SUZANI
Needlework from Central Asia
Taher Sabahi

QUM
Unique rugs from a unique city
Madeleine K. Parvin

Among the most fascinating and curious textile articles from Central Asia are the suzani , a graceful term linked to the origin of the Farsi word suz, which means needle. Suzani does not indicate an area of production or design, but the objects made using a special embroidery technique, allowing a whole range of objects and garments to be produced.
The area in which they are made has a considerable geographic unity, but it is inhabited by many different ethnic groups, from Turkomans to Uzbeks, Kazakhs, and Tadzhiks; all of whom have a common nomadic origin although in part they have lived permanently in cities or in the many small villages dotting the countryside for a number of centuries.
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For Iranians, the city of Qum is a holy city, second in the country only to Mashad. It boasts numerous religious monuments, including a splendid mosque renewed by shah Abbas I, a large number of tombs of Shi’ite saints and hundreds of tombs of the faithful.
For Iranians, the rugs of Qum are amongst the best and most refined in the country and yet, unlike other Iranian rugs of significant refinement, the Qum are of a relatively recent tradition. It is very hard to find any antique ones, or even any that are simply old.
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In almost every age and country, clothes may be considered “an aesthetic code expressing ideas concerning the social status of the person wearing them”.1 The choice of materials, colours, weave and cut – and, overall, evidence of the cost, quality of the manufacture, importance of the decorative elements – constitute a series of messages relative to ethnic membership, social and economic position, religious and political convictions of the wearer.. (...)