Quarterly Scientific-Research Goljaam

The Textile Museum & The International Hajji Baba Club
Washington D.C. June 19, 2004

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Introduction
Handmade carpet production in Iran goes back to the history, of which is not the subject of this short paper and presentation. Carpet production and in general carpet culture especially in rural areas is combined and mixed with every-day life of many people. In rural places, almost all the women know how to make carpets. They learn this from their mother and grow up with it. Many of them weave the carpets to take to their new homes when they get married. In Iran, carpet is not a mere commodity. It has different cultural, artistic, and historical heritage attached to it.
National Statistics
The population of Iran is about 65 million. In Iran, there are around 1,200,000 looms scattered in 27,000 villages and 210 cities, on which 2,200,000 weavers work. Roughly, 300,000 people work in the related fields such as artistic work, wool preparing and spinning, dyeing, repairing, washing, exporting, transporting and etc. In the year 2002, the export value of handmade carpet was USD 517,000,000, which showed almost 1% decrease to the year before which was USD 522,000,000. In this year, 5,920,000 square meters of handmade carpets were exported from Iran. One square meter of exported Iranian carpet was priced USD 83.00. In the year 2003, the export value of handmade carpet was USD 573,000,000 which showed almost 11% increase compared to the previous year. In 2003, 5,728,000 square meters of handmade carpets were exported from Iran. One square meter of exported Iranian carpet was priced USD 100 in 2003. Table 1 shows the value of Iranian carpet export in US Dollar for the past few years. After oil, handmade carpet is the highest source of foreign exchange earning for Iran. The most important aspect is not the value, but the employment which carpet sector provides as a job, and in most of the cases as a complementary income for the housewives and the families.