This social history of Iranian carpets traces their production, use, and exchange from the fifteenth century until World War II, highlighting in particular the carpet boom from 1873 to 1914. Over these five centuries, the Iranian hand-knotted, piled carpet shifted from an object made primarily for the Islamic Middle East to a commodity that by the twentieth century constituted Iran's largest nonpetroleum export to the West. The hand-knotted carpet, according to Helfgott, reveals an intricate record of Iranian society - its economic development, gender relations, and art history. Beginning with the rugs' early uses among settled peoples, nomadic pastoralists, and the Iranian court elites, Helfgott traces the changes in carpet manufacture and Iranian society that ensued when the West began importing carpets as luxury items in the nineteenth century. He follows the expansion of Mediter-ranean trade in carpets into a global market, linking it to the local patterns of production in nomadic, village, and urban settings. He also describes the debilitating conditions in which women and children knotted the carpets and discusses the European fascination with Iranian culture and, in a case study, the creation of the Iranian art collection at London's Victoria and Albert Museum. Ties That Bind draws on travelers' reports, British Foreign Office records, missionary diaries and records, and carpets and acquisition records in major museum collections.
Date Published 9/1/1996
Ratings
Rated By: W. Seal
From: Nevada City, CA
Rating:
Comments: Worth Reading (with caveat) For those who are interested in the economics and sociology of the carpet industry in Iran, this is the book. Helfgott's book gives a good overview of the development of how the West has influenced both carpetmaking and technique, and also convincingly sets forth the case against both Western importers and those involved in industrial scale production for unfair labor practices persisting until today. The book is marred, however, by a somewhat academic writing style and and a haughty stance the author takes vis a vis Western carpet collectors (though I'll bet he owns some). Sometimes the reader gets the unpleasant impression that Helfgott is writing to impress other academics with his politically correct views and verbiage. He uses words which it seems he thinks are more exact, like "Temur Lenk" for example, instead of the generally used "Tamerlane" for example, despite the fact that "Temur Lenk" is merely the Arabic version of the Persian "Timur-i-lang" (Temur the Lame). Temur, of course, was neither Arab nor Persian, but Turkic from Central Asia, and was actually called "Amir Temur". On the whole, the book in general is worth reading for its information, so long as one is prepared to wade through some annoying bits of professorial snobbishness.
This social history of Iranian 
