Persian Carpet weaving in Zoroastrian city of Yazd

The city of Yazd has a long history of fine textile weaving, in particular hand-loom silk fabrics. Due to the arrival of machine-made fabrics, weavers in Yazd started to learn and practice carpet weaving instead.  The use of fine weave, soft wool and designs in Yazd’s Persian carpets is very similar to Kerman carpets. Kerman is the closest large city to Yazd and most famous for its fine Persian carpets. Similar to Kerman rugs, the warps and wefts are cotton in Yazd carpet productions.

In the early years of production (late 19^th Century), designs were inspired by Kerman and Kashan carpets (another famous town in central Persia with long history of fine Persian carpet production). However, after the Second World War and the increased demand for Persian carpets in Europe and United States, Yazd weavers with the help of Kermani merchants developed new designs to build a new market for their own goods. Nevertheless even after this transition, Yazd Persian carpets were still inspired by Kerman motifs with better colours, finer weave and increased pile density. Persian rug designers and weavers in Kerman were enticed by higher wages by merchants in Yazd to move there to produce better quality rugs than their southern rival city of Kerman.

Yazd Persian carpets are mostly woven with wool imported from Kerman and occasionally seen with silk inter-touch. Carpets from Yazd are cottage industry weaves (use of home looms) and mostly in larger sizes.

Largest Persian rug woven in modern times unveiled in Iran

Even in today’s economic environment, there are still orders coming from palaces, presidential offices, parliament houses and places of worship around the world to make very large Persian rugs in Iran. Just recently, there was an order from the main Abu Dhabi mosque in United Arab Emirate (UAE).

This rug is measured 133 x 41 meters ( 5,453 square meters or 60,468 square feet) larger than a football pitch and it was made on nine different looms in nine-piece sections and joined together after delivery.

There are over thousand stylised flowers woven in the field of this Persian rug with many other motifs surrounding them in 25 different colours as can be seen in the picture.

The motifs in this Persian rug are designed to reflect the sculptured work in the ceiling of the mosque, giving it a colourful reflection of life under the prayer's feet.

Four shades of green, five blues, four reds, six shades of cream and six other colours are combined to create this beautiful and vibrant enormous Persian rug masterpiece.

The design of the rug took over six months to research in order to make sure that the colours are in harmony with its surrounding whilst keeping with the traditional Persian rug design.

This carpet was woven in nine different workshops using ten master weavers in each workshop in the city of Neishabour in the province of Khorasan (north east of Iran).

As with most Persian rugs, the pile is 100% wool woven on cotton warp and weft. The wool was of the finest quality and sourced from province of Kerman and New Zealand. There is no accurate information about how long it took to produce this rug. However we can estimate that at a rate of three hundred square meters per year per section using over one hundred weavers, it would take two years using about one thousand weavers to weave this rug.
Majid Mirmohamadi
219 Canterbury Rd
Canterbury, victoria 3126
PH: 03-98307755

www.majidcarpets.com