Embroidery Still Popular In Iran

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30887, 21 October 1965, Page 2

Embroidery Still Popular In Iran

Fine needlework is almost a lost art in Western countries, but the women of Iran hand their traditional skill down from generation to generation.

Miss L. Birt, an evangelistic worker for the Church Missionary Society, took over the organisation of an embroidery industry begun during World War I by the mission hospital in Islaham, in 1928. As she showed samples of the fine work, Miss Birt spoke of her early difficulties with the Persian language and her efforts to get the cottage industry on a business footing at the Y.W.C.A. World Fellowship morning tea yesterday. Work was done on Irish linen, and organised on a weekly basis with different women embroidering sections of the table cloths, mats and a variety of small articles. Designs were taken from copies and rubbings of Persian tiles, and Miss Birt had more than 100 women who were paid on a weight basis. “I weighed the cloth when it arrived and after it was embroidered, paying the women on the difference after the cloth was worked,” Miss Birt said.

Since her retirement, Miss Birt says she misses the people of Iran greatly, for they are attractive, and friendly. “I am disappointed that we do not see more of them here,” she said. “In appearance they are not very dark, but look rather like the French and Italians. Only the older men and women wear the traditional dress now for Iran is gradually becoming more Westernised.”

To prepare the children for this change in their way of life, the hospital built a hostel for the children of the workers. There they continued their Persian ways during the day, but in the evening they sat at tressel tables for their meal, and ate with spoons and forks. Aid from the Americans was greatly assisting Iran to modernise the land, and education was now compulsory. “But the people find ways of getting round that, especially in the villages,” said Miss Birt.

The women suffered very little from eyestrain, and if medical care or spectacles were needed, profits from the sale of the embroidery would be used for treatment. Children would sit beside their mothers, beginning to embroider almost as soon as they could hold a needle. Money from the sale of their work helped the Persian women a great deal, Miss Birt said. Their standard of living rose, and it was no longer necessary for them to marry their children off at a very early age.