DIVINE PARADISE
Garden Designs in Carpet Art
by Ali Hassouri

Persian rug designs (and Iranian decorative art) usually have an underlying belief or myth that subsequently gave rise to the design. A study of this art form should attempt to understand exactly what this belief or myth is. This paper will aim to shed light on the origin of Persian designs, and the preliminary ideas by which they were governed; it may also provide further understanding of the foundations of Iranian religious thought. The herati pattern (a common floral field motif), for example, is said to have its origins in the Mithraic religion, of which very little remains in today's Iran.1 One group of Persian carpets depicts the design of a garden, which can be realistic or abstract. The design is known in Persia as golestan (meaning garden); it has also been in use in Turkey...

Comparison of techniques and materials starting with the materials and techniques, one must first make a fundamental distinction: the two carpets chosen have polychrome silk warps (Z3S) in ivory, light blue, blue, yellow and ruby red, whereas the Hamburg carpet has a white cotton warp (Z3, Z3S)26. Furthermore, the carpet has two light blue cotton wefts, the first is tight and the second one is sinuous. In this instance there is an obvious similarity with the two signed Kashan pieces: on all Kashans the As 3 asymmetrical (Persian) knot is opened on the left. However, there is a second characteristic similar to that of the wefts, which is peculiar and certainly worth mentioning for a Kashan: the knots are not placed at 90° but rather at 70° - 80°. From the reverse, the warp at the opening is not visible because it is hidden by the two wefts, but the woollen knot yarn that wraps it is clearly visible...

The origin of C14 when cosmic rays enter the earth's atmosphere they convert a small fraction of the atmospheric nitrogen into a radioactive isotope of carbon, called radiocarbon, or carbon-14, or in short C14 (also written as 14C). Because C14 has the same chemical behaviour as ordinary carbon, C14 atoms end up in atmospheric carbon dioxide, which is used by green plants in the process of photosynthesis. Since animals live from plants, consequently C14 is to be found in the whole biosphere (all living organisms). The total amount of C14 in the world is in equilibrium, since the permanent generation of C14 by cosmic rays is balanced by its radioactive decay...