InANTIQUES | BLOSSOM DESIGNS

In the city centers that were famous for rug weaving, the paisley motifs were executed in a more formal and curvilinear way, such as in the Tabriz Hadji Jalili rug shown above, whereas in the villages and tribes, the paisley motif would be rendered in a simpler and cruder way, such as in the Malayer rug seen left.

The Farsi (Persian) word for paisley is boteh or butah, and as a general rule of thumb within the rug trade, the city versions of Paisley rugs are referred to as such, while the rugs with paisley designs woven in a more geometric format are referred to as “Boteh” designs. It is the same design as the paisley, but just executed in a more stylized or rudimentary way.

Like their paisley design counterparts from the more organized rug weaving workshops in the larger cities, these simpler boteh design rugs also reflect the rich cultural meaning of this particular blossom motif, but tend to do so with a smaller design scale and with more repetition of pattern from one end of the rug to the other, as opposed to the larger scale and more finely articulated renderings of the similar rugs from the more sophisticated Persian cities.