Treaty of Shah Sanai
Zari or Zarbaft is a delicate and expensive fabric whose warp or thread is made of pure silk and its wefts are made of colored silk; Except for one of the wefts, which is made of Gulabtun or Zarin or Simin thread. The variety of colors and patterns in this fabric is more than other traditional handwoven fabrics.
According to the report of jahane-gardesh, quoted by Isna, some sources date gold weaving back to the Achaemenid period and refer to the travelogues of people such as Herodotus, a Greek historian, who said: “The Romans paid huge sums of money every year for the beauty and fame of traditional Iranian gold weaving.”
According to some researchers, the Safavid period was the golden age of weaving in Iran due to the activity of a workshop called “Shahi”, and the Qajar period is considered one of the worst periods in the history of Iran for this industry, because at that time, textile factories in European countries began to produce They made a lot of cloth, and the indiscriminate and cheap entry of Russian cloth into the country prevented the continuation of the activity of manual and traditional workshops.
Currently, the Sheikh-ul-Islam Gold Weaving Workshop, the Isfahan Fine Arts Academy and the Kashan Cultural Heritage Department are the only active workshops in this industry.
Mehdi Shamsali can be introduced as one of the only remaining artists of gold weaving in Isfahan; An artist who has been working in his father’s workshop since the age of eight, and after returning from military service, he has been teaching gold weaving at the Academy of Fine Arts.
He spent more than 50 years of his life in preserving, reviving and teaching the art of gold weaving and with the support of Isfahan’s cultural heritage, in 1375 he settled in Isfahan Textile House (Sheikh-ul-Islam House) and tries to keep this field alive.
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