Of tachehs and designs

An exhibition of a tribal art of weaving is on at the Courtyard, Dubai, till November 12. On display are a variety of tachehs in different patterns and designs.
The tachehs that still survive serve as reminders of an important group of textiles from Chahar Mahal province of Iran. The word tacheh is one of the few Persian words for tribal and rural containers. Ta or tai in Persian means "little bale". Since this word is of ancient Persian origin and has Indo-European roots, more research is needed into the possibility of its being akin to the German tasche, which also means bag or sack.
The tacheh is a fairly large container or a bag, about the size of the juval but somewhat thinner. Each tacheh is woven from a piece of fabric about 130 cmsx100 cms, and has an area of 1.30 square metres. Roughly a fifth of this area consists of pile weave, and the rest is weft-faced plain weave. The pile weave often consists of symmetrical knots generally on one level. The warp of tachehs are often of wool and sometimes of cotton.
The use of cotton became more common among the Chahar Mahal weavers in the 20th century. Tachehs were always woven in pairs and in one piece. A woven fabric of this kind has dimensions of roughly 260 cmsx100cms. It resembles a small kilim with two pile-weave, salt-bag-shaped sides at its two ends.
This kilim can be cut and converted into two separate tachehs or folded and sewn from the middle to form a twin tacheh. In that case, the woven kilim is folded both length and breadth-wise and its two edges are sewn together. For reasons of durability, the imprints on the two ends of the tacheh have a special structure which, by virtue of the increase in the wraps and the wrapping of extra wefts around them, makes the fabric stronger.
This reinforcement also holds true for the upper and lower segments of the tacheh. The tacheh has the same use as the juval that is, primarily for the storing and moving of wheat and barley. The tachehs are filled at harvest time with wheat or barley, loaded on to donkeys or mules in pairs and taken either to the mill to be ground or home to be stored.
The number of tachehs a farmer has depends on the size of his crop and yield. Those who have more tachehs obviously are better off economically and for the most part, store their wheat and flour in granaries in a corner of their house, where they also keep their tachehs in stacks. The poorer ones, meanwhile, stack their tachehs in a corner of the same room in which they live.
A large number of the dated tachehs belong to the early to mid-twentieth century period. In terms of novelty of patterns and designs, Chahar Mahal Bakhtiari is one of the richest centres of rug-weaving in Iran. As far as patterns and designs are concerned, they fall into separate categories. The patterns and designs of the majority of Chahar Mahali textiles have their base in soft lines and floral patterns, and one can easily see the imprint of classical Persian rugs in them.
The Lori textiles, on the other hand, have preserved their tribal purity. The several varieties of khorjin khur, mafrash, and saltbag are the handiwork of nomadic Lors. A considerable number of tachehs have a plain field design. The prototype and origin of this design is taken from sofrehs and also used extensively in gabbehs.