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Country of Origin: Persia/Iran
JBOC Comments:
Catalog Notes:
Origin: Sirjan Afshar Soufreh
Central Southern Iran
Woven: c. 1935
Size: 1.39 x 1.38m 4'6" x 4'6"
Ref: 401RE004
Soufreh is one of a number of western spellings,
including sofreh, soffrai etc. of the Persian
word for a small rug. It refers to either the
very narrow rugs woven by various tribal groups
in Iran as runners, to fill in along the sides of
large carpets in a room, or more commonly, to the
almost square table rugs used on the floor as a
tablecloth on which plates of food are placed.
These eating cloth soufrehs consist of mostly a
kilim (flatweave) square plain ground containing
a square zigzag motif generally with a central
medallion. A different weaving technique is
frequently used for the borders, often a
combination of parallel wrapping and extra cord
reinforcement, (like this soufreh) or can have a
knotted pile selvedge and ends. Occasionally the
corners are decorated with tassels containing
good luck beads or shells, but these are often
missing on older examples. Soufrehs are woven by
a number of tribes in Iran including the Afshar,
the Balouch and some Kurdish tribes. This
particular soufreh was woven by the Afshar, one
of the most widely dispersed tribes of the Turkic
peoples, there being other substantial Afshar
clans in Azerbaijan and Kamseh in the north west,
Khorassan in the north east, Kerman in the south.
The Afshar are still in Khuzestan in the
southwest near the Zagros Mountains, where they
originally settled after mass migration from
Turkestan in the twelfth century AD. This piece
comes from the market town of Sirjan in southern
central Iran since it shows the mixture of white
and blue flower motifs typical of the many
soufrehs made in this town and its surrounding
area. Because of their shape, eating cloth
soufrehs like this one may be used on the floor,
as a wall hanging, or even as a table cloth - its
original function!
Seen on www.kilim-warehouse.com
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