Kerman

Kerman refers to both a city and a province in south central Iran. The city itself is one of the great historic weaving centres of Persia and is the place to which one of the most distinctive groups of late 16th century to mid-17th century carpets is attributed, the so-called “vase” carpets. This terminology refers both to the technique of carpets in a wide range of designs and also to one specific design, one of all-over stylised flowers and huge palmettes with vases of Chinese form places at intervals throughout the field. In the second half of the 19th century, Kerman was one of foremost centres of “revivalist” weaving. All rugs and carpets were woven with the asymmetric knot and most on cotton foundations with wool pile; however, there are some rare examples with silk or part silk pile and some examples on silk foundations with wool pile.

A number of great ustadan or master-weavers are associated with this period, between about 1860 and 1920. Several of their names were recorded by A.C. Edwards in his pioneering book The Persian Carpet and are known from signed examples of their work; they include three generations of the Khan family – Mohsen, Hassan and Khashem – three other unrelated ustadan with the same family name – Ahmed Khan, Ahmed Ali Khan and Zeman Khan – and three other particularly well known weavers, Aziizollah, Ali Reza amd perhaps the greatest of all, Sheikh Hossein. In addition, several European firms established factories in Kerman and there are several surviving carpets of suburb quality bearing signatures by two of the most important, Castelli Brothers and Milani.

One of the most abiding features of late-19th and early-20th century Kerman weavings, in particular those associated with the village of Ravar close to Kerman City (often mistakenly given as Laver in Western rug literature), is the dense all-over floral pattern, often with botehs, derived from the designs of shawls for which Kerman was the centre of production in the early- to mid-19th century. Many of the most celebrated of these rugs are both signed and also have central pictorial ovals with finely woven “reproductions” of European paintings. A number also bear the names of those for whom they were woven, including two or three of the leading Bakhtiari khans (see Bakhtiari) who were made governors of Kerman province in the first two decades of the 20th century.