Bakhtiari | 295 x 246 cm | Nr. Z-528

Lightly framed Bakhtiari, dark blue with panel pattern

Origin	Pakistan
Dimensions	295 cm x 246 cm (= 7.26 m²)
Construction	hand-knotted
Material	Pile: wool (hand-spun, natural dyes) Weft & Warp: cotton
knots per m²2	200.000
Pile height	5mm
Year of manufacture	2020
Colour	Dark blue, colourful shades
Edition	one-of-a-kind piece

 

Origin

The Bakhtiari (also Bachtiari) are an ancient, widely branching people living in south-western Iran. The collective name for their rugs is Bakhtiar or Bakhtiari, where the ‘i’ corresponds to our preposition ‘of’. Bakhtiari rugs – the rugs of the Bakhtiari – take in numerous sub-provenances with a range of pattern types. For all this breadth, Bakhtiar rugs resemble one another in their colour compositions, in their various handcrafted techniques and in their line, which is always floral.

Bakhtiari rugs are made mainly with natural dyes, which feel pleasant despite their intensity and take on a beautiful patina over the years. Frequently used colours are brown for the outlines, plus red, bottle green, yellow and white as a highlight that gives the rug its likeable character.

 

Pattern

The so-called compartment pattern of this Bakhtiari recalls a lushly planted garden with geometrically ordered beds, each one framed on its own. This design is so characteristic that compartment rugs are also called garden rugs in German. The individual panels in the pattern of this Bakhtiari show different motifs, yet follow a strictly symmetrical, rectangular arrangement.

There is a reason for this: large parts of Persia and many other regions of the Middle and Near East are desert- or steppe-like arid areas, where so-called irrigation horticulture is widely practised. Water is channelled to the beds through small irrigation canals. The panel pattern renders this irrigation system in heavily simplified form. Because of the dryness in these regions, blooming and verdant gardens are also something quite special. The panel pattern therefore probably goes back to the wish to bring a little garden – and with it a small paradise – into the home. In the Koran the term garden, as the earthly counterpart to paradise – a word of Old Persian origin, incidentally – appears very frequently.

The background of this Bakhtiari is dark blue. The border is kept in dark blue.

 

 

Material

The technique used to prepare the materials for the pile of this Bakhtiari is over 200 years old. The wool was dyed with natural dyes and spun by hand. Dyeing with natural or plant dyes is more involved, more costly and more time-consuming than dyeing with chemical colours. For a luminous red, for instance, you need around one kilo of ground madder root as a dyestuff per kilo of wool. For a strong yellow that is not too pale, it takes as much as two kilograms of dyer's weld per kilo of wool. Spinning the wool is just as time- and labour-intensive. And fewer and fewer people still master the art of spinning wool by hand.

But the effort is worth it: dyeing with natural colours lets the high-quality wool keep its natural oil content. Wool dyed with natural colours and spun by hand creates fascinating, shimmering patterns. The charm of hand-spun wool, with its slight irregularities and natural shades, unfolds as a contrast in modern interiors, but equally in rooms furnished in a more traditional or country style. The weft and warp threads of this Bakhtiari are made of cotton. This versatile material is tear-resistant and elastic, which makes it especially suited to a hard-wearing foundation.