Arak
— — the loom city under a wide sky.
Not only on a wall.
“A planned city founded in 1808 on the high plain south of Tehran, the capital of Markazi Province. The bazaar runs four covered kilometres through the old quarter, and the rugs woven here — long known to the trade as Sarouk — are some of the most recognisable in Iran. The town sits near seventeen hundred metres above sea level, and the winters bite. The brick reads warm against the dry hills.
Arak, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Arak is the capital of Markazi Province in central Iran, about two hundred and sixty kilometres southwest of Tehran on the high plain between the Zagros foothills and the central desert. The city was founded in 1808 by Yusef Khan Gorji under the Qajar dynasty as a fortified garrison town, originally called Soltanabad. It was renamed Arak in 1938. The metropolitan population is over half a million, and the elevation is roughly seventeen hundred metres above sea level, giving cold winters and dry summers.
The covered bazaar of Arak runs roughly four kilometres through the historic centre and is one of the largest brick-vaulted bazaars in Iran. Built during the nineteenth century with successive Qajar and early Pahlavi extensions, it carries the trade in textiles, copperware, and rugs that defined the city's first hundred years. The Chahar Fasl bathhouse and several Qajar-era caravanserais survive within the bazaar quarter. Brick is the dominant material; the streetscape reads warm against the dry hills.
Arak became internationally known through its rugs, which the trade has long called Sarouk after a nearby village. From the late nineteenth century the city's workshops wove room-sized carpets for the American market, often in deep red grounds with floral medallions, and the type still dominates auction catalogues a century later. The Markazi Carpet Cooperative continues to organise weavers across the province. Nowruz, at the spring equinox in March, is the largest civic gathering of the year.