Blue Persian Carpets and Rugs

Another typical color seen in Persian rugs and carpets is blue. Different hues of blue are utilized in Persian art to symbolize harmony and peace among people and the rest of creation. Blue contrasts beautifully with numerous warm colors in Persian rug patterns, bringing balance to the entire composition. Because blue was so valued in Persian culture, people were always looking for natural sources that contained blue pigments. Though obtaining blue color from natural sources faced with difficulty, Persian people eventually discovered a natural gem known as "indigo" from their neighboring civilization, India! Even though numerous plants contain indigo, humans in ancient times used the original source known as Indigofera, which is why indigo became such a fantastic dye for blue (mostly grown in India). Persian eventually discover other nearby plants that contained indigo to deal with the problem of indigo's scarcity. Woad thus became another source of blue dye for dyeing the fibers of Persian rugs.

Indigofera is the original source of indigo dye, a shrub that is mostly grown in tropical Africa, south-central Asia, and South America. This plant belongs to the beans family and includes light green leaves and pink or purple flowers. This unique plant is also soil healing and was grown in India in ancient times widely. After European explorers discover India, they began to grow this plant in their countries too. The process of extracting indigo from Indigofera is easy, though there are different ways to do it. People in ancient times believed that fresh leaves of Indigofera were richer than indigo. They put leaves in a pool and put heavy stones on the, filling the pool with cold water until the indigo was extracted from the leaves. Finally, indigo will be obtained by fermentation. Dyer used molds of fermented indigo and yarns in big pots of hot water to dye yarns into the blue. Different parameters and mordant will create different shades of blue!

Woad is an easy-growing plant from the mustard family. This plant had also an important place in ancient art, used by people from over a millennium BC. Until the medieval era, woad was used vastly by many civilizations like China, Greece, Persia, and Egypt. The lake of Indigofera cause European to think about other dyes for blue, as woad was used even before the Indigofera became common, and Europeans started to cultivate woad seeds. Soon many regions in Europe had great lands of Woad. In Persia, Woad was a wild plant, growing in meadows of this fertile land. Though the Indigofera has the most concentrated levels of blue pigment and creates a deeper blue, Woad dye makes a unique shade of blue, demanded by many Persian rug producers.