Learn about the symbols of Iranian “Persian” Carpets (Video)

Iranian “Persian” Carpets from Chris Beauchamp on Vimeo.

In July 2010, Chris and I visited Iran for 3 weeks. While there, we met a man named Abed. I like to describe him as an “Iranian hippie”.

We spent four won­der­ful days with him in Esfahan, Iran. He shared his mind and style of life with us, taking us to the new, hip parts of town, as well the old his­tor­ical ones. Above all, he opened our eyes to the history, the unique story and the life behind each and every Iranian “Persian” Carpet. Each carpet has meaning unique to itself. The two broad cat­egor­ies of carpets are City Weave and Nomadic.

In this video, Abed teaches the sig­ni­fic­ance of common symbols found in carpets. The video fea­tures the two Nomadic carpets Chris and I bought to com­mem­or­ate our epic eight month journey and visit to Iran.

Music by Niyaz. Footage by Chris Beauchamp. Video pro­duc­tion and editing by Laura Beauchamp.

Please do not repro­duce without per­mis­sion. www.outtheresomewhere.ca

This entry was posted in Iran, Video! and tagged , , , , , on by .

About Laura

Photographer, educator, tour guide, with experience in museums and heritage. Also, singer dancer and all-around extrovert.

2 thoughts on “Learn about the symbols of Iranian “Persian” Carpets (Video)

  1. Louise Vinciguerra

    I own a rug...I am not sure what type of rug it is. I pur­chased the rug from a man that has traveled to many dif­fer­ent coun­tries during his life. I noticed that there is a symbol in only one of the corners of the rug and I wondered what the sig­ni­figance of the symbol was...just curious.
    Thank you in advance for any help that you might be able to provide for me.

    [Reply]

    Chris Beauchamp Reply:

    Post a link to a pic and we can try to find out... :) We’re not experts, but there are lots of people out there.

    One thing we learned, some of the nomadic carpets have sparse symbols because it rep­res­en­ted things like scarce animals in a field.

    One other thing we learned is that the carpet makers do most of their work without a pattern, and like to invent small unique symbols or even just make a mistake.

    [Reply]

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>