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Northen and western provinces
Iran, has
long been known as a fount of beautiful and legendary
carpets. Her centres of carpet weaving, since ancient times,
have produced thousands of rugs and carpets, many of them
precious and valuable.
This does
not mean, that all over this vast country of 1650000 square
kilometres, that all carpets are woven the same way. In a
great area of this country, for climatic, demographic and
economical reasons the art, or as it is called today, the
industry has developed very little.
In this
brief introduction, we study a general view of carpet
weaving in Iran then we begin to explain in detail the
centre of carpet weaving in different cities.
In the
central and south eastern part of Iran there are two
uninhabited deserts that cover a vast part of country. In
these deserts, particularly in the central area, there is no
living creature and no sign of carpet weaving. On the other
hand on the border of these deserts there are famous cities
like Nain, Ghom, Yazd, Ravar, and Birjand, in which the
finest carpets are made.
Among the
inhabitants of cities and villages bordering the Caspian
shores, carpet weaving is not very popular. The reason for
this may probably be the fact that due to the national
resources and tourism in the provinces of Ghilan and
Mazandaran the standard of life is relatively high and
therefore most of the men in this area are unwilling to
weave carpets.
Moreover,
the energetic and active women of this region are
continuously busy in the rice, tea and tobacco fields and
the orange groves. In addition, the slopes of the high
Albors mountain that are always covered with snow, hinder
the grazing of the sheep, thus causing a shortage of raw
materials such as wool.
As a result
there is no need for carpet weaving. The only cities where
runners and rugs of medium quality are woven are
Kelar-Dasht, Babol and Amol. The designs of Kelar-Dasht
carpets are generally geometrical and the colours are red
and black, the knot being Ghiordes and pile is of medium
height.
Carpet
weaving along the coast of the Persian Gulf and the Oman Sea
is almost non existent and if one does find carpets, these
are often shoddy and of an inferior quality.
The
scarcity of the population, the lack of pastures for grazing
and nourishing sheep, employment in the oil industry,
fishing, smuggling goods across the frontiers and emigration
to the nearby Arab States is the cause for the shortage of
any carpet industry in this area.
In the map
of carpet weaving in Iran there are two coloured areas, dark
and light green. In the darker green area, the centre of
carpet weaving is more concentrated and is more important
whereas, in the lighter green area carpet weaving is
prevalent but not as concentrated as in the darker green
areas.
Looking at
this map we realise that although great numbers of cities
and ports in Iran while important in the political and
industrial field, they are outside of the green colour
areas, such as Orumiyeh, Ahwaz, Abadan, Dezful, Sary,
Khorram-Shahr, Bushehr, Bandar Abbas and etc.
In our
method of studying the centres of carpet weaving in the
provinces of Iran, irrespective of their political or
industrial importance, we concentrate solely on the history,
artistic values, technical elaboration and commercial
values, hand pile production.
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