Garden Design Rugs

Learn More About Antique Garden Design Rugs

Collection and Meanings of Garden Design Motifs in Antique Rugs and Carpets

Antique Garden Design Rugs – The original garden design in carpets is a pattern that illustrates a Persian garden from a “bird’s-eye view”. The oldest known carpet that depicts this iconic design served as the de facto design prototype for weavers (mostly in North West Persia) to follow. This carpet is dated 1622–32 and is currently part of the current Albert Hall Museum collection in Jaipur, India.

The Persian garden design will usually consist of classic four-parts (chahar bagh) encircled by a perimeter of tall cypress trees and shrubs to block strong winds and protect the vegetation. The pattern will show a wide stream of water in the center of the garden and intersected by narrower offshoots. Most of the larger offshoots will feature designs of stylized swimming fish and at the center will be a depiction of the raised platform where the aristocracy would lounge.

Below is an image of an antique Oushak rug that features a classic garden design:

Antique Garden Design Rug

The famed “Garden Design” refers to the portrayal of flowers, trees and other vegetation often with a central fountain. In antique rugs featuring this theme, animals such as tigers, birds and deer were often portrayed in poses of repose and relaxation.

Gardens were important in Persian life, representing paradise, and were portrayed on carpets to bring the visual and aesthetic appreciation of the exterior effulgence into the interior. Famous garden carpets include the legendary Spring of Khosrow carpet woven between AD 531 and 579 during the Sassanian period. Garden carpets were popular in the Safavid period and Mughal culture as well.

There are two other patters that are generally refereed to as: “Garden Design”. These designs are of rugs that feature grid designs of either square boxed or more if a diamond pattern grid.

Below are examples of each of the two garden designs in rugs:

Garden Design

A Magnificent Persian Carpet Depicting The Garden Of Paradise

Persian Antique Garden of Paradise Persian Carpet — Every Wednesday, The Nazmiyal Antique Rug Collection features one spectacular example of a hand-made vintage or antique rug from its vast catalog. We select each piece based on its aesthetic beauty, conceptual merit, and history.

Persian Garden of Paradise Antique Carpet #48340

This week’s Wednesday Wishlist rug is a beautiful room size antique Garden of Paradise Persian carpet, featuring a beautifully detailed flora and fauna design full of animal motifs. Animals frolic amidst lush trees and flowers on a rich blue field, surrounded by an equally elaborate border in warm shades of rust, crimson, burnt orange and teal. The playful scene illustrated on this Persian rug provides the viewer with many lavish details to discover, while the size of the rug, at approximately 10 feet by 13 feet, makes it a wonderful choice for the focal point of a room.

Detailed Image Of The Blue Garden of Paradise Antique Persian Rug

The Garden of Paradise design is symbolic of heaven in Persian tradition. The term Garden of Paradise refers to an elaborately fertile garden, filled with exotic and varied plants and animals, enclosed by a wall, symbolic of the separation between heaven and earth. Wealthy Persians often built Gardens of Paradise on their palatial compounds, as places of worship and as symbols of their status. Traditional Persian Gardens of Paradise were rectangular, with a river or body of water running North to South, and East to West, forming a cross and dividing the garden into four sections. These gardens also often included covered pavilions or structures, and raised walkways for the purpose of viewing the garden from above. Fountains and waterfalls symbolizing eternal life were also common.

Unraveling The Chahar Bagh Rug and Persian Garden History

Several types of handwoven rugs can be found all over the world. Many people are familiar with the terms “Persian rugs” or “oriental rugs“. However, there are many different types of Persian rugs. The Chahar bagh rug (Charbagh), or “garden rugs”, refers to area carpets with a specific Persian style garden design layout. This specific rug design pattern has existed for thousands of years and is known as a favorite among collectors.

Origins Of the Chahar Bagh Rug Design

The term “Chahar Bagh” translates literally to ‘four gardens.’ The layout of these rugs reflects a specific Iranian garden format. This garden form dominated the Persian garden scene from around 600 AD and can still be seen in the area today. However, the origins of Chahar Bagh actually date back to the mid-6th century BC in Cyrus the Great’s palace garden at Pasargadae.

Charbagh Gardens At Naqshe Jahan Square In Isfahan Iran

Charbagh gardens focused on water and irrigation due to the arid climate of the area they originate from (present-day Iran). These layouts were geographic in nature, with strong symmetry. A fountain or water source would be located at the center of the garden, with the water separating into four different canals. These canals were designed in right angles and moved to divide the garden into four separate beds. These four beds represent four elements; sky, earth, plants, and water.

The Chahar Bagh Rug At The Albert Hall Museum In Jaipur

The Chahar Bagh Garden Form

The Chahar Bagh form spread rapidly throughout the eastern world until the 18th-century. Chahar Bagh gardens could be created anywhere, from a small courtyard to extensive royal palace grounds. Gardens with the four quadrant design can also be found over a vast distance, from Spain through the Middle East and India. As Persians and Muslims moved across Asia, the gardens were adapted to fit local needs, but the basic design features stayed the same.

Chahar Bagh Garden Plan For Humayun’s Tomb

The spread of this garden layout and the spread of Islam went hand-in-hand. The four-garden designs were adopted by Muslim invaders, as they were viewed as a representation of the garden of Paradise (described in the Islamic holy book, the Qur’an). References are also made to a garden of Paradise, or Eden, in the Christian bible. This garden form’s symbolism has roots in three of the world’s larger religions – Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism.

Charbagh Gardens of The Taj Mahal

Chahar Bagh as a Rug Pattern

The garden imagery, particularly the Chahar bagh rug pattern, is well represented in Persian poetry and art. The Persian carpet weavers masterfully showed the Persian garden’s symmetry and beauty in their handwoven rugs.

Char Bagh Rug At The Metropolitan Museum Of Art

Representations of Persian gardens in carpets combine a bird’s-eye view of the traditional four‑part garden with the addition of birds and trees. Garden rugs can be classified into three groups according to their designs:

4 Quadrant Chahar Bagh Rugs With Directional Landscapes with Trees

This group depicts dark tree imagery. This design’s variant is the Indian floral lattice group, which features a trellis-type design with several types of flowering trees, shrubs, and plants.

Example:

Chahar Bagh Four Quadrant Rug In The Victoria Albert Museum

Paradise Park Chahar Bagh Rugs

Figures of birds and animals are added into the landscape to create a “Paradise Park.”

Examples:

The Schwarzenberg Paradise Park Chahar Bagh Carpet Doha Islamic Art Museum

Center Of The Schwarzenberg Paradise Park Chahar Bagh Carpet Doha Islamic Art Museum

Chahar Bagh Paradise Park Design Safavid Fragment from the Montreal Museum Of Art

Formal Chahar Bagh Carpets

This design features a formal, walled garden separated by pathways and water canals into four (or more plots). These plots are filled with flowers, trees, and a variety of animals.

Example:

The Wagner Chahar Bagh Carpet In The Burrell Collection

The Antique Chahar Bagh Rugs

The earliest known references to a garden carpet are to the ‘Spring Of Khosrow Carpet,’ which was made for the 7th-century Sassanian emperor, Khusrow. This rug was rumored to be extremely large and very beautiful, crafted from silk, precious stones, and gold and silver threads. The Spring Carpet depicted a garden with trees, pathways, and blossoming flower beds.

A painted depiction of Khosrow I: The Lakhmid ruler Al-Mundhir III ibn al-Nu’man asking for Khosrow I’s assistance against the Byzantines.

Aside from the few distinct Safavid rugs of the late 16th/ early 17th-century, all other examples of this type of carpet were made during the 18th-century. These carpets were woven in wool on a cotton or wool foundation. All of these carpets were manufactured in workshops in northwest Kurdistan, but production died out by the early 19th-century. By the early 20th-century, there were only a small number of 18th-century Kurdish pieces still in existence.

Charbagh Gardens at Jahangir’s Tomb In Lahore India

In 1937, a Chahar bagh carpet was found in the Maharajahs of Jaipur’s abandoned palace at Amber Fort. Knotted in the Safavid way, this antique rug shockingly had records on a label attached to the lining and notes written directly on the lining itself. This inscription provided a short description of the carpet along with the date “29 August 1632.”

Detailed Image Of The Chahar Bagh Rug At The Albert Hall Museum In Jaipur

The Jaipur carpet is extremely large, stretching an impressive eight and a half meters long and almost four meters wide. It is extremely finely knotted and made from ivory cotton, fine wool in various colors, and blue and pink silk, which is only found in the best quality carpets. This carpet appears to be produced by a high caliber commercial workshop, most likely as a special order. As one of the oldest examples of this design, the Jaipur rug served as prototype for Kurdistan-based weavers.