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Woven From the Soul, Spun From the Heart: Four Centuries of Iranian Textile Arts
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13919 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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2 / 1988 |
1,999 Words |
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Louise Sheldon
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A veritable treasure trove of over one hundred Iranian art textiles, spanning four hundred years, has emerged from the vaults of the Textile Museum in Washington, D.C. Now being seen by the public for the first time ever, their startling beauty and extraordinary technological complexity are brought to light in a broad-ranging exhibition entitled Woven from the Soul, Spun from the Heart.
Cultural Significance
This first integrated study of the role of textiles in the development of the Persian nation (now Iran) reveals their unique importance to international trade and economics and to the cultural environment. The result of extensive scholastic research, the touring exhibition traces the evolution of the art through the major textile-producing eras, of the Safawid and Kajar dynasties, from the sixteenth to early twentieth century.
The splendor that typified the Safawid court is conveyed at once in a few textiles displayed in an introductory gallery. Against the lustrous silk pile of golden velvet, a quartet of female figures captured in a graceful S-shaped stance are linked by the curvaceous stems of giant flowers, whose vivid reds, whites, and blues are as vibrant today as when they were woven into foil-wrapped yellow silk three centuries ago. Another superbly designed velvet displays the less Europeanized, distinctly Persian figures of young falconers arrayed in the bejeweled extravagance of Safawid nobility. An early fragment shows the vigorous arabesque of an ogival lattice, under-laid with circling stems of pomegranate and palmetto blossoms. In this initial sampling, the richness and diversity attained by Iranian textiles become apparent; one begins to sense the individual weaver's deep involvement in each creative work:
The robe I bore was spun within my heart
And woven in my soul. A silken robe,
Composed of words, that eloquence designed.
I labored hard to draw its warp and woof
From deep within myself.
Court poet Farrukhi of Sistan wrote these lines, from which the exhibition's title was taken, in the eleventh century, an era when combining words and themes in repeated structures and patterns was frequently compared to weaving in Persia. Conversely, professional weavers enhanced their works with philosophic and mystic concepts by weaving into them inscriptions, invocations, and signatures. These were inevitably intertwined with the gently curving lines of a floral motif, the most characteristic element of Iranian textiles. These rounded shapes, taken from nature, set Persian weavings visibly apart form the bluntly angular lines of Caucasian and Central Asian textile design.
The first section of the Textile Museum's exhibition, appropriately entitled "Meaning and Metaphor," explores the significance of imagery in textile design. The well-represented princely pastimes of hunting and falconry are rapidly comprehended. A less obvious image, wine drinking, signifies spiritual intoxication, as well as drunkenness. Over the centuries, moments of high drama stolen from the vast wealth of Persian literature were captured in both court painting and textile design. The rose with a bird, the poppy with a butterfly, deer, or
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