Textile Museum Rug Conference and Exhibition
Celebrates Persian Carpets

Fifty people from coast to coast gathered for the 12th Rug Convention at The Textile Museum in Washington Saturday, December 5, to hear various speakers discuss Persian carpets. A splendid exhibition of Persian weavings, all "Woven from the Soul, Spun from the Heart" and dating from the Safavid Dynasty (16th century) through the Qajar dynasty (19th century), provided a lush background for the proceedings. Among the museum's Safavid weavings, silks were paramount. All manner of them -- velvets, damasks, satins, silver and gold cloth, taffetas, and gold brocade (reportedly) the world's most expensive class of fabric in the 1660s) illustrated that happy conjunction of technological development, economic power, and political stability which led to a memorable cultural achievement. These silks were woven at great expense to be purchased by an elite. Cat. 39. Safavid fragment. TM inventory number R33.7.1.

The disappearance of a luxury market for court carpets coincided with the political upheavals of the early l8th century. One can look at annual silk production to follow the fortunes of the Persian economy from the collapse of the Safavid dynasty in 1722 through much of the l9th century. Dutch factors, for instance, estimated Persian silk production it 600 tons in 1650; production then declined to 200 tons in 1750 following the Afghan invasions; it rose to 1,000 tons in 1850 during a period of relative stability under the Qajars, then declined to 99 tons in 1877 following the visitation of the silkworn disease in 1865.

At the same time, foreign imports, primarily cotton textiles, replaced local Persian products. First, better quality Indian cotton prints, then cheap, brightly colored cotton cloth from Europe were imported. Meanwhile, Persian silk production shifted from the export of spun silk to raw silk. The resulting dislocation of jobs related to textiles was severe. In 1850, for example, there were 800 silk looms operating in Kashan compared to 8,000 during the Safavid period.

The available pool of cheap labor in the last half of the 19th century was soon put to work producing carpets to meet a growing European demand. Persian carpets displayed at a series of international exhibitions beginning at London's Crystal Palace in 1851 created interest among the European middle class, as did the representation of carpets in Orientalist paintings. Led by Ziegler in Arak, some European firms organized and developed carpet production. They were soon followed by groups of Persian merchants, especially those from Tabriz.

The emerging carpet industry soon assumed a significant role in the Persian economy. The number of people employed in carpet production rose from 1,000 In 1860 to 65,000 in 1910. Carpet production as a percentage of Persian export rose from virtually nothing in 1850 to 12 percent in the period from 1911 to 1913.

According to Carol Bier, the first speaker at the rug convention, the typical l9th century city rug was very different from its Safavid predecessors. It had wide borders and an oblong field showing repeated patterns. The motifs found most often were botehs and stripes with meandering tendrils and other floral designs, as shown in no. 72 and no. 76 (both Senneh kilims) in the exhibition catalog.

Ms. Bier, associate curator, Eastern Hemisphere Collections, The Textile Museum, also illustrated a Safavid origin for the repeating Herati pattern so plentifully present in l9th century rugs. Catalog no. 8, a small l6th century damask woven in Kashan, shows outward turned palmettes at four cardinal points surrounding a central blossom; four stems connect the pattern in the familiar diamond configuration. Tendrils in the two lower quadrants of the diamond cross the stems at right angles and head toward blossoms in the field.

The Safavid origin of the Herati pattern was later challenged by Dr. Murray Eiland. He showed this design emerging from 17th century Indo-Herat carpets, as he had previously done in his book Chinese and Exotic Rugs and elsewhere. This origin, however, varied enough from the design in the Textile Museum's silk damask to suggest that the Herati design might have been drawn from both sources and that the validity of one source doesn't necessarily negate the other.

Dr. Eiland, however, found little originality in the design of 19th century rugs. He illustrated a simplification of form in classic rugs in the development of Herati, Mina-Khai, Harshang, and other familiar designs. He also showed the uses of the boteh to be derivative from the vocabulary motifs in classic rugs.

There's no lack of originality, however, in many of the pieces of the l9th century carpets collected by the late Shah in the Gulistan Palace. Here are many instances of secondary motifs from older designs given prominence with freshnness and vitality in brilliant and various palettes surely reminiscent of those in Safavid carpets. Slides of some Gulistan carpets were shown by Michael Seidman, who read accompanying remarks prepared by Donald N. Wilber. It's unfortunate that Dr. Wilber was indisposed and was unable to add other comments.

Some of the liveliest commentary in the conference came in the afternoon from P.R.J. (Jim) Ford, Eastern Kayam OCM (Oriental Carpet Manufactory) London. As heir of A. Cecil Edwards's legacy at Oriental Carpet Merchants (sic) (OCM), Mr. Ford had ransacked the company archives for material about the origins of the company and the original principals. James Baker and four associates founded OCM in 1908. He was the son of George Baker, the official gardener for the Turkish sultan; he was also the uncle of A.C. Edwards.

James Baker had called Cecil Edwards a "doomed man" in 1915 for the latter's finicky attempts to control the quality of the carpet production he had begun in Hamadan in 1910. No one, however, who saw the downturned mouth and the dark eyes smoldering with passionate intensity shown in Edwards visage would have so badly underestimated Jim Baker's nephew. Cecil Edwards's memorably intense face was one the most striking images projected on the screen all day and served as a suitable reminder of the strong influence he has any discussion of the commercial aspects of the late 19th century Persian rug boom.

A rug boom in 1987 it was not, however. When asked about current Persian rug production as a member of a panel discussing rugs in the market, Jim Ford replied emphatically that "current rug production in Iran is of no interest to most of the world," that only old Persian rugs command attention. Too many Persian rugs, according to Ford, are now woven with bad wool colored with the cheap dyes of "catastrophic" quality. He then described a rug seen in a recent trip to Kerman in which a black dye had been substituted for indigo blue. The black had subsequently bled into areas of undyed woo1 so that the piece presented itself as a "spongy grey mass with green highlights." By contrast, new carpets from Western Turkey have, he said, excellent wools and dyes.

The countryside in Iran, said Ford, has been depopulated by absorption of young men into the army. The subsequent impoverishment of the farming economy has been so severe that Iran, historically an exporter of agricultural products, is now importing butter.

George Bailey, rug expert at Christie's East and another member of Jim Ford's panel on Persian rugs in the market, shifted the discussion back to old rugs. The most popular old rugs in Christie's auction market are Serapis, Herizes, Bijars, Sultanabads, Ferahans, Motashem Kashans, and Saruqs made before 1920. The qualities he looks for in choosing rugs for sales are subtle, soft colors, pleasing designs, and good wool.

The final speaker, Dr. Annette Ittig, University of Toronto, returned to the conference theme concerning the renaissance of Persian city carpets with a report on the activities of the Ziegler Co. in central Iran at the end of the l9th century. Ziegler built a headquarters compound in Sultanabad in 1880 and eventually controlled 2,500 carpet looms in the area. The company bought and exported Khurasan and Turkoman carpets as well as those contracted and made under its own supervision.

In short, Ziegler's carpet production from 1880 to 1920 told a story of foreign entrepreneurs making local entrepreneurs their agents. Carpets produced from this partnership had simplified designs and introduced repeated patterns into production of carpets in a tradition inherited from the Safavid past.

A few words about Carol Bier's wonderful exhibition: Great rugs have great colors. I saw good colors everywhere in this exhibition, not the raw, uniformly applied colors derived from synthetic dyes but soft, mellow colors, many of which, despite their age, are astonishingly bright. Consider catalog no. 39, three Safavid fragments. The palmettes and animals are surely drawn with good proportions and good linear development. The sense of movement is grand and elegant. Yet I came away from these pieces with an overwhelming impression of pleasing colors moving from complement to contrast and back again for dramatic effect. In the collection of tribal rugs, I was dazzled by the bright amber field of catalog no. 107, a Khamseh Confederacy rug and an ethnographic masterpiece which George Hewitt Meyers had the good taste and prescience to buy as early as 1915. The dark spandrels in this rug recall the graphic arrangement in the pieced cover shown in catalog no. 75, a reminder that tribal and urban designs are not as far apart as one might think. The best piece among the tribal rugs, however, was a small Shahsavan saddlebag once owned by Joseph McMullan. Here good graphics emphasize a few simple, strong colors with good balance and exquisite clarity.

Cat. 107. Khamseh Confederacy rug. TM inventory number R33.7.1.