Central Block, First Floor

Persian carpet depicting Khusrau on horse-back
and Shirin seated on terrace, 20th century.

Carpet Gallery

Persia has been renowned as the greatest carpet weaving center in the world, when the 16th century saw the zenith of the carpet industry under the Safavid dynasty, under the patronage of Shah Abbas (1568-1628 A.D). After the death of Shah Abbas, the carpet making art gradually lost its importance and value and reached its lowest ebb during the Afghan invasion of 1721 A.D. Persia did not recover the art until the 19th century.

The Persian carpets occupies a unique place under the museum’s middle-eastern art collection. The utilitarian functions of carpets as floor coverings, door or wall hangings and other decorative purposes, do not deprive them of their artistic charms and quality. Exquisite specimens with intricate weaving and decked with different ornamental patterns, practically from all important looms of Persia namely, Kashan, Bokhara, Tabriz, Kirman, Shiraz, to mention a few are represented at the gallery.

The museum houses few Bokhara carpets, woven by the Turkoman tribes having elongated octagon forms arranged in rows of diamond forms with straight lines connecting the centers of the octagon. In the center of each octagon is an eight-pointed star woven. These carpets can be dated back to the 18th century.

There are some carpets with woven figurines too, one such carpet depicts Khusrau on horseback and Shirin seated on the terrace, swimming ducks and fishes are shown in the foreground of this carpet while the borders around the main border depicts Shikargarh scenes.

It was only in the 16th century that prayer rugs of high quality were designed and woven in Iran. The museum has got quite a few prayer carpets. The Persians made use of metal threads also in carpets. One such Musalla metal thread carpet in the museum was woven in Kashan. The base of this carpet is gold thread which is very thin flat wire brocaded into the warp and weft thread.