In a carpet shop, Bakhshayesh can disappear into a more familiar name: Heriz. The two belong to the same wider weaving district in East Azerbaijan, yet they are not interchangeable labels. A Bakhshayesh rug may share the bold medallion, angular flowers and strong colour that many people associate with Heriz. Its own design history, however, is more varied than that shorthand suggests.

One of the most useful ways to understand Bakhshayesh is to look at change. Nineteenth-century examples in a Persian field study include large medallions, linked repeats and open all-over patterns. Later production often concentrates on a corner-and-medallion composition in three locally named versions. The contrast does not give us a magic formula for dating a rug. It shows how local imagination, trading networks and pattern-making methods shaped what could appear on a loom.

A weaving place inside a larger market name

Bakhshayesh is a town in the Heris district of East Azerbaijan, in the orbit of Tabriz. Heris became the better-known commercial and administrative name for rugs woven across the district. In the market, a carpet made in Bakhshayesh might therefore be presented simply as Heriz. This is not always a deliberate error. A regional label can be useful when an exact village origin is uncertain. It becomes unhelpful when it hides a documented local tradition or pretends that all district rugs look alike.

Tabriz matters here as a centre of trade and design, not as a synonym for the weaving place. Designs and commissions could travel outward from the city while local weavers translated them into their own materials, scale and drawing. The shapes of a flower or the angles of a medallion could change in that translation. If you want the wider regional story, our Heriz rug guide provides it. Here the focus is narrower: what the Bakhshayesh designs themselves reveal.

Why the older carpets do not share one fixed look

The study groups its earlier comparison carpets around the later nineteenth century, especially approximately 1860 to 1890. That is a working range for the examples, not a date to attach to every rug with a similar pattern. The surviving photographs show three broad approaches to filling a carpet. Some place a medallion in the middle and corners around it. Others link repeated units across the field, almost like a network. A third group lets small flowers, birds or geometric details move through an all-over field without one dominant centre.

Even within the medallion group, the balance can differ. A central form may expand until it occupies much of the field, leaving comparatively small corners. Another example may hold a quieter field around a sharply drawn centre. In linked patterns, the eye travels from one unit to its neighbour rather than returning to a single focal point. In dispersed designs, the rhythm comes from scattering and repetition instead of a monumental medallion. These are different visual experiences, although all can belong in the Bakhshayesh story.

The research connects this variety with weaving from memory, family patterns and the adaptation of motifs circulating among neighbouring communities. Such explanations are plausible for the documented group; a photograph cannot tell us exactly what an individual weaver remembered, invented or borrowed. What the visual evidence does show is that the later, highly recognizable red medallion is not the only historical possibility.

From remembered pattern to portable model

A design can reach a loom in several forms. One is a remembered arrangement, with a weaver making decisions as the work grows. Another is a small guide that establishes the main zones without specifying every knot. In the later Bakhshayesh material, the study describes dastmal naqsha, cloth pattern reminders carrying the medallion, corners, field and border. It also records ornak, small woven models whose colours and details could guide a larger carpet. Eventually, graph-paper cartoons offered a more explicit plan.

These methods are not a simple scale from “authentic” to “inauthentic.” A reminder still leaves room for judgment. A woven model can preserve a familiar design while allowing variation in proportion or detail. A paper cartoon can support careful, consistent work. The interesting question is what each method asks the weaver to decide. When fewer decisions are made at the loom and more are settled in a repeatable plan, the output may become more consistent. The study argues that the range of designs in its then-current Bakhshayesh sample had narrowed in just this way.

Export demand was part of that history, but not the whole explanation. Merchants could bring patterns that suited distant buyers, and repeat orders could favour familiar compositions. Local weavers did not stop interpreting those patterns. The three named later designs below share an overall framework, yet their medallions, corners and flowers still differ in ways that matter.

Three later patterns, one shared framework

In the field study, Esmat Naqsha, Laleh Naqsha and Tajeri are three prominent named designs in later Bakhshayesh weaving. Each uses a lachak-toranj layout: four corner zones surrounding a central medallion. The name describes the arrangement, not a single drawing. Compare the rug examples first, then the enlarged quarter views. The centre may be broad and nearly square, elongated into a diamond, or surrounded by angular floral forms. The corners can be calm, tulip-like or forcefully framed.

Esmat Naqsha: a strong centre and quieter corners

In the example labelled Esmat Naqsha, the medallion is large and roughly square, with stepped or scalloped outlines around its inner parts. A drawn-out floral element caps the medallion. The corners occupy their usual positions but do not compete with the centre as heavily as they do in some related patterns. The field between them carries buds and leaves. At a distance, the rug reads as a confident geometric centre; nearby, its edges and flowers reveal a more intricate rhythm.

The quarter view below is especially useful because it lets you follow the transitions. The medallion boundary does not simply stop at a straight line. White, red and dark passages sharpen its outline, while flowers and angled forms carry the eye outward. The numbered markers belong to the original analysis; their purpose here is to help locate parts of the design, not to suggest that a single number can identify a rug.

Laleh Naqsha: the tulip moves between centre and corner

Laleh means tulip. In this design the study locates a tulip form in the medallion centre and again in the corner. The medallion is a large diamond, with elongated ends and prominent floral compartments. The field carries large blossoms and buds rather than leaving an expanse of plain ground. The corner tulip is comparatively small, so the form can be easy to miss if you look only at the whole rug from across a room.

The enlarged detail shows another useful feature: the border is not merely a dark frame. Floral units inside it repeat at a different scale from the larger forms in the field. The relation between those scales makes the pattern feel full without turning every part into the same size of ornament. A tulip-like shape may suggest the name, but the complete organization is what makes this a particular local design.

Tajeri: bold geometry with more breathing room

The Tajeri pattern has a large central medallion and substantial corners. Its central outline is related to a pattern also discussed in the wider Heriz area, a good reminder that named designs can cross local boundaries. Yet this Bakhshayesh example is not identical to every carpet sold under a Heriz or Tajeri label. The study notes a framed garpiz figure within the medallion, drawn-out floral ends, and sections of the field with relatively open space.

That openness changes the pace of the composition. Your eye can pause on ground colour before moving into another compact cluster of flowers or angled lines. Compare the detail with the more crowded Laleh field and the near-square emphasis of Esmat. These distinctions are easier to understand in images than as a list of abstract motif names.

The local names inside the design

Local motif vocabulary adds another layer. Gousha refers to the corner, while gobak names the medallion centre. Togh is used for a medallion end. The study glosses garpiz as watermelon and shamama as a round flower. In border descriptions, baligh is connected with fish but also marks a leaf-like form, while yelan and zanjireh distinguish main and smaller border zones.

These are names used to communicate a design, not a secret code with one fixed symbolic meaning. A motif called the same thing may be drawn differently in Esmat, Laleh and Tajeri. That flexibility is part of what makes the vocabulary interesting. The names preserve relationships among parts of the rug even as an individual carpet changes their exact shape, colour or size.

Colour, structure and the limits of a photograph

The study contrasts lighter, more varied older examples with the red, dark blue and pale accents common in its later sample. It also describes changes in materials and colourants as production evolved. Those observations should not be converted into an instant test for age. A bright ground is not automatically nineteenth century; a red field is not automatically modern. Restorations, dye variation, lighting and the way photographs reproduce colour can all complicate a comparison.

Likewise, structure matters but must be inspected on the particular object. The paper describes symmetrical knotting and a two-weft arrangement in later examples, along with wool and cotton used in different parts of the carpet. It does not prove that every rug sold as Bakhshayesh has precisely the same foundation, density or handle. A design may make an attribution worth investigating; it cannot substitute for provenance or a close examination of the weave.

There is also a chronological limit to the research. Its interviews and photographed examples document a particular moment and selected carpets. “Contemporary” in the study means contemporary to that research, not a claim that every Bakhshayesh loom in 2026 is still weaving only these three patterns. The best reading is historical: a once broad visual range had, in the documented later group, moved towards a smaller family of repeatable corner-and-medallion designs.

What makes Bakhshayesh worth seeing on its own terms

Bakhshayesh belongs to the Heriz district story, but it deserves more than a footnote under the district name. The earlier carpets show how much variety could live in one weaving place. The later named patterns show that even a shared commercial framework leaves room for local choices in medallion, corner, flower and border. Looking at both periods together makes the familiar angular red carpet more interesting, not less: it becomes one chapter in a longer design history.

Sources

Shabnam Mohammadi, Ali Vandshoari and Abdollah Mirzaeei, “The Structural Study of Designs and Motifs of Bakhshayesh Rugs during Late 19th Century up to the Present,” 2016 (figures cropped, CC BY 4.0).