37” x 47″ Vintage Persian Hand-Crafted Kalamkar Block Print Textile with a Paisley Pattern. The beauty of this piece is in the amount of creative and precision work that the creator had put in to make a complex design based on paisley from and integrate into a mihrab design makes a statement of fineness and uniqueness of this antique textile.
The Persian Kalamkar (Qalamkar or Ghalamkar) woodblock print textile is from the great city of Isfahan. This is done 100% by hand with different designs on each block. Each design is put in the ink and then applied to the textile. Once the design is completed, a hot iron is used to make the print permanent.
Kalamkaris originated in Persia where "qalam" meant pen and "kari" meant craftwork. Originally the design was hand-drawn using a bamboo pen, but since the 19th-century, block printing has been widely used.
