Scientific Journal of Pazhuhesh-e Honar

One of the most important and the most ordinary designs ever-decorating the face of the carpets woven in the centers concerned with weaving Iranian Carpet is “Botteh”. Bottheh has been developed in a wide variety of forms with a slight change in its original design. Unlike many complicated Islimi and Khotaiee designs, it is a simple minimal iterative basic pattern which covers the whole surface of the carpet. There have been a lot of talks and discussions about its symbolic concepts and notions, a general conclusion of which is presented here. The main issue in the present article is the analysis of the drawing structure of Botteh and the identification and introduction of its basic pattern. Preliminary inspections revealed that one of the geometric knots of the “Hasht” category known as “Wavy Hasht-o-Zohreh” would be the base of Botteh; so, their components were compared and contrasted one by one to verify the proposed hypothesis. The results showed maximum correspondence and overlapping between Botteh and the specified knot. Despite the unchanged nature of some forms of Botteh like Malmir over the years, in most cases carpet designers and weavers have exercised variety and innovation in order to avoid mere repetition and monotony. The great number of the weaving techniques has been also an influential factor in modifying some of its details to renew Botteh. Its symbolic and mysterious concepts and notions are still getting renewed while researchers continue their speculations.