نشریه پیکره
پیاپی 8 (بهار و تابستان 1394)

Individual, social and vernacular identities, all around the globe including our country, have been and will be a controversial issue. Reaching workable approaches in this respect requires interdisciplinary research and not mere making cliché generalization. Revitalizing social and vernacular Persian iden-tity is only possible through preserving Persian culture and civilization. Hence, rejuvenation of cultural beliefs and customs paves the way to restoring the unity and identity of ethnical groups. In this respect, taking into consideration the visual identity of environmental graphic design as well as the furniture of  human habitats reflecting the dominated life style is one of the basic sulotions This follows that the vernacular context of historical places, as a symbol of culture and civilization of a nation (or local people), should be preserved and restored. Looking at the identity of historical places, in general and the uni-versal heritage of Chogha Zanbil, in particular, this research has focused on the issue that the similar studies, while representing the glorious culture and civilization of the post can create a sense of cultural affinity familiarity and continuity in visitors’ minds. The data were collected based on library sources and then analyzed descriptively.

Historically, Safavid era is one of the most outstanding ones in Iran par-ticularly in terms of enhancement of art. In this era, the industry of textile, specially carpet weaving, could improve considerably. In this respect, mythical as well as  symbolic desing as a reflection of a part of a nations art and culture, have been represented in Safavid carpets distinctively. Among the most frequently applied designs in carpets and textiles of this era, bird motifs are readily recognizable. Birds, such as peacock, phoenix, lapwing and parrot, have been represented in a wide variety of forms and shapes more than other once at fierst each brid has been discussed in terms of its aesthics and symbolic concepts and functions in Persian culture and art and the then the special application of such designs in Safavid carpets has been addressed. As symbols of freedom and redemption, birds represented in Safavid carpets are replete with mysteries alluding to the ideal beauty of the Heaven. Safavid artists, did their best to represent their mentality of heavenly beauties of individual nat-ural elements in a remarkably artistic way. As such, the elements have been given mystical concepts. The data were gathered attributively based on library sources and then analyzed descriptively.

The history of applying ornamentations to clothes and dresses in Iran dates back to Pre-Islamic era. With appearance of Islam, however, the kind and material of ornamentations, especially for men, changed. The intensity of this change, depending on different social, cultural, political and economic con-ditions in each historical era has been different. Among the various historical eras, art in Qajar era was mainly at the service of Royalties. In fact, they wore ornamented clothes and dresses in order to draw attention to their status. In other words, ornamentations in Qajar era were more used as a social and wealth indicator than aesthetic purposes. In Qajar era, clothes and dresses, in addition to their own attachments, were adorned with additional ornamenta-tions in different ways. The ornamentations included armbands, medallions, buttons  crests  strips watches etc. Altogethers under the influnec of western art, the art in Qajar era underwent evolution in terms of design and pro-duction. However, from the end of Qajar era on, this impressionability, both from the aspect of clothing and of associated decorations, experienced a state of confusion. This study aimed to study this extreme impressionability. 

The image of the Islam Prophet’s(pbuh) Ascent depicted in Falnameh Tah-masbi in Saavid era represents a Shia version of the holy event symbolically. Showing a different pictorial version of the Ascent, the image has taken ad-vantage of applying the combined sun-and lion icon to represent the Prophet (pbuh ) and imam ali (pbuh) for the first thme . Adopting a systematic logical and interdisciplinary approach, iconology tries to interpret the latent meanings in artworks. The present study aimed to interpret the image of the Prophet’s (pbuh) Ascent with the help of the mentioned approach in three distinct phases the first two phases dealt with description and analysis of the image and the third one addressed the interpretation revealed by iconology and identified the latent symbolic values in the image. The questions of the research included 1- what cases can be interpreted as the latent meanings as well as symbolic values in iconology? and 2- Is it possible to have a general understanding of the circumstances and the common ideology of Safavid era in which the image has been created? The objective of this research was to address the iconology of the visual elements of the images related with the event of the Ascent. The hypothesis of the study was that the circumstances of Safavid era have had impact on the symbolic expression of the images. The methodology conducted is descriptive-analytic in nature. Also, the data were gathered based on library and database sources. The results indicated that iconology approach is particularly effective in identifying the latent conceptual layers in the imag-es. The results also revealed that the application of the combined sun-and-lion icon has continued in time, however, as the symbolic values changed, a func-tion shift has occurred in the application of the icon