Pictorial Carpet
Pictorial carpet is a name for carpets with decorative aspect. These kind of carpets are framed like a panel and will be placed on the wall . Original pictorial carpets are hand woven, but nowadays different samples of machine woven carpets have took over the market . Hand woven pictorial carpet is an Iranian art and was known as one of the luxury and fancy products from the past because like carpets they have value added and will become a cash easily and their average price is lower than a rug . A pictorial carpet could have different designs but the most important pictorial carpet designs are miniature , religious , fruit, nature , antiquities and wild animals .
One of the most interesting designs on a pictorial carpet is flower pot or a view of birds . This kind of pictorial carpets are suitable for houses with rustication architecture . Because rustication houses usually feels like nature . You can have pictorial carpets with beautiful designs like an alleyway. These pictorial carpets with their lovely textures are more alive than paintings .
History of Iranian pictorial carpet
Process of appearing carpets and kilims has evolved in 5th century B.C. after this carpet weaving flourished. The oldest carpets and rugs are related to central Asia and Pazyryk area and according to designs on the carpets , it is clear than weavers of these carpets are from Achaemenid era. It seems that pictorial carpets were popular in Samanid era like famous "Bahar Khosro" carpet which was gold woven and expensive and design of it was a flower of gardens with birds and rivers according to historians . Carpet weaving was stagnated for about 2 centuries after the attack of Arabs but because Umayyad house loved fancy stuff and they required beautiful things like carpet for their palace decorations this industry grew and there were some changes in carpet designs .
Geometric designs were changed to designs with circular and curved designs and designs like tendrils , flowers , fan palms , cloud masses , mushrooms , different animals , legendary and ordinary birds like dragon , Simorgh, wild cat and deer were mixed in Iranian carpet designs .
In the administration age of Kara Koyunlu and Aq Qoyunlu to the erst of Iran, beautiful carpets were woven, unfortunately there is no sign of these expensive carpets . Weavers of Safavid era did weave 1500 carpets and rugs. In this era, carpet weaving changed its place from a rural and nomadic job from to an important profession in city workshops and merchants started to export them to Europe . For weaving a pictorial carpet with complicated design the weavers used paper maps at first. But after advancement of technology and by using computers and bit image processing algorithms , pictorial carpet design pictures became codes with two parameters of location of the picture and color of each spot by special software .
