Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7fkt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T10:07:49.577Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Art: Crafts, Technology, and Material Culture

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Carol Bier
Carol Bier*
Affiliation:
Textile Museum, Washington, D.C.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Combining Aesthetic Intent with Utilitarian Value, Hand-Crafted objects may be beautiful as well as functional. Crafts rely upon human ingenuity and productivity. They encompass both the products and the processes of production that comprise most aspects of material culture. The crafts of preindustrial Iran achieved distinction for their high levels of technical and aesthetic accomplishment. At different times in Iranian history, crafts sustained local economies, generated income from trade, and brought international fame.

As with all arts, crafts tend to be culturally expressive, exhibiting styles that may be geographically and temporally defined. Determinants of style may include availability of materials, local traditions of craftsmanship, levels of state intervention and other sources of influence, as well as aesthetic preferences. In Iran, from household production for home consumption to cottage industry and commercial city workshops, and from nomadic encampments to court ateliers, crafts represent products of nomads, rural villagers, city dwellers, and courtiers.

Type
Articles
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 31 , Issue 3-4: A Review of the “Encyclopaedia Iranica” , Summer Fall 1998 , pp. 349 - 359
Copyright
Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 1998

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. Neumann, Reingard Persische Seide: die Gewebekunst der Safawiden und Ihrer Nachfolger (Leipzig: Seemann, 1988)Google Scholar, and Tietzel, Brigitte Und Blumen Sing ich ungestört, von ihrem Shawl herunter: persische Seiden des 16.-18. Jahrhunderts aus dem Besitz des Deutschen Textilmuseums Krefeld (Krefeld: Stadt Krefeld, 1988).Google Scholar

2. McWilliams, Mary Anderson “Prisoner Imagery in Safavid Textiles,” The Textile Museum Journal 26, (1987): 5-23Google Scholar, and “Allegories Unveiled: European Sources for a Safavid Velvet,” Textiles and Trade. Proceedings of the Textile Society of America Biennial Symposium, September 14-16, 1990, Washington, D.C., 136—48.Google Scholar

3. Bier, Carol The Persian Velvets at Rosenborg (Copenhagen: De Danske Kongers Kronologiske Samling, 1995).Google Scholar

4. Jain, Rahul “The Indian Drawloom and its Products,” The Textile Museum Journal, 1993-1994 32-33, (1994): 50-81.Google Scholar

5. Allsen, Thomas T. Commodity and exchange in the Mongol Empire: a cultural history of Islamic textiles (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).Google Scholar

6. Watt, James C. Y. and Wardwell, Anne E. When Silk was Gold: Central Asian and Chinese Textiles (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1997).Google Scholar

7. Wertime, John T. and Wright, Richard“The Tabriz Hypothesis: The Dragon and Related Floral Carpets,” in Asian Art: the Second Hali Annual (London: Hali, 1995), 30-53.Google Scholar One should also add to the list of references Helfgott, Leonard M. Ties that Bind: A Social History of the Iranian Carpet (Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1994)Google Scholar, Amanat, Abbas ed., Cities and Trade: Consul Abbott on the Economy and Society of Iran, 1847-1866 (London: Ithaca Press, 1983)Google Scholar, and Ittig, Annette ed., “The Carpets and Textiles of Iran,” Iranian Studies 25, nos. 1-2 (1992).Google Scholar

8. No mention is made of the two most useful explanations of carpet-weaving techniques: May H. Beattie, “On the Making of Carpets,” in Islamic Carpets from the Collection of Joseph V. McMullan (1972), reprinted in King, D. and Sylvester, D. The Eastern Carpet in the Western World (London, 1983), 106-109Google Scholar, and the classical standard, Tattersall, C. E. C. Notes on Carpet-Knotting and Weaving (London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 1969).Google Scholar

9. To the essay on Pre-Islamic carpets, one should now add Stronach, David “Patterns of Prestige in the Pazyryk Carpet: Notes on the Representational Role of Textiles in the First Millennium BC,” Oriental Carpet and Textile Studies 4 (1993)Google Scholar, and Kawami, Trudy “Archaeological Evidence for Textiles in Pre-Islamic Iran,” Iranian Studies 25, nos. 1-2, (1992): 7-18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10. One should also make reference to Bier, C. “Court and Commerce: Carpets of Safavid Iran,” in idem, ed., Woven from the Soul, Spun from the Heart: Textile Arts of Safavid and Qajar Iran, 16th—19th Centuries (Washington, D.C.: Textile Museum, 1987): 97-106.Google Scholar

11. Golombek, Lisa Mason, Robert B. Bailey, Gauvin A. Tamerlane's Tableware: A New Approach to Chinoiserie Ceramics of Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Iran (Costa Mesa, Calif.: Mazda Publishers, 1996).Google Scholar