Inspiration

In the late 1800’s Mohammad Hassan Mohtasham, a textile producer, was asked by some merchants in Tabriz to revive the carpet weaving industry in Kashan. Married to an accomplished weaver from Sultanabad he decided to relocate to Kashan to set up weaving centres. The Mohtasham textiles were produced from Merino wool imported from Manchester, and Mr Mohtasham decided to use the same wool to make carpets with. This decision would prove very successful and important because the high quality of Merino wool allowed a higher knot count for creating detailed motifs with a high pile. Furthermore, Merino wool ages well and appears almost silk like over time. This gave birth to the Mohtasham Kashan carpets that are now sought after collector's items all over the world. He left such an incredible legacy that many carpets from Kashan are now called Mohtasham Kashan, even if they were not woven by his weaving centres. Because of Mr Mohtasham's efforts there were 1,500 active looms in Kashan by 1900 and 4,000 by 1949. The height of the Mohtasham Kashan carpets woven with Merino wool continued until the Great Depression when the imported wool market crashed.
Photograph courtesy of Christie's

The oldest surviving carpet is the Pazyryck carpet on show in Russia and dates back 2,500 years. But the workmanship and skill that was needed to make this piece indicates that the weaving industry is far older than we can prove at this point. Unfortunately carpets are made from wool which disintegrates over the centuries and thus there are not any other surviving pieces to testify to this statement. We can only go by legends and tales (most of which we now accept as myths) to give us some glimpse of the magnificence and importance of the weaving industry.

One early carpet, dating from the eighth century BCE, may still be seen in the British Museum - albeit carved in stone on an Assyrian relief - as a precious offering to a king. The stone floors of the seventh century BCE Assyrian palaces - especially at Nineveh and today also in the British Museum - are generally accepted as carpet patterns. Another legendary and magical flying carpet is that of King Solomon. Said to be given to him by God, it could carry 40,000 men at once and fly at the speed of light. The next great carpet we know of was found in the burial chamber of Cyrus the Great of Persia (559-529 BCE), when 200 years after his death, Alexander the Great crushed the remnants of Cyrus’ empire and, breaking into his tomb, described Cyrus’ golden funeral couch as resting on an exquisite golden carpet.

We know from a tablet of perhaps 3000 BCE that the Sumerians had looms. Ur was one of their great cities and the code of Hammarubi of around 1800 BCE records its major export being wool to Babylon. The tombs of Beni Hassan in Egypt (2800 BCE - 2600 BCE) have wall paintings of weavers at work, and there are numerous other Egyptian wall paintings from 2000 BCE that depict looms, showing already highly skilled weavers.

Biblical accounts tell the tale of Joseph and his multi-coloured coat as well as detailed instructions as to the materials and the manufacture of every part of the Tabernacle, including how the textiles were to be woven and how they were to be used to build the huge mobile tent to hold the Tablets of the Law during the Israelites wandering in the desert. This indicates that the skill of weaving and dying wool in different colours was already an established art form. Of course, the precursor to this would have been the development of material by means of weaving. It was a matter of time before the weaving of materials, tents, curtains, bedding and carpets would become a trade and commodity for the earlier weavers, especially through all the conquering and wars that was going on at the time.

So next time you look at your Persian carpet, even though it may be new, remember the weavers of thousands of years ago who perfected their craft and passed it on to the next generations in such a way that we can still enjoy the results of their craft and honing their skills. We always say: you can never really own a Persian carpet, you can only become the new treasurer of it until the next generation takes over.

Extracts: Jews And Carpets Fact Paper 18© Anton Felton and Samuel Kurinsky and Ancient Egyptian and Greek Looms BY H. LING ROTH (Keeper). WITH 38 LINE BLOCK AND ONE COLLOTYPE ILLUSTRATIONS. BANKFIELD MUSEUM, HALIFAX APRIL 1913

Carpet bags used to be made of Oriental rugs. Carpet was the chosen material because it was a popular domestic accent piece and the "remainder" pieces were easily bought. In a sense, the carpet bag was a sustainable invention because it used remnants of materials which otherwise would have gone unused.

The carpetbaggers of the Reconstruction Era following the American Civil War—Northerners who moved to the South for economic or political opportunity—were given their name from this type of luggage which they carried

Carpet bags sometimes also served as a "railway rug", a common item in the 19th century for warmth in drafty, unheated rail-cars. The rug could either be opened as a blanket, or latched up on the sides as a traveling bag. From Robert Louis Stevenson's Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes (1879): "... my railway-rug, which, being also in the form of a bag, made me a double castle for cold nights."

There are many companies still producing carpet bags today keeping this very quirky trend alive!

It was Solomon's custom to take off the ring when he was about to wash, and to give it to one of his wives, Amina, to hold. On one occasion, when the ring was in Amina's keeping, the rebellious spirit Sakhr took on Solomon's form and obtained the ring. He then seated himself on the throne and ruled for forty days, during which time the real king wandered about the country, poor and forlorn. On the fortieth day Sakhr dropped the ring into the sea; there it was swallowed by a fish, which was caught by a poor fisherman and given to Solomon for his supper. Solomon cut open the fish, found the ring, and returned to power.
Solomon was also given a flying carpet when he was made king over every created thing, It is written that God gave him a large carpet sixty miles long and sixty miles wide, made of green silk interwoven with pure gold, and ornamented with figured decorations. Surrounded by his four princes, Asaph b. Berechiah, prince of men, Ramirat, prince of the spirits, a lion, prince of beasts, and an eagle, prince of birds, when Solomon sat upon the carpet he was caught up by the wind, and sailed through the air so quickly that he breakfasted at Damascus and supped in Media. One day Solomon was filled with pride at his own greatness and wisdom; and as a punishment therefor the wind shook the carpet, throwing down 40,000 men. Solomon chided the wind for the mischief it had done; but the latter rejoined that the king would do well to turn toward God and cease to be proud; whereupon Solomon felt greatly ashamed. - Source: Jewish Encyclopedia

Ancient Phoenician weavers

Phoenicians and Tyrian purple are inseparable. It is after all the Phoenicians, at around 1,500BC, who became known world-wide for producing purple textiles. Royalty and the elite everywhere could not get enough of this fascinating vibrant colour and as always, demand pushed up the price of purple dye to equal that of its weight in silver. Unlike the other cultures at the time, it was the Phoenician men who were responsible for weaving the textiles and who dominated the trade. Producing this purple dye was no easy task, for at the time it could only be made from the humble sea mollusc who lives 150 meters below surface. More than this, you need 9,000 molluscs to make just 1 gram of purple dye. The dye was made from the colourless liquid in the hypo branchial gland of the mollusc that had to be removed, crushed, soaked with salt and exposed to sun and air for a few days, before being boiled and heated at specific temperatures for a specific time frame. Perhaps it was the near extinction of the molluscs in Tyre that forced the Phoenicians to leave in search of molluscs elsewhere.

Ancient Peruvian weavers

Finding fragments of rope and textiles dating back to between 12,100 and 11,080 years ago in the Guitarrero Cave in Peru, created great excitement in the world of archaeology and also weaving! It showed not only that the Peruvians were distinguished weavers a very long time ago, but also that weaving was very important to them. In Peruvian society males and females were weavers, but it was the females who drove development and change in their weaving industry. From the usual back-strap weaving method the females started weaving side by side, three at a time, that enabled them to weave wider pieces of textiles around 3,000 years ago. They also started using the wool of llamas and alpaca and introduced embroidered symbols and patterns on their garments. The jaguar-god, Chavin, was a favourite motif. The Peruvian weavers made their dyes from plants, minerals, insects and also molluscs, that as we now know, produce purple dye.

The ancient weavers of the Czech Republic

At the base of the Děvín Mountain in Czech Republic, close to the Dolní Věstonice village, an Upper Paleolithic site has been excavated since 1924 revealing not only burials of 27,000 to 20,000BC, but many artefacts that included many pieces of art. Amongst the artefacts were traces of textiles from imprints in clay and burned remnants of cloth. It appears, according to the find, that the weavers manufactured a variety of cordages, plaited basketry and sophisticated twined and plain woven cloth. An interesting find amongst all these items were empty mollusc shells that is thought to be from the Dyje river close to the site. Thus we can assume that these weavers discovered the secret of purple dye long before the Phoenicians.

Luckily towards the late 1800’s synthetic purple dyes were created and it was no longer necessary to use the molluscs and purple is still as mystical today as when Tyres fell in love with it.

Sources – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Tyrian_purple, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Weaving http://www.donsmaps.com/ dolnivpottery.html, https://wildtussah.com/history- weaving-part-3-america, http://www.ancient.eu/article/ 791/, The Earth and Its People: A Gllobal History

Another fine example from the same era is the hunting carpet in the Poldi Pezzoli Museum in Milan.  It is one of the rare carpets that is dated in an inscription that says: “It is by the efforts of Giyath-ud-Din ʿJami that this renowned carpet was brought to such perfection in the year (1542 AD)"; and is thus historically significant.

Archeaological finds date the domestication of horses to around 3,500BCE in the Eurasian Steppes and Kazakhstan, but a beautiful cave painting of horses found in Lascaux, France, dating to 17,000 BPE, might suggest a much earlier time that humans and horses lived closely together. Another great depiction of a horse dating from the late Bronze Age is the Uffington White Horse situated on the upper slopes of the White Horse Hill in the English civil parish of Uffington and is about 110 m long formed from deep trenches filled with crushed white chalk.

Throughout our history horses have played a pivotal role in our societies from being the main form of transportation to being an animal that we can play with. It is no wonder that we immortalized them in our arts and crafts. The dressing of horses were as important as the dressing of their owners and great craftsmanship were employed to make/weave unbelievable horse blankets and saddlebags for the horses. No expense was spared to ensure that the horses were dressed up from head to tail in the most elaborate of ways.

Horses were often featured in the Persian carpets as is evident in the Pazyryk carpet (oldest remaining piled carpet), but during the Islamic invasion of Persia the portrayal of humans and animals in art was forbidden. It would only again be revived by the Safavid rulers who were keen patrons of the arts and requested the great master weavers to create carpets that depicted the royal horses, hunters and sportsmen on horseback. Polo was a game used to prepare soldiers for combat and was a great source of entertainment together with hunting. It is often depicted in carpets and miniature paintings of the time.

Today hunting carpets are still produced mainly in Isfahan, Iran, and because of the fine detail required they are mostly woven with silk. Horse blankets and saddlebags are also still produced albeit mostly for the owner’s own use. Pictured here is an antique Kurd Khorasan saddlebag in the Ghorbany Private Collection.

Written by Vanessa Ghorbany

References:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Domestication_of_the_horse
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Horse
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Uffington_White_Horse
• http://gdiran.blogspot.co.za/ 2011/03/graphic-design-in- persian-carpets.html

We know that wine is very old. The first thing Noah did after he landed on Mount Ararat and the waters subsided was to plant a vine and make wine. Move on a few millennia and we have Joseph in jail with the baker and the wine pourer (sommelier) of the Pharaoh. There are many other Biblical accounts on the use and importance of wine and it is so suitable then that the earliest wine makers to meticulously document their art, were the monks toiling the lands of the monasteries and making really good wine that they eventually sold. We know the weaving industry is very old, from textiles to carpets. The nomads needed tents, bedding and clothing and weaving was developed to fulfil these needs.

What then make these two cultures survive through time?

Well, it is exactly TIME that gives it its longevity. Few items become better with time and these two cultures produce exactly such products that can only really be appreciated with the passing of time. There is some magical alchemy that happens when the grape leaves the vineyard and enters the barrel. The process of fermentation with the help of time transforms it into a liquid that captures the aromas and energies of the place in which it grows and ages. The same magical alchemy happens when the weaver takes each strain of meticulously dyed wool to create a whole masterpiece with each woven knot and it is only with the passing of time that the colours will settle into the intended colouring of the wool dyer.

If you could ever have a picture made of what a good old wine tastes like, there is no doubt that a Persian carpet would be it. The complexity of colour and design matches the complexity of flavours and aromas in a wine. Just as every bottle of wine holds its little secrets in the flavours, a Persian carpets holds its little secrets in the woven pattern that can be read like an old manuscript by those who know the language. The great difference between them is that when you open that bottle of wine and drank it, the taste and flavours can only live on in your memory; but a Persian carpet can be felt and touched and looked at for generations.

It seems as if an invisible power helps both these cultures survive and evolve through wars, invasions and changes of mankind, sometimes even pushed to the brink of extinction. That is possibly its’ greatest magic: that the people who make it come and go, but the art of transforming a grape into wine and wool into a Persian carpet survives from generation to generation, thanks to the farmers and weavers who pass on their skills. It links past with present, it transports us back to that exact moment when the wine maker dreamed of what this wine would become and the weaver envisioned cutting his completed carpet off the loom. Once the bug has bitten you, you will never get enough of either. The thirst for knowledge on it and the almost quasi-religious experience both gives you is what eventually turns a consumer into a collector, and a collector into a treasurer.