Restoration of the Design and Motif of the Textiles in the reign of Fathali Shah Qajar In view of Royal Figurative Paintings

The traditional textile art has passed a path along with the royal figurative paintings of the court, which was dynamic in the first period of the Qajar era, and it went out of progress in the second period, because of the flourishing of naturalism. Despite the boom at the beginning, the traditional textiles found many substitutes with the arrival of industrial fabrics in the middle of the mentioned era. While in the first half of this dynasty concurrent with Fathali Shah’s rule, this art had not been waned, and just like the art of painting in this era, it was leading the competition with the combination of both domestic and foreign arts. The present paper sought to answer this question: How can we try to recognize the design and motif of the common textile of that time by studying the royal figurative Paintings of the reign of Fathali Shah Qajar? The purpose of this article is to identify the design and motif of the common textiles of that time based on the principles of the Iranian traditional arts by the analytical – historical method and by examining seventeen royal figurative paintings of that era. Certainly, because of the fact that the main focus of this research is on the figurative arts, it must be said that the design and motif of the textiles of clothes attract more attention than other applications of textiles. However, the results of this study suggest that in addition to textiles with no design and motif, most of the textiles of that era used the designs of Vagire, Ghabi, Moharamat, and Afshan that were usually decorated with the plant patterns. Among the mentioned designs, the designs of Afshan and Moharamat were more popular among the common people. Afshan design was defined by being used for women clothes and household uses and Moharamat design was the prevalent design in the clothes of the royal servants. On the contrary, various types of textiles without any further design appeared in the wardrobes of the royal family and they were sometimes decorated with Moharamat trimming. Moharamat and Ghabi designs were also widely used in the clothes of men and women of different classes of the society.