Iranian Journal of hand woven carpet

Discourse in Safavid Rugs Garden

Bijan Arbabi

Regardless of its architectural features, garden is one of the key concepts in Persian art history from the ancient times to the Islamic period with a significant role in different arts, especially in architecture, from conceptual, formal and also contents-based points of view.

The main aim of this research is a comprehensive study of garden concept and its significant role in Safavid art and culture.

This paper is to question the status of garden in the role of epistemology and thought concept in forming many of movements and artworks of Safavid period, esp. in the art of carpet weaving.

This Historic, descriptive and analytic research with its library-based data collection method practices Michael Foucault’s discourse theory and ideas of Laclau and Mouffé to analyze the gathered information.

Results show that regarding its conceptual, determinant and regulative characteristics, the concept of garden is an epistemological discourse in forming the configuration, concept and context of Safavid art. Accordingly, garden is a dominant discourse in art and rugs of Safavid period.

The Discourse of Archaism in Persian Pictorial Rugs during Qajar Era

mahmod tavoosi

Iranian hand-woven carpet is a national art rooted in the ancient civilization, culture and history of Iran. In history, carpet designs have been transformed, due to changes in society and at times subjects, designs, shapes and combinations are brought in or taken out. For example, during Qajar Era, new social transformations resulted in the invention of new motifs in rugs in contrast to former abstract motifs; with simulated or imagined images of kings.

This paper studies pictorial rugs of Qajar period with a sociological approach and with Laclau and Mouffe discourse analysis beside the semantic structure of Syntagmatic and Paradigmatic axes of Ferdinand de Saussure. It aims at finding the answer for the question of what discourse signifiers were affecting those rugs and the reason behind the popularity of the images of mythical ancient Iranian kings at that era.

Descriptive-analytic approach is used in this study and library documents were applied as data source. Ten samples of pictorial rugs, with Iranian kings as their subject, were selected randomly as the sample. The findings of this study reveal that since a willingness to find an Iranian identity right against other nations was to emerge at that era, people who travelled to Europe tended to find the reason behind Iran’s underdevelopment. As a result, they introduced mythical kings and the pre-Islamic era as the ideal kings and the golden age, which was being reflected in the rugs of that period. The structure of motifs’ companionship seem to be replaced by images of kings in order to emphasize the hegemony of their divinely spiritual legitimacy and political power in the world.

A View on the Design of Niche Prayer Rug (Saff) in Islamic carpet weaving

Hussein Kamandloo

Iranian artists and craftsmen have been interested in decorations for a long time. Geometric, animal and plant motifs and sometimes a line in various combinations adorned all or part of their handmade works. The art of carpet weaving hasn't been excluded. Carpet designers have created beautiful and sometimes unique designs by the influence of religion, politics, culture and other common arts during the course of history and the master weavers have also recorded it.

One of the most important applied designs in carpet-weaving art which became universal by the arrival of the Islam is the design of prayer rugs, the carpets with small dimensions that were designed and woven to perform the most important religious practices; saying prayers. Probably, performing congregational religious ceremonies including Congregational Prayers, Friday or Eid (Islamic Feast) prayers were enough to create a unique design in the art of carpet-weaving in Islamic Iran with the title of a Niche Prayer Rug (saff).

In these kinds of carpets, a row of altar arches is woven on the length or width of the carpet to determine the position of a single person who says prayers. This attractive design that can be a symbol of unity of the Islamic nations, has been gradually adapted by Muslims of other Islamic countries such as Turkey, India and Eastern Turkestan. Considering the culture and common decorative motifs of that area, the native weavers produced different and sometimes beautiful carpets that are rooted in original Iranian art.

This descriptive-analytic investigation is to study the history of the Niche Prayer Rug (saff) design in Iranian carpet-weaving art. Regarding the library based state of the research, it’s tried to introduce the reason of weaving these kinds of carpets and also the areas that produced them.

A study on Paisley Motif in Iranian Carpet

fateme dorjvar

Paisley (buta-Jeghe) a motif which has been applied in Iran’s carpets in Islamic era. The history of using this pattern in Iran’s art has always been a controversial issue. Some think of it as a motif belonging to Pre-Islamic decorations such as cedar or pattern of animal wings of the Sassanid era. Meanwhile, others see it as a motif which was imported by one of the cashmere shawls from India into the Iranian art. Paisley pattern is highly considered among Iranian weavers. It has decorated the carpets and rugs of many Iranian cities. It has also been used in hand-woven products of Fars nomads more than carpets of Qashqai and Bolvardi nomads. It has also been welcomed and spread among carpets of other regions like Bijar, Hamadan, Kurds of West of Iran and also hand weavings of Turkaman Nomads. Regarding paisley motif, More than 70 categories had been reported while only about twenty groups had been cited with precise names among different references. Due to the diversity and extent of its types in each group, one can find tens of its various samples. The usage of Paisley motif has not only been for decoration, but also as a foundation for shaping some carpet designs.

Identification of Innovation Obstacles in the Design and Production of Isfahan hand-woven Carpets: Entrepreneur’s Approach

bahareh navidzadeh

Since some part of cultural entrepreneurship pays attention to entrepreneurship in arena of art and handicrafts, and handmade carpet is one of the oldest and most important handicrafts in Iran, paying attention to carpet is really prominent. Paying attention to originality of this native art, production and exportation of handmade carpets for having a share in competitive market and development of entrepreneurship in industry of handicrafts are the reasons for the importance of this issue. In recent decades, this market has faced some obstacles that has caused some problems. To solve these problems, innovation is one of the fundamental solutions. Therefore, this study has tried to find a solution to get rid of these obstacles in the art and evaluate the solutions in this research. This research which is based on descriptive and survey analysis is willing to find the obstacles on the way of innovation in Isfahan handmade carpets and to present a method or way for innovation in Isfahan handmade carpet. The statistical society encompasses designers, producers and carpet merchants, with 211 samples randomly chosen. Its results show that the obstacles on the way of innovation in handmade carpets go into the five major categories of economics, marketing, culture, management and technology, for all of which 30 sub-branches has been identified. In addition, the analysis of the achieved results show that each of these factors has different levels of effect on obtruding innovation in Isfahan hand-woven carpets. To conclude, some suggestion are given to get rid of these problems.

Extraction and dyeing of wool fibers with Walnut Shell using ultrasonic waves

Robabeh Taghizadeh Borujeni

Today, much research is conducted on the use of new methods of dyeing textiles, all of which are trying to select an appropriate method of reducing the usage of energy and chemicals in a way to produce cost-effective products with an acceptable uniformity. One of these methods is the use of ultrasonic waves. Since the dyestuff is extremely limited by the plant cell membrane, extraction methods such as ultrasonic ones can better improve the mechanism of extracting natural dyes and dyestuff out of cell membranes and also improve the transfer of dyestuff onto fibers’ dyeing process in order to assist in conservation of natural resources,

The aim of this study is to use ultrasonic waves in the extraction of dyestuff of walnut shell and to dye wool fibers with the extract. Favorable results are obtained compared to conventional screw. By calculating the absorption efficiency with conventional ultrasound method, it was concluded that the use of ultrasonic waves can increase the concentration of the dye in solution more than the conventional method and by increasing the concentration of the dye in both methods, this factor is increased. According to the findings, it is concluded that ultrasonic extraction method is more efficient than the usual one. To investigate the effects of ultrasonic method in the dyeing process, the productivity of ultrasonic method in dyeing was calculated in relation to conventional method in two modes of (UU) and (UC). The productivity of (UU) in relation to (UC) was % 13/77. Various mechanical aspects are included to achieve the positive effect of the use of ultrasonic waves in dyeing process such as degassing of fiber, stimulation of dyeing solution, rapid spread of dyestuff on fiber and breaking the gathering of dyeing molecules. These cause a higher influence of the dyestuff in the fibers and a sheer deep dye. Measurement of stabled samples results show that the stability of the samples in both ultrasonic and conventional methods, has been fair to good. The results of the SEM analysis clearly presents this conclusion. Creating a kind of surface erosion and degradation scales, which led to greater influence and power of color dye into the fiber, increases the effects of cavitation. They are considered to be seen in the SEM images.