still exists, but improved communications have resulted in an exchange of designs, colourings and skills between neighboring or even more distant areas. In this way the identification of one rug from another is becoming more difficult.

Certain means of identification may be noted. Weavers use either the Persian or the Turkish knot depending upon the practice of each area. This may be expressed geographically by drawing a line southwards from the Caspian through (or a little west of) Resht, Qazvin, Arak, Isfahan and Abadeh, down to the province of Fars and the lands, which separate the Qashqai weavers (who use the Turkish knot) from the Khamseh tribes (who use the Persian knot). All carpets woven west of this arbitrary line are made with the Turkish knot. East of the line all carpets-whether Persian, Indian or Chinese-are made with the Persian knot. Recognition of the knot is more easily learned from the text-book diagrams. The pile tips of the Turkish knot spring from within the loop at the base of the knot. The pile tips of the Persian knot come forward from each side of one of the two warp strands on which the knot is tied.

There are no exceptions to this arbitrary geographic line. Several places in Turkey have recently adopted the Persian knot as they find it less wasteful in yarn consumption. Some Turcoman Bokhara carpets show both knots in the same piece. Perhaps the most notable exception to the rule is provided by the Afshari weavers in Kirman province. Although their homes now lie east of the line, they weave with the Turkish knot because their original home was in Azarbaijan whence they were exiled to the south as punishment for the insurrection under Shah Tahmasp. Minor exceptions to this rule are due to the practice of weavers who live close to the line on the other side or to intermarriage and the introduction on a small scale of one know or the other within family units.

The three categories of weavers-tribal, village, or town-each have differing characteristics. Tribal looms are light and horizontal, being egged out on the ground so that they may e easily collapsed and rolled up to be carried to the next grazing-ground, as the tribe migrates in the spring and autumn. When the loom is pegged out, the working area is lifted free of the ground by a tripod support.

Understandably, the tribal rugs are the least developed. Theirs have the simplest designs, the most rudimentary and the fewest colors. Their designs take angular forms because the comparatively loose weave, due to fewer knots to the square inch and the coarser materials used, does not allow the weaver to knot closely-detailed patterns. Tribal rugs are woven in designs to which the weavers of each tribe, and sometimes each group of families within the tribe, have been accustomed for generations, being woven form memory without help of loom-drawings. This accounts for the frequent oddities of pattern, where a forgetful weaver or his Shagrid (apprentice) has followed his attention to stray and his fingers have knotted in some charming departure from the true repeat of the pattern in the corresponding diagonally opposite quarter of the rug.

A rewarding study could be made of the different uses of color detail in each producing center. The freest use of color may be found in Kirman, even though it is here that the carpet colorist observes strict conventions or the typical nature of a Kirman carpet would be lost. Carpets made in the village of Raver north of Kirman were famous at the turn of the century for their consistent excellence. Today Yazd carpets seem likely to usurp Ravar’s paramount position. Ravar must look to its laurels. Similarly Yazd weavers must watch that their colors do not become too hard. They should more closely follow the former Kirman conventions. A light blue carpet may have a border of cream or light rose. One seldom or never sees a Kirman carpet with a green ground or border. A flower in light pistachio green, with a darker pistachio shade used equally in the same flower, is typical of Kirman coloring. Each Kirman flower must be shaded by the use of two complementary tones of the same color; but the choice of colors for the flower is strictly limited to those appropriate for use on the ground color.

Most important of all is the choice of the outline color to be used round each petal or outside each stem to give definition to the pattern. The contrasting outline must itself be evenly balanced by the use of other complementary sets of shades in the general coloring of the carpet. The coloring must be precise, not blatant; it must give definition to the pattern, yet remain unobtrusive.

With all these rules and conventions to be observed consciously or unconsciously, how fortunate it is that Persians seem born with a draughtsman’s skill and so gifted with an unerring sense of color! It is for these gifts that we are grateful, for they bring us joy of Persia’s carpets heritage.

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