A Study on the Form and Content of Iran’s Four-Seasons Carpets

Problem statement: 

“Four Seasons” is one of the design structures of Iranian carpets, dating back to the first half of the twentieth century amid the cultural and social evolutions of Tabriz in the Qajar and the first Pahlavi eras. The combination of rural life scenes and historical buildings along with the structure and patterns of traditional designs in the Four Seasons pattern has made these carpets similar to visual texts illustrating the cultural and social situations of their production time. This study attempts to answer how the social and cultural conditions of a society are depicted in the Four Seasons Carpets and which visual symbols represent them. Hence, the main question of this study revolves around the identification of dominant subjects and effective social backgrounds in shaping the pattern of the Four Seasons in the geography of the Persian carpet.

This study aims to identify dominant subjects in depicting landscapes, the geographical area of products, and effective social backgrounds in shaping the Four Seasons pattern.

The research method is qualitative and employs content analysis of patterns. First, 26 carpets containing the Four Seasons pattern were selected as case studies. Next, a qualitative analysis was conducted on the contents of each case based on the outlined questions and objectives in the study.

The results of the research indicate that all the identified samples were designed and hand-woven in Tabriz. The patterns of these carpets show nationalism, archaic concepts, and cultural-social customs of Iranian society in the form of visual and written signs.