The inspiration to create a small capsule collection of fine ‘Ghalicheh’ size (2m x 1.40m) hand knotted pure silk Esfahan Carpets for Bakhtiyar Signature came to me whilst sitting in the traditional Persian garden of the historic Abbasi Hotel in Esfahan, a beautifully restored former 300 year old Safavid Caravansary. I was drinking Chai (tea) surrounded by beautiful floral displays, fountains and water lined avenues with singing birds flitting between the topiary and trees. I was back in my home city on one of my buying trips and at that time had no idea how this project would become such a passion of mine, taking 5 years to complete.
Esfahan carpets are synonymous for their beautiful designs inspired by the gardens which heavily influenced the decorative tile work of the mosques and architecture of the former Safavid capital city. So when thinking of the design I originally thought of keeping to the traditional Esfahan design layout of a border, corner pieces and a central medallion. However when looking at the border I thought how wonderful it would be to cover the complete field of the carpet with a myriad of flowers which are a symbol of joy and happiness and incorporate 60 birds ‘Shast Parandeh’ which are a symbol of life in the air, flitting and dancing across the garden of flowers throughout the carpet.
This though would take the skilled weavers much, much longer to complete, as it’s so time consuming to continually follow a changing design, and more so as I wanted the carpets to be of a fine quality and woven in 100% pure silk, so the knotting is incredibly intricate.
When choosing the colour of silk I visited the leading specialist dyeing workshop I use in Esfahan for my bespoke MMA collection and other Bakhtiyar Signature collection pieces. I spent a lot of time there, experimenting with the shades and depth of colour. I wanted the silk to be soft pastel hues using the highest quality natural dyes only, dyed in the traditional ways by hand, in steaming hot vats. This led to miles of silk being dyed until eventually reaching the exact colours that were in my mind.
My first idea was to have a carpet with a pale blue silk border and soft red silk field, I then thought how wonderful it would be to have another carpet woven with a soft red silk border with a pale blue silk field. At the same time we were also dyeing the silk for the flowers and birds and I particularly loved the skeins of silk in soft greens and pistachio green and always had this in the back of my mind.
The carpet design was then carefully transposed on to grid patterns for the weavers to follow. When I saw the woven border of the first carpet on a subsequent visit to Esfahan I immediately knew I should weave more carpets for this capsule collection and decided to create 3 more using the greens I had loved so much on my previous visits to the dyeing workshop.
I engaged five of our most skilled weavers to weave one carpet each, all of which were highly skilled weavers I’ve used for previous commissions. I knew I had to be patient as the design was so complex and the silk hand knotting so fine being 1,100 knots across, it would take years for each carpet to be woven. I would eagerly visit each weaver on my buying trips and see my vision come to life and dream of the day when I had them here in England.
One of our talented weavers working on Shast Parandeh - Ghermez Aabi.
She can be seen initially beating down the latest row of knotting before trimming away excess silk to then be able to start weaving the next row of the carpet.
Finally the weaving of the 5 pieces was completed and the carpets taken off the looms. The very last process was for the carpets to be sent to be carefully washed, hand shaved, washed again and packed for shipping.
Below are our two remaining Shast Parandeh carpets.
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