Shahrekurd

Shahrekurd is the center of Charmahal, and used to be called before as “Dehkurd” meaning the krud village, and today is a populated center in the Bakhtiari area, and this city has a lot of weaving workshops. Also, there are plenty of other workshops in the near villages. The Shahrekurd rugs are excellent samples of the most recent Bakhtiari productions that are weaved with a warp of cotton yarn and two wefts with a little bit density and high quality wool. Choosing red color next to dark blue and bright spectra of natural wool cause displaying more that these patterns possess a big circular medallion that has some parts and this is the characteristic of Charmahal rugs. This rug is called “Kheshti” in the local dialect, this rug has a simple appearance and inspired of old garden-like designs which used to be current among Safavid rugs. The background is divided into definite parts by distinguishable lines, and this netted parts, you can see some rivers and webs like octagons or rectangles and sometime like tear. Each rectangle shows a garden having tress and simple flowers and among this trees, you can observe weeping willow and cedar.

There are plenty of the samples made in the 20^th century and followed French desirable patterns, having empty background with circles of yellow flowers; this pattern is called “Gol Farang” (europan flower) in iran. Weaving similar rugs having one weft, was done in “Brujen” and “Faradnabe”. Some of the best Shahrekurd rugs are called ” Bibi Baf” whose names originate from “bibi” which is a word to call the khan’s wife, who was the most important woman in whole tribe and usually was the best weaver and grew in a rich noble family and so much respected. The suffix ” Baf” means “weaved”. Such “Bibi Baf” rugs are ones which are weaved by skillful weavers or according to another citation, these are the rugs which were offered to Khan’s wife, therefore these are so much subtle and precious. Often, these “Bibi Baf” rugs have a flower-design inspired from French patterns.