DYEING FOR COLOUR
Natural dye research at
Marmara University, Istanbul
by Harald Böhmer

Carpets from the sixteenth century, and much earlier, have retained their colours owing to the use of natural dye ingredients. More recent colours made with synthetic dyes have faded. This article looks into the colours used in ancient carpets such as the Pazyryk, the Palmyra textile and the Topkapi prayer rugs, and the raw materials used to make these colours.

What did colours in old classic Turkish rugs use to look like? To answer this question we can take a look at exemplary pieces housed in the Museum for Turkish and Islamic Art (tiem) Istanbul, and in the Museum of Islamic Art, Berlin.
Figure 2 shows the medallion of a large west-Anatolian carpet from the seventeenth century or earlier, and figure 4 shows a detail...

A look at one of the rug world's most creative and innovative Persian ustads, who died recently. Arabzadeh's carpets contain decorations and motifs which in in the last few decades have shed new light on the art of the carpet.

Persian carpets, in all their beauty, have been held in high esteem in the West since the sixteenth century. In fact today, the term Persian carpet is used to highlight their authenticity and beauty regardless of their actual origin. Carpet weaving in Persia has distant origins, and as such it constitutes one of the most widespread forms of artistic and artisan expression.
The greatest period was undoubtedly linked to the artistic efflorescence of the Safavid era between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Owing to incentives provided by the ruling dynasty, decorative models for carpets were renewed in works by skilled miniaturists and designers; geometric models typical of the fourteenth and fifteenth...

The last and final part of Herrmann's theory, in which the author looks into other designs, patterns, and effects commonly found on carpets.

To draw this article to a close we shall take a look at some more aspects of carpet and textile art. Message of the carpet: the carpet is a medium for the transfer of the soul from this world into the next, or is the carrier of the soul through the great circle of life. This then explains why carpets and textiles have been found in graves or burial sites and why they also have the same geometry as these sites. It accounts for the tradition, still prevalent today, whereby a carpet or kilim is given to a religious place on the death of a person, and it explains the phenomena of the legendary "flying carpet" bearing the soul well-protected and safe from harm into the other world. It explains why the carpet is full of mythical animals as help-mates and guardians of the soul...