Bijar

Bijar, a town almost exactly due west of Tehran in north-west Persia, has given its name to the surrounding area and is a term used generically to describe all the rugs from the many villages that are marketed both through Bijar itself and through Tehran. The principal characteristic of Bijar rugs is great thickness and durability; whereas older examples were single wefted, those made in the last 70 or 80 years have tended to be double wefted. All are symmetrically knotted and the rows of knots are beaten down at the time of weaving to create this dense and extremely hardwearing fabric. This is a Kurdish area and the designs, therefore, follow the Kurdish repertoire of floral and geometric motifs and often have large and somewhat eccentric medallion designs that commentators have tried to associate with various ancient Kurdish belief systems, including shamanism, Zoroastrianism, Islam and several somewhat odd cults of their own.

Almost a distinct type from the rugs and carpets that make up the market in Bijar weavings today, are the late-19th and early-20th century examples often marketed under the name Garrus. This was the name formerly given to Bijar and was also the family name of the ruling family of Kurdish khans. Several carpets with inscriptions to members of this illustrious family have survived and some of these are woven in a manner distinct from later Bijar rugs. Although almost all are symmetrically knotted and double wefted, a small number have been recorded with single wefts and, very occasionally, silk wefts, either bleached white or dyed red. Many of these carpets have the Garrus arabesque design, of which the McMullan carpet in the Metropolitan Museum with the altered date is probably the most famous, although certainly not the most beautiful. There are also examples with all-over designs of shrubs, often in conjunction with a small, central, lobed rectangular medallion and small corner pieces. After the arabesque, the best-known Garrus design is a large irregular hexagonal medallion with anchor finials at top and bottom sitting on a plain field (generally either dark blue or red) with corner pieces (usually of a different ground to the central medallion, but sometimes the same, cf. Plate 231), which join, or nearly join, across the base and down the sides so as create the effect of the field being itself a large, stepped, hexagonal medallion. These joined corners, like the central medallion, often contain welldrawn flowering shrubs and simple arabesques. In many instances, it seems that such floral elements are closely related to the shrub carpets woven in the 'vase' technique in 17th century Kerman and there are other 19th and 20th century Kurdish carpets, such as those with stylised chahar bagh (four gardens) design, that seem derived from the same source.