It has been thought that the great carpets of the sixteenth century were made in Tabriz, but this is hardly possible because firstly, in addition to being Turkish speaking, the weavers of Tabriz, and indeed of the whole of Azerbaijan, use the Turkish or Ghiordes knot, and the sixteenth century masterpieces are all constructed with the Persian or Senneh knot. Secondly, the Ardebil carpet is dated 1539/40 and it is assumed that this is the year it was either completed, or very near to it. If that is so, the piece was being made a few years previously in 1534, the year when Tabriz had been taken by the Ottomans, and the capital temporarily removed to Kasvin. It seems improbable that the court manufactory was taken away and set up again during the making of this carpet.

Like the rest of the country, Tabriz was subject to the gentle decline in textile art, but the merchants of the city traded in a multitude of commodities with whichever conqueror came along, and by the middle of the nineteenth century it was again a very wealthy city. As foreign trade expanded, so Tabriz prospered, the merchants bringing goods from all corners of Persia for onward transmission to Constantinople (Istanbul) and thence to Europe and America. Once it became the practice to weave custom-made carpets for the various overseas markets, often under European supervision, Tabriz weavers made vast quantities, and still do so.

Unfortunately they have set their quantities above their qualities, and although between the two world wars some very high quality pieces were produced, very low qualities were, alas, also introduced, and even today some very poor carpets come from that city. To their credit, however, it must be said that high-grade carpets can still be obtained, but not enough of them are seen on the market, probably because of their price.

Before we leave Tabriz, it should be mentioned that, unlike all other Persian weavers, the weavers of Tabriz do not tie the knots with their fingers, but with a knife with a hook on the end. They can work astonishingly quickly with this instrument. The blade is, of course, used to cut the yarn after the knot has been made.

]]> http://www.coveringrugs.com/tabriz-persian-rugs/feed/ 1 http://www.coveringrugs.com/qum-and-nain-rugs/ http://www.coveringrugs.com/qum-and-nain-rugs/#comments Mon, 03 Nov 2008 20:10:12 +0000 irfan http://www.coveringrugs.com/?p=82 Both these towns are on the main road skirting the western edge of the desert, the road from the capital, Teheran, to Kirman, the old route to India. Both started weaving carpets in the decade before the Second World War. Both produce fine rugs. Here the similarities end.

Qum is an important town in the religious sense, with many pilgrims visiting its shrine every year, for here are buried some of the Sefavi and Qajar rulers. Strangely enough, the town has no weaving history. When weaving commenced in Qum, it was not with the normal traditional designs that the weavers worked. The designers created new forms, based on the traditional patterns but in small all-over designs, as opposed to the designs of Kashan.

Nain was important for the weaving of woollen cloth until it declined in the nineteen-thirties, when the weavers turned their energies to rugs. From here come now some of the finest rugs ever woven in Persia. They are made from finely spun wool, which is short cropped, giving a clarity of design unmatched elsewhere. They also sometimes weave with part silk pile, giving a glittering effect which results in the illusion that the rug is embossed. Always expensive, never seen in profusion, if any modern Persian rugs are to create the treasures of tomorrow, those from Nain will be among the leaders.

Some further names should be recounted because of the contribution they have made historically, or for their place in the modern world of hand-knotted fabrics. Firstly, the carpets of Joshaghan, just off the main road south of Kashan, have remained almost identical in design and one design only for over two hundred years. Not many are turned out today, but those which find their way onto the market are quite unmistakable. The name of Senneh will not be found on Persian maps, the town being called Sanandaj, but in carpet lore Senneh is the name given to the particular type of knot used by the Persian weavers as distinct from the Turkish one. Why the name of Senneh was given to this knot is a mystery, because the town itself lies in the heart of the Kurdish area of Persia, where the people not only speak Turkish, but naturally use the Turkish knot in their weaving as well.

A possible answer may be that the rugs of Senneh are so finely woven that early western observers, not checking their facts, were misled into thinking that only the Persian knot could have produced such weaving. It would be a natural mistake to make, because the Senneh is very fine, with a peculiarly lustreless pile, cropped much shorter than any other Persian rug. Not many are made now, and it is the semi-antique rugs which are in demand, and these are naturally becoming scarcer as time goes by.

In contrast, the Bijar carpet from the town of that name in the neighbourhood of Sanandaj is, and always was, a robust effort, solid, in many cases so hard it could hardly be folded for packing. Sultanabad or Arak, to give the town its modern name, has been mentioned previously as being the place where Messrs Ziegler & Co. began business in 1885. Today the various trade-named carpets such as Muscabad, Mahal, Saruk and Sultanabad are still being-produced in this area. From here also come the dainty Malayer rugs as well as the hard-wearing Fereghan carpets. It is difficult to know which names to leave out in dealing with the above areas.

The goods from all these places, and many more villages in the surrounding countryside, are now marketed in Hamadan, which is a large city where a number of European exporting houses have offices and buying agents to gather carpets from an area comprising some hundreds of villages. Hamadan has had its moments historically, but not in the art of weaving. Today it is one of the most important cities in Persia for the collection and forwarding of goods to America and Europe. Also from this area come the unmistakable rugs and runners known as Sarabend. The design of these is always a version of the pine cone or leaf design.

Cities, towns and villages, all make rugs and carpets, but there are also the tribal areas, which cannot be left out of any discourse on this subject.

The Bakhtiari tribe is probably the best known in Persia, and one of the largest. Rugs from their area, which is west of Isfahan, are in a rather coarse weave, often in garden or panel designs. Very colourful, these rugs are not tribal at all in character, having a more formal appearance than one would normally associate with a nomadic people. The reason for this lies in the fact that these rugs are not made by the Bakhtiari tribe proper, but by the villagers in an area where a section of their people settled more than a hundred years ago, since when they have led a sedentary existence, in contrast to the main tribe which still lives a nomadic life.

Another large tribe, this time really nomadic, is the Afshari. These people are of Turkish origin, and they only moved into Persia in the sixteenth century. Their habitat is the area between Shiraz and Kirman, and their rugs are sold on both markets. Also sold on the Shiraz market are the products of the Quashqai tribe, inhabitants of the Fars district, to the north of Shiraz.

The other important tribal area from which rugs emanate is in the north-east of the country. Here are the wandering Beloutchi people, who provide the cheap dark purplish-red and black coloured rugs known throughout the world as Beloutch rugs. The Tekkes and Yamouts inhabit the frontier territory common to Persia and Turkestan. From these people come the so-called Bokhara rugs, which will be more fully discussed in the next chapter.

Indeed, one of the most common Persian designs, woven in many parts of the country in various forms, is known as the ‘Herati’ design. Somehow the name of Herat became associated with a particular type of carpet in those early days, but it is never used for the modern product.

The nineteenth-century revival of the carpet saw the emergence of what is known as the Khorassan carpet  not necessarily made in Meshed, but in the province of that name, of which Meshed is the principal city. Khorassans were not, however, commercial pieces in the sense in which we regard the term, even the sizes being of the old Persian proportions long and narrow. Mesheds as we now know them are made in western sizes for export, and they come in various qualities. In general they have a somewhat sombre appearance, not suitable for chemical washing, and the yarn lacks the lustre associated with other Persian weaves. Both Turkish and Persian knotting is employed here. Carpets made with the former are actually named Turkbaff, and not Meshed, which definition is used for the Persian knotted variety. The word Turkbaff means ‘Turkish knot’, while Farsibaff refers to the Persian knot.

So far, only the largest cities of Persia have been discussed, those in which the art of design has played a big part in their development over the centuries, and which have placed Persia in the forefront of carpet production in the Orient. There are, however, some smaller places, possibly not so well known, which have also made, and still make, their contribution to the overall picture of the country which produces a greater variety of carpets than any other.

The woollen carpets of Kashan from the middle of the nineteenth century are still looked for in the markets of the world. Made with extremely fine wool and mellowed with age, they are magnificent specimens and now have a wonderful natural sheen or glazure on the pile which could not be emulated by chemical washers. This is due to the type of wool used in Kashan in those days. Of later years, and up to today, Kashan still turns out good quality pieces, but with two reservations: firstly, the yarns used are in no way comparable to those used fifty to a hundred years ago and secondly there is a lack of variety in the designs.

Kashan also produces silk rugs and carpets, and here the modern product faces the criticism of sameness of design, coupled with a harshness of colour which one is anxious not to interfere with lest the colours should be disturbed. In other words, the dyes may be good, but they do not show it with confidence. However, the silk Kashans of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries have stood the test of time and when in good condition are much sought after for their beauty.

The Kirmanis are the masters of designs in floral form. They are adept at producing the most intricate designs of all. In the nineteenth century, when their products started to attract the attention of the western world due to the enterprise of the Tabriz merchants, they were constructed of fine wool, very closely woven, and the pile was cropped short, giving extremely good definition of design. The multitude of colours employed gave an overall picture of quiet efficiency, not matched in the carpets of the time. America, however, wanted a more durable and heavier textured product, and gradually the Kirman weave took on a different appearance. In design they still retained the hallmark of Kirman draughtsmanship, but a high pile was employed which took away some of the precision of the definition seen in the earlier pieces.

The colours were also somewhat crude, but chemical washing took care of that problem, so that by the nineteen-twenties a carpet had evolved which was known in the trade as the ‘American Kirman’. America was, and probably still is, the largest market for Kirmans, so no blame should attach to the makers for providing the requirements for a profitable market, even though some of the artistry dies in so doing. After the Second World War, the market demanded designs with a French flavour, and these they got also. Today, Kirmans are good, sound pieces in the main, their crowning glory lying in the ingenuity of their designers but, with the introduction of modern chemical dyes, the glorious harmony of their exquisite soft tones has inevitably been lost.

Revival of the craft did not begin in Isfahan until after the First World War, and today Isfahan rugs and carpets are purely commercial and not very attractive 3 there is something about the finish which belies their beautiful designs. Their colours, too, appear to lack the blend of shades which the designs deserve.

The above procedure has been given in some detail in oder to illustrate the fact that vast armies of highly skilled work people were necessary to turn out these masterpieces, and we still do not know exactly where any of them were made.

With the death of Shah Abbas the Great, a slow decline set in which was not to be reversed until well into the nineteenth century. The revival came through two sources. Firstly, the Shah of the reigning Qajar dynasty started to take an interest in the arts at about the middle of the century  and, secondly, the merchants of Tabriz found a growing trade in Persian carpets and rugs for export.

Gradually a business with Europe was built up, not only in Tabriz, but in the surrounding area, and in 1883 the first European firm established an office in Sultanabad (now Arak). This was a Manchester firm which exported cotton piece goods to Persia. This firm, Ziegler & Co., had been dealing with” Persia for twenty years or more, and already had an office in Tabriz. Apparently they found difficulty in getting their money out of Persia, and it was suggested that they should order carpets for European consumption, the export of which would provide the necessary per contravalue. Before very long Ziegler & Co. were doing a large business in Persian carpets from Sultanabad, and other places in the area, not only by ordering carpets of traditional sizes and designs, but by cultivating a market in special sizes, and even designs, for the European market.

Hitherto carpets had been made in sizes applicable to Persian use, but henceforth, the now familiar sizes were being made for use in rooms of very different shapes. Ziegler’s also used softer shades of colour than had been used before, particularly a soft green shade, and although the carpets were not of the best quality, even today one can find a piece in good condition, which could only have been from the looms controlled by this enterprising firm. They were the first Europeans to put their name to a quality of Persian carpet, and even now, long after they liquidated (before the Second World War) an auction room catalogue may still refer to a piece as a ‘Ziegler’. Ziegler’s were also responsible for obtaining the Ardebil carpet in 1886 from the mosque at Ardebil, together with the second carpet mentioned earlier.

Other European business-houses, particularly German ones, followed Ziegler’s lead, and the Americans also sent representatives to place orders with weavers in towns and villages. Meanwhile, the Tabriz merchants had not been idle. They took control of much of the weaving in such distant places as Meshed, Kashan, and Kirman, either by establishing factories or placing orders with weavers on a cottage industry basis. They, too, started to evolve new designs, which could incorporate the new colour schemes wanted in the western world, and the new western sizes.

Kirman appeared to be the chief attraction for the American market, and although other types of goods were naturally imported into America, the Kirman was one of the most popular, and it still is so today.

All this activity laid the foundations for a very healthy export business which continues today, and now some of the earlier revival pieces have reached the age of mellowness which bring them almost into the antique category.

By the turn of the century some very good Tabriz and Kirman pieces were being made, and those still in existence today can command good prices in world markets. Armenian and Persian dealers settled in America and Europe, and placed orders back home for special qualities, sizes and designs, and some dealers even today incorporate a symbol or signature unobtrusively placed in a corner on one of the borders, or at the edge of the field, in qualities made exclusively for them which have proved successful.

Shortly after the turn of the century, another innovation was introduced into England. It was known that different waters had different effects upon materials such as wool, and after weaving many carpets were immersed in rivers or dammed-up streams known to be effective, before being offered to the consumer. Certain waters imparted a kind of silky sheen to certain types of wool, and took excess colour out of the carpet, mellowing it somewhat. It became increasingly important to find ways of doing this in the latter part of the nineteenth century and the early part of the twentieth, because genuine old goods became scarce, and it was their mellow colourings that were wanted by the western world.

How then to make the harsh new colours of the contemporary rugs look something like the old ones? The dealers in Tabriz, Constantinople (Istanbul) and other towns tried many ways, one of which was to place the rugs in public places for the daily traffic to trample on them, after which, when the surplus dirt had been removed, the colours would at least have become much softer. The local answers to the problem were interesting enough, but not for the quantity of goods now demanded. The solution was soon to be put on a gigantic commercial basis by an Armenian who set up a chemical washing plant in London in 1907. His name was Shahinian, and for many years he had the monopoly for this process, being the only ‘chemical washer’ in Europe. No need now to find a suitable water or other local means to obtain the required finish for a particular rug or, indeed, for a particular market. Mr Shahinian had the answer in his little bottles.

Carpets were made under contract in every producing country of suitable yarns and dyes for the type of wash they were destined to undergo, and it was this processing enterprise which helped in no small way to make the London transit market the largest in the world, and the centre of world trade in Oriental rugs and carpets. The warehousing for this vast quantity of goods was, and still is, carried out at the Cutler Street Bonded warehouses of the Port of London Authority in the city of London, known colloquially as the PLA or just the ‘Docks’, the latter name being a misnomer, as they are some distance from the river. The actual location of these cold, dark, thick-walled warehouses is very roughly a kind of triangle with sides on Bishopsgate, Houndsditch and Middlesex Street (the famous Petticoat Lane).

The description cold and dark refers only to the buildings, which are very old and were once associated with Clive of India. Go inside these buildings, and a world of colour bursts forth. Here are rugs and carpets from every producing country, old, new, washed, unwashed, and they are all recorded in the stock books, piece by piece, by the Port of London Authority. Each piece has a PLA stock number, and a PLA size, which is accepted by everyone as being correct. The individual traders do, of course, keep records too, but when the carpets enter or leave the Bonded premises, it is the PLA record which is used.

London did not, however, remain the only transit port 5 Germany in particular became an important market, and today it is by far the biggest consumer of Persian goods in Europe.

From the early years of this century the American market also developed, mainly, in the first place, with old goods but later, as these became somewhat scarce, a business was created, particularly with Kirman, in a special type of texture and design which today is easily identified as an ‘American Kirman’.

The Persians have always been masters of design, not only in rugs but in every conceivable form of art. In our particular field, ever since the Golden Age, any Persian carpet has always been of a ‘complete’ design, that is, a design in which every motif is in the right proportion to the whole. We are speaking, of course, of town carpets as distinct from tribal or rural cottage pieces, many of which, although masterpieces of their kind, were not the ultimate result of the artist’s conception. The towns from which these exquisitely designed carpets emanated are not many in number, and a few words about their turbulent history will show that much dedication was required to carry on with artistic life in the face of the troubles to which they were subjected.

68 Tabriz carpet of ‘Portuguese’ design. The significance of this design is not understood, nor the reason for the name, although various theories have been given. It has been said that it was executed in the seventeenth century for the Portuguese in Goa, and indeed the sailing ships are manned by Europeans. Whatever the significance, the design appears to be of a volcanic island, the red centre being the crater. The next band of colour is cream, or natural, which could represent the snow line. Then comes green, the tree line, and finally a light brown colour representing sand, before the sea. 19 ft 7 inch X 9 ft 10 inch

Obviously the designers of the day worked with the utmost precision, and the original artist’s conception, or cartoon, was laboriously transferred onto squared paper, each square representing a knot, and in the correct colourings, just as is done today in any carpet design studio.

Next on the list of preparatory operations was the dyeing of the yarn. This again was an extremely skilled job, the secrets of which were handed down from father to son. When we look at a sixteenth or seventeenth century piece now, we see a mellowed version of the original colours. In their early days, the colours would have been rather raw to our eyes, but, of course, blended perfectly. The dyes used were naturally of vegetable, mineral or animal origin. The fame of these dyemasters spread far and wide, even into England, as we find recorded by the historian Richard Hak-luytin 1579:

Certaine directions given by M. Richard Hackluit of the Middle Temple, to M. Morgan Hubblethorne, Dier, sent into Persia 1579 … In Persia you shall finde carpets of course thrummed wooll, the best of the World, and excellently coloured; those cities and townes you must repair to, and you must use meanes to learne all the order of the dying of those thrummes, which are so died as neither raine, wine nor yet vineger can staine: and if you may attaine to that cunning, you shall not need to feare dying of cloth: For if the colour holde in yarne and thrumme, it will holde much better in cloth … If before you returne you could procure a single good workman in the arte of Turkish carpet making, you should bring the arte into this Realme, and also thereby increase worke to your company.

Unfortunately, we are not informed whether or not Mr Hubblethorne was successful in his quest, but it is highly unlikely. In the old days of ‘natural’ dyes, the art of dyeing was a family tradition, handed on from father to son, and the actual recipes used were jealously guarded secrets, for on the success of these recipes hung the livelihood of the dyer and his family, and it is not at all probable that he would easily part with them to a stranger even more so since that stranger was an infidel from a foreign land.

On this score it is interesting to note that there was one occasion when an Indian dyer was persuaded to part with one or two of his recipes, and delightful reading they make. One, for example, started off with instructions to ‘take alum and cinnamon, grind and sift light as the light dust of the high hills . . .’ Another more prosaic recipe for a good rich red reads:

Take lac colour and cochineal. Steep from four to six days in the sun, in hot weather for the lesser period, stirring constantly, till a rich deep colour comes where some has stood for a few minutes in a thin glass bottle and settled. Then strain through two cloths, and put in pomegranate rind and good iron filings water. Add mineral acid, steep the wool for thirty-six hours, then boil for three hours, wash well and dry.

The thought of stirring that mixture for from four to six days under the full weight of an Indian sun does not sound like a life of ease, but all this labour merely produced one of the colours needed for a carpet. Multiply all this work by twelve or even fifteen and you have some idea of the labour and time that went into the production of some of those Old Masters of the golden age of rug weaving.

After all the preliminary preparations the materials were at last ready for the loom. Looms for hand knotting have not changed much over the centuries. Nomadic people used the horizontal version, and still do so. It is easy to dismantle and move from place to place, and it can easily be re-erected on any small flat area of terrain. However, to make the type of carpet we are reviewing, an upright loom is required, and some pretty long and perfectly straight timbers are necessary. The Ardebil carpet is 17 ft 6 inch wide, so the top and bottom rollers on which the warp threads are wound would have to be somewhat longer than this. For such a size of piece four or five weavers sitting side by side would be about right.

According to early accounts this magnificent sumptuary carpet was woven of the finest silk, the pattern being in the form of a garden in which the gravel paths were represented by gold thread, the streams by silver thread, and the lawns by masses of emeralds sewn to the background. Trees and bushes were depicted with gold and silver thread and precious stones of different colours were used to form the flowers. The purpose of this fabulously expensive carpet was to cover the floor of the palace at Ctesiphon during the winter months so that the king might still enjoy his spring garden, hence the name ‘Spring of Chosroes’. After the fall of the Persian Empire to the Arab invaders, the conquerors, when dividing the spoils, came to the not unreasonable conclusion that such a prize was too much to fall to the lot of one person and it was therefore cut in pieces and apportioned among the leaders. It has been reported that several of the pieces later found their way into the bazaars of Baghdad. Sic transit gloria.

From this date of defeat until the beginning of the Golden Age in the first half of the sixteenth century, we know very little of the art of rug weaving, apart from occasional references in writings concerning the extravagances of certain rulers of the period. Then come the first hundred years or so of the Sefavi dynasty when the finest carpets ever seen were made. The surviving pieces from this period are well catalogued, and many of them can be seen in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, the Museum for Art and Industry, Vienna, the Museo Poldi Pezzoli in Milan, or the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, to name but a few.

Detailed descriptions of these pieces have been published many times, and need not be recounted here, but there is one carpet from this period which seems to warrant further mention, for, to the author’s knowledge, it has not been recorded in any book until now. It is called the ‘Trinitarias’ carpet, so named from the Convent of the Trinitarias Del Calzas of the Calle Lope de Vega, Madrid (the burial place of Cervantes) where it had lain for more than 300 years, being only brought out and used on special feast days. The earliest record of the carpet in the convent’s archives is 1699, but it is reputed to have been given to the Del Calzas nuns by Philip IV of Spain when the Trinitarias Convent was founded in Madrid at the beginning of the seventeenth century. It was never seen by the public until 1928, when it was removed from the convent and exhibited at the Seville World Fair.

Shortly afterwards it was sold to the Spanish Art Gallery in London, after opposition from the Royal Academy of History, Madrid, which wished the Spanish nation to purchase it to prevent it from leaving the country. In fact the opposition to the sale was so great that through the Archbishop of Madrid, the matter was referred to the Pope, who ruled that the nuns should sell it for the best offer. Something over 300,000 pesetas was paid for it, and it reached London at the end of 1929. Later it appeared in an exhibition at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, and in 1940 it was shipped to the Art Gallery of Toronto, Canada, for safe-keeping during the Second World War. At the end of the war, the carpet was returned to the United Kingdom, and was then purchased by the well-known carpet manufacturers James Templeton & Co. Ltd, of Glasgow.

Tempieton’s, makers of fine machine-made carpets, and inventors of the Chenille process of weaving, reproduced the design of the Trinitarias carpet in one of their finest Chenille qualities the ‘Abbey’ quality, and it proved to be a most successful addition to their range of designs. In 1958 Messrs Templeton sold the Trinitarias carpet to the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia, where it is now housed. Technical details of the carpet are as follows:

Size: 10.30 mx 3.40 m (33 ft 9 inch x 11 ft 2 inch)
Knot: Persian or Senneh
Warps and wefts: cotton
Pile: wool

170 knots to the square inch. It is not as finely woven as the examples of the period to be seen in the leading museums in Europe and America, nor is it comparable in its structure, as the foundations are of cotton as opposed to the silk of the other museum pieces. However, it deserves special mention because of its condition, which is wonderful for its age, owing no doubt to the cloistered surroundings in which it was housed for centuries. Even the famous Ardebil carpet in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, which is usually quoted to set the standard for the period, is not a single carpet but the beautifully renovated product of two almost identical carpets.

63 Woven during the reign of Shah Sulay-man (1667-1697) and therefore of the Sefavi dynasty. Attributed to Isfahan. The inscriptions   in   the   main   border,   though   in   an archaic style, and with one of the verses in ‘mirror    image’     are     nevertheless     finely written. They read as follows: The precious royal carpet which lies on the ground boasts that his rank and splendour are greater than all things in the firmament. He has fallen under the feet of the King, and is very happy because he is surrounded by many beautiful women. Why should not this sublime seat be the companion of Zephyr when he has for his merits a face under the feet of such a king Sulayman? On the sublime seat resides a king whose conquests and victories have been thanks to the grace of God innumerable. The heavens have cast down their golden light to illuminate the darkness in which the just King dwells. The justice of the monarch who rules the kingdom is a hundred times greater than that of Solomon.

The firm of Perez (London) Ltd have in their possession a framed fragment, together with the original letter dated 26 January 1926, signed by Mr Alfred Brown, Chairman of Vincent Robinson & Co. Ltd, which reads as follows:

I certify the attached fragment of carpet to be a genuine and actual piece of the world famous Ardebil carpet now in the Victoria and Albert, South Kensington, Museum.

The said carpet was imported by this Company into this country in 1886 of which Company I was then a Partner and Director, and still remain so.

The carpet, with its duplicate, was in a delapidated (sic) condition when imported and was restored to its present condition by incorporating portions of the second carpet by this Company, in which work I took an active part.

The incredible thing about the carpets of the Sefavi period is the fact that nothing whatever is known about where they were made. Certainly they were made in towns or cities, all within a period of just over a century, during which time there were various wars, particularly against Turkey, and the seat of government must have moved quite a few times as ground was lost or won. It is always assumed that the manufacture of these masterpieces was under the patronage of the reigning Shah, and the names of Shah Tahmasp and Shah Abbas the Great, whose reigns cover most of this period, and who were known to be patrons of the arts, are mainly associated with these pieces.

Actually, they must have been made in properly equipped factories, and if one contemplates the amount of work and the number of people necessary to make even one carpet, the total number engaged in textile manufacture in those days can only have been counted in thousands.