86 
House ^ Garden 
THE TRADITION of the KIRMAN RUG 
Owing Little to Outside Injiuetice, the High Standard 
and Individuality of Kirmans are Well Maintained 
A. T. WOLFE 
'Ijtrjjll'-. 
Kirman industry is the quantity 
and peculiar excellence of wool in 
the district. This wool, which is 
remarkably fine in texture and bril¬ 
liantly white in tone, comes partly 
from the native sheep that feed by 
the salt lake Niris, and partly from 
the hair of an indigenous breed of 
goats which inhabit the mountain 
ridges. There may be something in 
the lake water that accounts for the 
snowy whiteness of a Kirman 
fleece, at all events the wool takes 
dyestuffs with a cleanness and 
purity unrivaled elsewhere; the 
Kirman yellow, for example, is 
amazingly golden and pure. The 
admixture of white goats’ hair helps 
to give the pile its lustrous and soft 
quality that suggests silk, especially 
in some of the old pieces, but 
though silkworms are cultivated, 
and the produce woven into some 
of the rugs, such are exceptional. 
Weft of wool and woof of cotton 
is the general rule in Kirman. 
This uniformity in the Kirman 
fabric has been maintained through 
the centuries by weavers of remark¬ 
able diversity in faith and race. 
Wandering Afghan tribes are 
steeped in the tradition; Moham- 
O F all rug-making centers in 
Persia, Kirman in the South 
has been the least subject to outside 
influences. This is largely due to its 
geographical position; the deserts 
and mountains which of old pro¬ 
tected Kirman from the constant 
invasion and pillage that disturbed 
industry in the North also put a 
Irar on the va-et-vient of commerce 
and made export and import diffi¬ 
cult. Working on steadily in the 
old tradition of color, fabric, and 
design, the weavers of the Kirman 
highlands have been famous for at 
least a thousand years for their 
rugs and shawls. Marco Polo 
noted their beauty after his visit in 
“1270, and Chardin, the famous 
French explorer, added his testi¬ 
mony in the seventeenth century. 
But few travelers penetrated so 
far; even today Kirman is well off 
the beaten track. This accounts for 
the marked individuality and con¬ 
servatism of Kirman rugs, and 
although modern products have not 
wholly escaped commercialism, still 
in no other Eastern rug is the old 
tradition so well maintained. 
Another contributing cause to 
the fame and tenacity of this 
This fine example of a Kirman 
shoivs the Tree of Life motif with 
flowers of larious kinds blossofn- 
ingfrotn its branches 
This design was a favorite floiver 
motif among makers of Kirman 
rugs. Four other kinds are 
shown opposite 
^ Left) The narrow flower border 
is typical. The ground of the rug 
is coral with the pattern traced hi 
various colors. (Right) Arabic 
inscriptions in black against a 
pale ground have their decorative 
place in this design 
