A Study and an Analysis of Visual Components of Golestani Design of Tabriz’s Contemporary Carpets (in the Recent Century) through an Aesthetic Perspective

Examining contemporary Iranian carpets may be achievable by understanding the visual aesthetic components of various designs in different regions. Golestani design is a type of modern carpet design in Tabriz, which has been developed based on the traditional and contemporary aesthetic approaches with a visual language (pictures) in a multi-textual structure. In this design, the pictorial images are embodied in the most eloquent expressions in the multitude of texts. The fundamental question of this research is the representation of naturalistic paintings in the transformation of Golestani design of Tabriz’s contemporary carpets. Therefore, this research analyzes the visual components of Golestani design to recognize Tabriz’s contemporary carpets. Hence, the fundamental inquiry of the research has been: what are the essential components of pictorial images as the pictorial characteristics of Tabriz’s Golestani design? This research is descriptive-analytical deploying an aesthetic approach. Through library sources and a study of visual documents, it has analyzed the visual images of Golestani design of Tabriz’s contemporary carpets. The under-study statistical group is contemporary Golestani carpets (throughout the last century). The under-study statistical sample is 9 examples of Golestani carpet images belonging to the contemporary era. We collected pictorial data by referring to museums' websites, by examining the images of theses and reference books, and by taking photographs of carpets. As the results of the research have showed, the transformation in Golestani design has occurred based on the traditional and contemporary aesthetic approaches. Traditional components such as Iranian-Islamic text, geometric structure, and multiplicity of texts are clear; contemporary components are visible in their pictorial images close to the nature. According to the aesthetic structure of this design, the multiplicity of use of visual images in Tabriz’s contemporary Golestani design manifested itself in the multiplicity of texts and visual components of the contemporary era (such as inspiration from nature as a realistic image).  Two visual components of Golestani design are the framing of the multi-text space with naturalistic images and the extensive use of more realistic pictorial images.