War Rugs
A few months ago, I wrote about finding a book of Persian fairy tales at a sidewalk vendor in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Shortly after that discovery, I ran into something even more unexpected on that same street: a vendor selling war rugs. They look like any other rugs, except if you look carefully, you’ll see tanks, grenades, and helicopters in their patterns. See the peacocks and helicopters in the rug above, for instance.
The merchant, Kevin Sudeith, let me visit his warehouse in Long Island City, Queens, where I saw a sizable collection of all kinds of cool, nontraditional rugs. My favorites, besides the rug above, weren’t actually war rugs at all but were rather pictorial Iran-related rugs, like the ones below.
This one depicts the famous Azadi Square in Tehran. I think Kevin said it was made in Pakistan or Afghanistan, not Iran.
This rug, with the French flag on the helicopter, may be a reference to Khomeini, who lived in France for a few months before coming back to Iran to take over. I am bad at translating Iranian dates but suspect the date on here is around the time of the 1979 revolution, so if anyone could do that, please leave a comment.
The history of war rugs goes back to Afghanistan in the early 1980s, and you can read about and see more rugs on Kevin’s website, warrug.com. He also has a really handy chart showing the anatomy of a rug (click on “rug education”).
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Update: Kevin tells me the rugs here were probably woven in or around Mashad, not Afghanistan or Pakistan.
Thanks, Negar! I wonder what this rug’s about, then.
Thank you for sharing!
the date reads 3/3/75. we’re in year 86 right now so i don’t think it’s necessarily revolution-related. the only significance i can think of is that 3/3 (3rd of Khordad) is the anniversary of Khoramshahr’s liberation. but even that was years before 1375.