Scientific Journal of Motaleate-e Tatbighi-e Honar

 The history of carpet weaving art in Arak indicates that this city is one of the important centers in the carpet weaving industry. For this reason, many designs and patterns of Arak carpets have the stylistic characteristics of this region, consisting of carpets with famous underground designs, usually produced in the dimensions of one and a half cubits or two cubits. Because similar designs are evident in Kashmar and Tabriz regions, an attempt is made in this study to run a competitive assessment of the subject regions through which the following questions will be answered: What are the qualities and characteristics of the Arak underground carpet styles? Do these carpets have a specific regional style? This is a developmental study where a descriptive-analytic method is adopted to analyze the related data, following an inductive approach in this context. The data are extracted through assessing the available documentation and the researchers' reports. The samples consist of two separate Araki designs, one Kashmari design, and two old and new Tabrizi design carpets. The findings indicate that the Araki carpet samples as to design, pattern, color, composition, and their match with samples from the other two regions have distinctive stylistic features. These differences are mostly evident in features like micropatterns, color, and arrangement method, in the sense that the Araki style design with its specific features is outstanding, and is a distinguished style unique to this region. Recognition of such distinguishing elements would prevent disorders in the stylistic sense of these types of carpets.