Stamping Art
Hello out there,
Getting lost in Isfahan's lively bazaar is probably part of the experience if you visit this fascinating city right in the center of Iran. The dimensions of this place are just unimaginable and packed with hundreds of small vendors selling spices, carpets, kitchen appliances and everything else. Since I was just fascinated by everything that was going on around me, I actually did not mind getting lost and just enjoyed walking through the alleys and discover the Iranian way of life.
In one part of the bazaar, where all kind of fabrics were sold, I got into a conversation with a very kind vendor of tablecloths. Of course, he invited me for a cup of tea and asked all kind of questions about my life in Europe and this trip through Iran. During the conversation, I looked around his store and recognized that the tablecloths he sold were not the typical mass products I had seen everywhere else.
At a second glance, in fact, every one of them was a unique artwork. He explained, that for generations his family crafts these tablecloths by using ancient stamps and natural color to print all kind of patterns on the fabric. Since he has several hundreds of them and uses the pattern with different colors on top of each other, every tablecloth is unique. Of course, I wanted to take a photo of this craft, which he gladly accepted and showed me one of his oldest stamps, that carries the logo of his family. Since he just sold one of the cloths, he pressed the colored stamp on the back of the fabric and I only had to press the shutter.