A photograph of two Qashqai weavers beside a floor loom in Fars shows small bundles of coloured yarn within reach. It cannot tell us what dyed those particular fibres. It does show where colour enters the work: as prepared yarn, before a knot becomes part of the pattern. To understand that preparation, we have to look beyond the finished rug. Wool must be gathered, cleaned, sometimes spun, coloured and brought to the loom. Each stage leaves room for choices, constraints and collaboration.

Cover photograph: Julia Maudlin / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0. The photographed weavers were not identified as participants in the study discussed here.

An oral-history study in Fars recorded the memories of 26 people involved in handwoven carpets, among them weavers, dyers, producers and repairers. Its accounts give an unusually close view of how materials were obtained and colours made. They also resist a tidy story in which every Qashqai family used the same plants or every older rug was dyed only with local ingredients. A recollection of a practice tells us what someone knew or did; it does not chemically identify the dye in another person's rug.

Colour begins before the dye bath

The study brings interviews together with earlier descriptions of wool work. In one reported sequence, sheep were washed, fleeces shorn, wool cleaned and spun into yarn, then skeins were prepared for colour. Another account allows dyeing before or after spinning. People were not all doing the same job at the same point in the year. Some households prepared material themselves; some obtained spun or dyed yarn from elsewhere. A dye bath was one part of a chain, not a solitary act that defined a whole textile tradition.

The seasonal setting matters because sheep, water, plant material and labour did not become available on a shop schedule. The study describes spring wool work and the role of rivers in washing fibre and rinsing skeins. A 2007 photograph at Sarab Bahram in Fars documents Qashqai women washing wool at a spring. Those people were not identified as the study's interviewees, and the picture does not show a dye bath. It gives a real view of the washing stage that is easy to miss when looking only at completed carpets.

Cleaning is consequential. Grease, soil, water and the preparation of yarn affect how evenly colour is taken up. Different small batches can therefore finish at different intensities even when they are meant to belong to one colour area. The visible bands often called abrash may be consistent with batch differences, but their presence does not prove a particular dye, age or place of weaving. The abrash guide explains the visual effect separately; here the point is that colour variation has a material history before it becomes a pattern on the floor.

A palette drawn from routes as well as plants

The Fars accounts name yellow materials such as jashir, a regional plant, and describe khoshk or mordaraghaji in several preparations. Pomegranate rind, walnut husk, madder root and indigo also appear. The names do not form a single fixed recipe card. One respondent might discuss a plant gathered along a route, another a purchased ingredient, and a specialist dyer a different combination. The paper's colour table records possibilities, not ingredients that can be assumed in every Qashqai rug.

Local access influenced choice. Seasonal movement could bring weavers near particular plants, and a dyer might collect material or obtain it through others. But “local dye” is too simple a label for the entire palette. The interviews mention bought dyestuffs from other Iranian regions; in some accounts, indigo work went to specialist dyers rather than being done in a household. Encyclopaedia Iranica also describes Fars weavers using local wool while documenting a wider trade in dye materials. The place where a rug was woven, the place a root grew and the place its yarn was dyed need not be identical.

That distinction helps explain why regional colour traditions can be recognizable without being sealed off. A yellow associated with one locality might be shaped by a plant growing there; a red could depend on madder brought from elsewhere; a blue could require purchased indigo or specialist handling. It is possible to discuss those traditions without claiming that geography alone identifies an individual rug's dye chemistry.

One named colour could involve several decisions

The oral histories give several ways of approaching green. In one account, wool coloured blue with indigo was combined with a yellow-producing material. Elsewhere, respondents discuss khoshk, jashir and different mordants, the substances used in some dye processes to alter how colour binds or appears. A maker could aim for a pale grassy green or a deeper shade while using related materials. Such descriptions are evidence of skilled adjustment, not instructions for reproducing the result at home.

Madder is similarly more than a label for red. Interviewees associate it with red, pink and orange-to-copper ranges in different treatments. The amount and condition of plant matter, the wool, the bath, the mordant and later rinsing can all matter. Encyclopaedia Iranica describes madder hues as responsive to fibre, preparation and other bath conditions. This helps make sense of the oral accounts without turning every colour name into a one-to-one plant identification.

The paper records local words for colours, including names for blue, green, red and pink. That vocabulary is valuable evidence of how people organized a palette in speech, but it is not a laboratory key. An English colour label can also flatten distinctions that mattered to a dyer. “Red” might cover a bright scarlet, a coppery tone or a deeper lake colour. The eye sees the result; the remembered words tell us about the decisions around it.

The work did not stop at the edge of the dye pot

Several respondents remember soaking, heating, stirring, taking out skeins and rinsing them, at times in running water. One describes wool laid out after colouring. Another details repeated handling in a madder process. The accounts differ in timing and materials. That difference is part of the story: there was no one sequence shared by all 26 people, and the study is not a controlled test of colourfastness.

In some memories, dyeing also belonged to a social calendar. The article describes occasions associated with spring and shared work, including music and hospitality. These recollections should not be turned into a claim that every Qashqai dye bath was ceremonial, or that the same customs continue everywhere today. They show that technical knowledge could live within household and community routines as well as in a professional workshop.

There is a useful tension here. The most visually striking stage may be a row of coloured skeins drying in the light, while the less photogenic stages decide whether that colour is usable. Cleaning the wool, obtaining a suitable ingredient, controlling a bath and rinsing it all take attention. In the weaving photograph, the yarn has already crossed those thresholds. The photograph shows the later act of making a rug from coloured material, not proof of how that colour was produced.

Plant dyes and synthetic dyes were not two separate worlds

The study's interviewees remember chemical dyes becoming attractive because they could be quicker and cheaper to obtain or use. Some describe disappointing results from particular products or methods, while others remember renewed interest in plant dyeing and workshops that supported it. Different communities and makers adopted or retained methods at different times. The source's broad historical comments should therefore be read alongside the actual variation in its interview table.

It would be misleading to convert those memories into a rule that an “authentic” Qashqai rug must contain only plant dyes. Synthetic colours entered Iranian carpet production in the nineteenth century, and older and newer methods could coexist. A particular maker might use purchased dye, locally gathered plant matter, undyed wool or several of these in one working life. A rug's quality cannot be decided by applying a moral ranking to the words “natural” and “synthetic” alone. Fibre preparation, the quality of the dyestuff, process control, construction and later care all matter.

The interviews also show how little a finished surface reveals about a supply chain. The dyer, spinner, weaver and seller might be different people. A yarn could have moved through a market before it reached a loom. More uniform colour does not automatically mean industrial production; a change of tone does not automatically mean hand-gathered plants. These are possible histories, not conclusions that can be read off a photograph.

What a finished rug can actually tell you

Start with what is visible. You can describe the relationships among blue, red, green, brown and undyed areas. You can notice whether a field changes gradually across its length, or whether a narrow band marks a likely new batch of yarn. You can study how colour supports the design rather than treating it as a code that will reveal the plant used. For a wider introduction to Qashqai structures and motifs, see the Qashqai rug guide.

Then separate observation from identification. A red that resembles madder is not proof of madder. A green may result from more than one material sequence. Fading, restoration, lighting and photography can change what you see. The Met describes how conservators can identify colourants through analysis of a tiny yarn sample and comparison with reference compounds. That work concerns a different historic textile, but the lesson applies here: confident material attribution can require object-specific evidence beyond visual resemblance.

For a rug whose dye history matters, ask what is documented about that particular object. Is there a reliable production record, a family account, a workshop description or a specialist examination? If not, an honest description of visible colour and condition is more useful than an unsupported promise about a plant or an exact date. This is especially important when a richly varied palette is used as a sales shortcut for “old,” “tribal” or “naturally dyed.”

Why these memories are worth keeping

The oral study is most valuable where it preserves alternatives that a simple colour chart would erase. It remembers wool washed near water, yarn spun and coloured at different stages, plants collected on routes and ingredients bought through markets, household work and specialist dyeing, and the uneven arrival of new materials. Its 26 participants do not speak for every Qashqai weaver. Their different answers make the tradition more intelligible because actual production was shaped by place, time, access and individual decisions.

A finished rug gathers those decisions into a surface we can live with and study. The colours are real, but their causes are not always visible. Looking closely at the wool and asking carefully about its history honours the craft more than assigning a romantic recipe to every red or blue thread.

Sources

• Seyyedeh Akram Olyaee Tabaei and Seyyed Mohammad Mehdi Mirza Amini, «تاریخ شفاهی رنگرزی پشم در فرش‌بافی ایل قشقایی», 2018.
• Encyclopaedia Iranica, “Carpets ii. Raw materials and dyes.”
• The Metropolitan Museum of Art, “Identifying Natural Dyes to Understand a Tapestry's Origin.”