Weaving tradition and the
market By Charles Recknagel and
Muhammad Tahir
HANOVER, Germany - In the
highly competitive and highly international world
of hand-made carpets, producers closely watch one
another.
And at the four-day Domotex fair
in Hanover that ended on Tuesday - one of the
biggest annual trade shows for the industry - many
were watching Bayat Nomad Gaminchi, a successful,
high-end production house that operates in Iran
and the United States.
That is because the
house was using the occasion of the fair to
unveil
a new line of Persian carpets in what
traditionally are almost unthinkable colors.
Whereas Persian carpets historically are
woven in deep, saturated hues that shine
splendidly in the intense sunlight of the East,
the well-known producer is for the first time
shifting part of its production to softer and
brighter pastels.
Bright colors for
dull winters Softer and brighter colors
are popular today for curtains and other
furnishings in the West - where the long winters
reduce the sun to a dim glow above the clouds.
That puts a premium on brightness inside the home.
Ali Bayat, one of Bayat Nomad Gaminchi's partners,
said the decision recognizes the realities of the
Western market.
"There are two types of
demand in the market," Bayat said. "One has been
developed by interior designers and fashion
designers and 'color broadcasters', and you have
to go with them because there is a market demand
for that. And there is another demand of a type
that looks at the carpet as an art form, and they
are looking for the carpet to be as original as it
used to be. And they are looking for that and
there is a demand for that. So we have to keep up
with both parts of the market."
Bayat was
standing in his glass-enclosed display area in the
center of the bustling trade fair. Outside - as
far as the eye can see - the great hangars of the
exposition complex were filled with chest-high
piles of carpets. Wholesale buyers from across
Europe were prowling the floor, purchasing
hundreds of pieces at a time.
Tension
in the hall The atmosphere was genteel but
tense as millions of euros changed hands in cash
and credit in a few days. The faces in the crowd
were German, Italian, Spanish, European, Persian,
Turkmen, Turkish, Chinese, Indian, Pakistani - the
list went on and on. In the middle was a Turkish
tearoom, filled with chain-smoking men drinking
glasses of black tea.
So why are people
watching Bayat? Because his break with tradition
is the latest measure of how much interior
designers are pressing Oriental carpet makers to
cater to popular Western tastes.
Some
carpet makers at the fair lamented the trend,
which not only touches the colors used in a carpet
but also the motifs.
"Before, for the
consumers, the most important thing was the
culture of the rug," said Ahmet Koker, a
representative of the Istanbul-based My Home
production house. "The women who wove the carpets
were weaving what they feel and for many years
[their traditional motifs] have been collected and
there is a good collection in any one area.
"But at the moment you can see the
patterns are mixed. There are some designers -
they get some flowers from Persia, they get some
flowers from India, some flowers from Turkey, some
flowers from Russia, some flowers from Azerbaijan,
like that. So if you look to any one carpet it is
not [a reflection of] a culture, it is a good
collection of a designer."
Meet the
chobi The pressure to change is
keenly felt by Persian and Turkish producers. But
perhaps the greatest adaptation so far has been
shown by Afghan refugee weavers in Pakistan.
Predominantly Turkmen, and now also
Hazara, weavers have created a design that was
hugely in evidence at the trade fair. The design -
called chobi - uses a soft palette of
whites and reds to present simplified floral
designs reminiscent of Mughal art.
The
chobi design - the name means "wood" and
describes the predominantly wood-based, natural
dyes used for the soft coloring - is now being
imitated by some Chinese producers. In the carpet
world, that is a clear recognition of its
salability in the Western market.
The move
to a softer palette is not the first time Oriental
carpets have felt, and responded to, Western
market pressure. In many ways it recalls a wave of
pressure that Persian producers felt from the West
in the late 19th century.
At that time,
the economic surge that accompanied rapid
industrialization in Europe and the United States
created a large moneyed class almost overnight.
The newly prosperous wanted the traditional status
symbols of the very rich, including luxuriant
carpets. But they wanted less complicated designs
than the often highly complex motifs popular in
Islamic cultures.
To meet the demand,
Western carpet importers and department stores
worked with Eastern producers to create new,
modified Oriental styles. One of the most famous
designs of that time - the ziegler - has
clear echoes in today's chobi.
Now,
as Oriental carpet producers again come under
enormous pressure to meet Western consumers at
least halfway, carpet makers must once again
choose between tradition and fashion.
The 'organic' choice Many
appear ready to experiment - tentatively moving
toward softer colors, while also producing
traditional carpets in the saturated colors that,
so far, have withstood every shift in consumer
taste.
But some producers say the answer
is not to follow the interior designers but to
resist them. And with the fervor of pioneers, they
are staking their fortunes to another Western
trend: a longing for "natural" things that have a
strong sense of time and place.
Hossein
Attaran is the London manager of the Tehran-based
company Carpet Heritage. The Persian-carpet
producer distinguishes its carpets by prominently
labeling them "organic". Attaran says "organic"
means the carpets are woven in a specific region
and in a specific design that has traditionally
been woven there. He says that gives his carpets -
which are antique reproductions - a sense of
purity that is too often missing in the modern
world.
"I personally get energy from these
carpets," Attaran said. "I mean, I know it is
organic. I know the material is organic. I know it
is done by a weaver in her home. It is not
machine-made; it is not factory-made. Everything
takes you [back to a traditional world]. The
collection is named Persia Revisited, and it takes
you back to what Persia used to be."
The
variety of trends in Western consumer culture
presents producers with tough, conflicting
choices. And they must carefully weigh them as
they present their wares to the wholesalers.
The wholesalers' fingers run so quickly
over the wool, feeling its quality and the
tightness of the knots, that an observer might
think they are barely interested. But that is
because they are not only looking for quality;
they are also trying to answer that hardest
question of all - what will appeal to the
retailers who must sell the carpets to the
consumers?
And as the wholesalers think
and close their eyes, weighing the fortunes to be
won or lost with a single "yes" or "no", the
decision is clearly never easy.
Copyright 2007 RFE/RL Inc. Reprinted
with the permission ofRadio Free Europe/Radio
Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW,
Washington, DC 20036.
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