They’re 17 people. They have gathered in an old, green place. Behind them is a beautiful, multi-storied mansion. Two of these people seem to be the main couple in this celebration, facing each other. They don’t take eyes off each other. No words are uttered, but instead, these looks in front of the audience are telling us in a thousand different languages “come and hear the story from us”. So we accompany and watch a crowd of young girls and boys who seem to be the guests in this celebration; watch them in a background of the sweet melody of wind and string instruments, which are played by two musicians standing in front of the young couple. Yes, we’ve come to the right place. This is a woven image a Kerman’s Ravar handmade carpet in the Carpet Museum of Iran.
Written above the carpet is “commissioned by Agha Morteza Gholi Khan Bakhtiyari” whose name increases the Iranian associations of this wide and long carpet. Like most other works exhibited in the museum, this carpet has large dimensions: 640cm x 440cm.
Upon entering the main hall of the Carpet Museum of Iran, you find yourself in a completely Iranian atmosphere. A great courtyard with a high ceiling, and a pool in the center; a place where you can escape, even if only for an hour, the humdrum of the daily life in the twenty-first century, so that you would sit and relax for a moment next to the clean water flow of this Iranian pool in the Carpet Museum.
The first few carpets at the entrance of the museum explain why the ceiling is so high. The dimensions of the carpets are too great to be exhibited in ordinary halls.
In the next hall, the map of the Iranian art of carpet-weaving is another attraction. This map shows the areas and regions where carpet-weaving industry has been, and is, common. A bit further, there is a glass box containing carpet-weaving tools including hooks, scissors, combs, etc. suggesting that the Iranian carpet-weaving has never for a moment separated from these seemingly simple tools.
In the Iranian Carpet Museum, we see various kinds of carpets with different designs, from carpets with images inspired by Shahnameh (The Book of Kings, the grand Persian epic by Ferdowsi) to carpets whose worn out texture suggests their historical and artistic significance.
There are also smaller-sized carpets with designs adorned with Persian script, most of which adopted from the classical Persian literature. In conclusion, if you want to escape for an hour the daily life monotony of the third millennium and prefer to spend a short time in front of the visual manifestation of the Iranian history and culture, the Iranian Carpet Museum is the place for you, a place which in addition to its artistic and human content, seems to express an ontological message and meaning, because in this place, the most heartfelt of feelings, that of being away from the modern consumerist life and taking shelter in the fantastic world of carpets is incited.
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