Glimpses of Modern Persia 
emphasized by the presence of a prayer rug 
suspended on the wall. 
Before the days of glass, the windows 
throughout Persia were made with oiled 
paper, tough and of a peculiarly translucent 
quality. Even now, this is to be found in 
plenty, particularly in places remote from 
large cities or the beaten tracks of travel. 
Nothing in P ersian ornamentation is more 
subversive of the cardinal principle of decora¬ 
tion than the 
broad friezes of 
oil painting 
which are com¬ 
mon in many 
rich Persians’ 
houses. They 
are heavy in 
color, theme and 
treatment, and 
make an apart¬ 
ment top-heavy 
to the extreme. 
"Phe Persians are 
of the Shiah sect, 
which does not 
bind itself as the 
Sunni does to 
strict obedience 
to all the Kor¬ 
anic mandates. 
It weaves human figures in its rugs, carves 
historic scenes in its splendid silverware, and 
paints, with some skill but small schooling, on 
its bare walls and on many articles of ornament. 
In device some of the Persian brush workers 
are clever ; in fineness of technique they are 
phenomenal; but in veracity and drawing they 
are painfully lacking. Some traveler has 
remarked that the portraits of all the Shahs 
since Ismael Sufi look precisely alike. With 
the natural tendency of the Persian toward 
profusion, landscapes are presented into which 
every possible object, animate or inanimate, is 
interjected with Hogarthian liberality. Con¬ 
scious that painting is a foreign art, the Persian 
painters have, barring their efforts at portrait¬ 
ure, usually passed by the indescribable 
picturesqueness of their own land and chosen, 
in a great part, European themes, leaving the 
many-colored, strange East an ever tempting 
subject for our own artists. It is an additional 
tribute to the unapproachable climate of Iran 
that exterior paintings,such asare occasionally 
seen on the outer walls above the doorways, 
endure for years with little if any sign of 
disintegration. 
A word of the kalin kiars —the emphasis 
is equally distributed in the first word, and 
falls on the final syllable of the second—the 
prints which are used in so many Persian 
homes to cover the walls. The best of them 
are made at Ispahan, I believe. They are 
of hand-woven 
cloth, chiefly 
cotton, very fine, 
and in design are 
cloth versions of 
the rug. They 
are in a single 
piece, of all 
shapes and sizes; 
and the patterns, 
whichareprinted 
with many sec¬ 
tional hand dies, 
in soft colors 
upon while, are 
identical with 
the older and 
daintier floral 
designs of the 
sixteenth and 
seventeenth cen¬ 
tury carpets of southern and middle Persia. 
Their effect, when placed on the walls, is most 
attractive ; light, cool, soft, satisfying to the 
artistic sense, and most praiseworthy in that, 
rising above the rug-covered floors, they give 
an airy, sort of outdoor effect strongly in con¬ 
trast with what the Persian perpetrates when 
he sets out after fine decoration. The kalin 
kiars seems to be little known in this country 
and I have wondered many times why wise 
house furnishers have not made them popular 
for the walls of summer cottages, especially 
in unfinished rooms, and for that matter in 
certain rooms of town houses. They can be 
taken down at will, dusted or washed, and 
returned to the wall, and they are about as 
cheap as wall paper. 
Of heating facilities Southern Persia, being 
of a semi-tropical climate, has little need ; 
but the middle districts gain from great 
altitude much of the cold they lose by low 
latitude, and in the North, winter is not a 
IN THE HOUSE OF A WEALTHY PERSIAN 
370 
