Quarterly Scientific-Research Goljaam

Design, color and pattern, which are of the carpet overriding esthetic elements, create identity for a carpet. Designers have been depicting the most beautiful and attractive pictures as the carpet design for the past centuries. The history of incorporating computer-based designs into carpets does not exceed three decades; therefore, it is a present-day technology adopted: In the similar vein, it has provided us with a wide range of possibilities. However, due to lack of interest in the widespread use of computer in many carpet-manufacturing procedures, it seems to have been faded into insignificance; therefore, an attempt should be made in order to overcome the challenges between traditional designing atmosphere by hand & that of computer. There are some unanswerable questions as follows: 1) does computer ruin the carpet design genuineness?; 2) is the presence of computer fundamentally necessary in this field?, and 3) will the relationship between an artisan and an apprentice break down when there are countless patterns & designs saved in the computer and there is no need for these manually-designed patterns to be learned & handed down. The method of research adopted here is a case study. In order to recognize each of the above-said methods in designing carpets, it was deemed necessary to study the history of formation of manual designing and the impact of computers in speeding up the production of carpet drawings. In addition, a comparison has been made between computer-aided drawings with that of manual ones. To do this, appropriate data was collected via library resources & interviewing great masters. The research revealed that each one of the manual & computer-aided carpet drawings have special specifications which have been contributed to their similarities & differences. Between them nevertheless, the computer-software stem from manual designing. The distinctive characteristic of computer in speeding up the production is that it is regarded important in both drawing and other fields related to carpet such as approximate calculations, weaving & marketing. It seems that the disinterest of traditional carpet designers in making use of computer has nothing to do with using a computer as a tool; in the other hand, another convincing reason shall be uncovered. It is of paramount importance to describe computer in carpet drawing correctly.

Despite the fact that many branches of art and craft were affected by the ideas of Western modernity in the Qajar era including painting, architecture, poetry, literature and handicrafts, carpet-weaving art preserved its cultural traditions and mainly represented its traditional motifs and designs. The present paper aims to study the economics and the situation of carpet-weaving in the Qajar era, to understand how production relationships and the presence of foreign companies affected the development of the traditional carpet weaving of Qajar era, and also to know what the role of consumer markets of the West was in the preservation of traditional design and motifs of carpets in this epoch. This research is a historical-descriptive- analytical research in terms of nature and method, where desk study method has been used for data collection. The research reveals some results which show that an increase in the exports of Qajari carpets as well as the presence of foreign investments in the carpet-weaving areas of Iran, resulted from the impact of the Western consumers markets, were decisive factors in maintaining and the preservation of traditional designs and motifs of Qajari carpets.