Visions Of Nature: The Antique Weavings of Persia - Hardcover

Antique Persian weavings represent a wide variety of functions, utilitarian, religious, and artistic. While their purposes and histories arc diverse, these rugs share powerfully unifying design motifs. These are elaborate, inspirational, and mysterious "visions of nature."

This book, through the author's collection, offers an overview of Persian weaving traditions-nomadic, village, and urban center production-as well as insights into Persian history, literature, and geography. The author explains important factors in the identification of weavings and he proceeds to weave fascinating detail throughout the entire book. The main body of this work It comprises 130 textile plates, all of which predate the twentieth century. Detailed maps outline the seven geographical regions of Persia and provide the organizing framework for this superbly illustrated collection.

James Burns: James D. Burns has collected rugs and textiles from the Near and Far East for over forty years. His previous book, Traditions in Weaving: The Caucasus, published in 1987, illustrated part of his collection of Caucasian rugs. For this book, along with the expertise he has gained through extensive travel and research, he draws on his own collection of Kurdish weavings as well as selected masterpieces from European and American public and private collections, thus bringing together some of the finest and most beautiful examples extant. James Burns has degrees in History and Political Science from Whitman College, and a Doctor of Jurisprudence degree from the University of Washington. He is a trial lawyer in Seattle.


James D. Burns has been collecting rugs and textiles from the Near and Far East for fifty years. In this volume the author highlights masterfully created antique rugs from his own collection of Persian weavings, supported by the expertise he has gained through extensive collection, travel, and research. James Burns has degrees in History and Political Science from Whitman College, and a Doctor of Jurisprudence degree from the University of Washington. He is a trial lawyer in Seattle.