Reed Screens in the House of Light
- Ornamentum
- Jan 29
- 8 min read
The Story of one Persian reed screen's journey from Iran to Canada
by Laleh Ebrahimian and Michele Hardy
In the golden light of 1960s Tehran, a nation balancing rapid modernization with a yearning for its roots, Violette Dehghani and Mehdi Ebrahimian emerged as pioneering figures in the revival of Persian arts and handicrafts. Amidst both external and internal pressures, particularly during a period of profound national cultural transformation, they played pivotal roles in reimagining and adapting these traditional crafts. Their efforts were part of a broader 20th-century movement to preserve Persian cultural heritage while responding to contemporary needs.(1) Honouring Dehghani and Ebrahimian’s legacy, their children recently gifted a Kurdish reed screen from their personal collection to Nickle Galleries at the University of Calgary.
Violette Dehghani and Mehdi Ebrahimian, Artisans of Revival
When Dehghani and Ebrahimian opened their handicraft gallery, Zinat Sara, in Tehran, they weren’t simply curating objects, they were illuminating the living threads of Persian cultural memory. Together, they helped usher Persian design into the modern era without severing it from its sacred and vernacular roots. Their collaborative work spanned architecture, textile, painting, ceramics, fashion, and furniture, offering a vision of revival through reinvention.
Born in Shiraz—the cradle of Persian lyricism—Violette Dehghani carried the poise of that city in her palette and practice. As a child in the rural south of Iran, she was captivated by the intricate crafts of the Qashqai tribes, planting the early seed of a lifelong devotion to Persian handicrafts. Trained in interior design in London, she expanded her studies to include art and art history in both England and France, developing her rare fusion of technical skill, historical insight, and aesthetic sensibility.
Back in Tehran, Dehghani joined the newly founded Markaz-e Ṣanāyeʿ-e Dastī, or Handicrafts Emporium, at Iran’s Ministry of Economy, becoming a key figure in the movement to revalue Persian craft. She also advised acclaimed Persian art historians Arthur Upham Pope and Phyllis Ackerman.
Left: Violette Dehghani working at the newly-established Handicrafts Centre under Iran's Ministry of Economy in the 1960s, where she joined the team that promoted and revamped Persian handicraft. // Right: Mehdi Ebrahimian with a silk abat-jour (lampshade) designed in collaboration with Violette Dehghani and sold at Zinat Sara Handicraft Gallery. Both images © Laleh Ebrahimian 2025
Alongside her team, she travelled the country, co-curating and commissioning works for the centre. They not only sourced treasures from across Iran but also worked directly with artisans, helping to elevate both technique and visibility of everyday objects into works of art. Their shared approach—prioritizing quality, authenticity and reinvention—helped usher colours, designs and forms of old Persian handicrafts into new markets while preserving their soulful lineage.
Dehghani believed that heritage was not merely to be preserved but to be worn, used, and passed through the hands of ordinary life. Her designs on textile and ceramic drew from literary epics and miniature painting, reframing traditional motifs with clarity and restraint. Every object—whether a glass vessel handblown at their factory, a print on silk or cotton, or a fashion accessory—was an act of cultural continuity.
It was the deep-rooted passion for the arts and art history that brought her and her husband, Mehdi Ebrahimian, together. Raised in Isfahan and trained at its prestigious School of Fine Arts, Ebrahimian studied under some of Iran’s most revered teachers before continuing his education in Paris at the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs. From these dual lineages she developed an aesthetic that was both historically informed and architecturally ambitious.
Ebrahimian’s most iconic built work is perhaps the restoration and reimagining of the 300-year-old Abbasi Hotel in Isfahan. As the lead architect, he supervised not only the structural design but also the training of local artisans and commissioned some of the country’s master craftsmen to revive long-dormant techniques in mirror work, stucco, wood carving, and mosaic. Every detail was considered—from the Persian motifs engraved on the dinnerware to the tilework evoking Safavid geometry to custom furniture crafted by Master Javad Chaichi—so that the hotel would feel like stepping into a glorious, living artifact.
In New York, his design for the Waldorf Astoria’s Persian restaurant carried that same vision of immersive heritage, with shimmering mirrored walls and Qajar-style wall paintings. The restaurant became a byword for cultural luxury in the late 1970s. His exhibition designs for international fairs—such as those in Montreal, Tokyo and Kuwait—were similarly attentive to Persian forms, drawing on patterns from mosque tiles, rose motifs, and the architectural curves of Persepolis.
At home in Tehran, the couple’s Zinat Sara Gallery functioned as a vibrant laboratory of reinvention, where craftspeople developed textile patterns, ceramics, and household objects that reinterpreted Persian design for contemporary use. Traditional textiles converted into elegant dresses were worn by the queen, increasing the visibility of the country’s handicrafts. The items were not museum pieces; they were living artifacts, meant to reintroduce the logic of beauty and storytelling into domestic life.
The Kurdish reed screens the couple acquired during their many journeys across Iran were an emblematic expression of their artistic legacy. More than a decade later, one of these pieces, intricately interwoven with wool, was mounted on their living room wall, where its warmth, rich colours and quiet majesty delighted family and guests.
Their legacy has been documented in foundational publications such as Arthur Upham Pope’s Survey of Persian Art and Jay and Sumi Gluck’s Survey of Persian Handicraft. Yet it also lives on in spaces and objects still in use today. Whether in an ambassador’s residence adorned with mirror work and stucco, or in a silk scarf bearing the figures of the Shahnameh epic, their work continues to speak, quietly and with grace, to the soul of Persian art.
-- Laleh Ebrahimian
Archives of Lived Meaning
A recent exhibition at Nickle Galleries, University of Calgary, Canada featured some of the oldest, largest and most intriguing carpets and textiles from our permanent collection. Prominently displayed in the Nickle's cavernous concrete gallery was a Kurdish reed screen or chikh, recently donated and publicly exhibited for the first time. This magnificent work was gifted by the children of Violette Dehghani and Mehdi Ebrahimian, in loving memory of their parents. Measuring 150 cm high by 635 cm wide, few galleries have the space to exhibit such a large textile; fewer still have the ability to care for, research, and contextualize it. Chikh are architectural textiles made by nomadic Kurds. Used as the outer or dividing walls of their characteristic black tents, chikh are readily transportable, draw on locally available materials, offer ventilation and beauty. Violette Dehghani notes:
The Kurds are especially noted for their ornate chikhs, which vie with their superb carpets in fineness of work and richness of color. It is mainly a tent interior decoration, but when the tent sides are raised in warm weather the chikh functions as the tent wall, passing air and light between the reeds but protecting privacy and screening dust.
Anthropologist Patty Jo Watson described and photographed the process for making reed screens, observed in 1959 at Qala Kharawa in Iran. Working with Iraqi Kurds more recently, Michaël Thévenin notes that reed screens are important for hospitality and protecting the family’s intimate spaces. They also enhance solidarity and mark boundaries.(2)
Using a simple, upright loom, rigid reed wefts are held in place with pairs of warp threads. As wefts are added, the warp yarns, wrapped around rocks, are moved from front to back (or vice versa), twinning the wefts in place. While screens can be unembellished, the Dehghani / Ebrahimian screen is composed of reeds that have been wrapped with different colours of wool—as they are woven together, they combine to create bold patterns not unlike those used to embellish carpets. In an essay describing the Textile Museum's Kurdish reed screen, Carol Bier suggests chikh are technically and aesthetically related to kilims(3)—a type of flat-woven carpet.
The Dehghani / Ebrahimian screen is additionally embellished by alternating pairs of warp threads so that a diamond lattice is created overtop of the designs formed by the wrapped reeds. The edges are finished with bands of woven goat hair. Similar techniques are used to create screens in other cultures; the exhibition mentioned above featured reed screens from both Iran and Kyrgyzstan, demonstrating not only the technical mastery of nomadic weavers, but a broadly shared creative vocabulary. Diamonds and octagons with hooked horns and chevrons, for example, embellish screens from east and west Asia. The Dehghani / Ebrahimian screen, additionally, features two rows of four legged beasts (possibly goats or sheep), worked in shades of red, bottle green, and sparkling white.
Nickle Galleries is home to a collection of carpets and textiles from across Asia. Much of the collection was assembled by the late Dr. Lloyd Erikson whose love of carpets drove him to travel extensively, purchase widely, and share generously. Known as the Jean and Marie Erikson Collection, it is particularly strong in nineteenth century Caucasian and Persian carpets of tribal and village origin, there are also wonderful examples from Turkey, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and further east; some significant early carpets, as well as a small number of embroideries, felts and other associated textiles. The collection has grown through donation and selective purchases—today it numbers close to 1000 textiles. The Dehghani / Ebrahimian screen enhances the teaching and research potential of the collection, extends its geographic reach, and offers a potent example of beauty, sustainability, skillfulness and effective design. As Laleh Ebrahimian, their daughter, recently noted "this piece reflects a vision of Persian art that moves between the monumental and the intimate, the sacred and the practical."
Nickle Galleries is thrilled to be the stewards of this remarkable "archive of lived meaning" and look forward to learning from it, building upon it, and sharing it with our community. We hope that the late Violette Dehghani and Mehdi Ebrahimian, talented scholars, artists and champions of Persian art and design, would be pleased with their enduring and far-reaching legacy.
-- Michele Hardy, PhD
Curatorial Director, Nickle Galleries
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Alaleh (Laleh) Ebrahimian, an LSE-trained development professional with over 20 years’ experience, writes on a range of topics, including her parents’ art collection and development issues affecting children and women.
Michele Hardy has a PhD in Cultural Anthropology and is Curatorial Director for Nickle Galleries, University of Calgary. Recent publications include Prairie Interlace: Weaving, Modernisms and the Expanded Frame, 2023 (co-edited with Long and Krueger).
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Endnotes
Bier, Carol, Ebrahimian, Mehdi, Ala Firouz, Iran, and Gluck, Jay. "Crafts." Encyclopaedia Iranica (online). Accessed June 1, 2025. https://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/crafts/.
Thévenin, Michaël. “The Ornamental Cane-Screens (çîẍ) of Iraqi Kurdish Nomadic Breeders”. In Nomad Lives, edited by Aline Averbouh, Nejma Goutas, and Sophie Méry, translated by Louise Byrne. Paris: Publications scientifiques du Muséum, 2021.
Bier, Carol, and Textile Museum (Washington, D.C.). 1992. A Kurdish Reed Screen: August 22, 1992-February 15, 1993, the Textile Museum, Washington, DC. Washington, DC: Textile Museum.