Article on the decoration of the halls of Qajar houses in Tabriz

Iran’s society at Qajar period faced new political, economic and social conditions that caused peoples immigrations from rural to urban areas that caused the necessity of housing growth at that time. Although, some conditions including communicating with western countries such as Russia or Osmania and travels of Iranian rulers and training Iranian student at abroad countries and etc. effected buildings architecture and surely their ornaments, that these changes were more obvious at construction of palaces and dwellings specially the houses of wealthy people. This article focuses on the ornaments that are used at the main room of the houses (their halls) that has been structed at Qajar period; the reason for selection of houses hall to check their ornaments was because of this rooms importance that host the guests of a home; you can see ornaments decorating other parts of house like the entrance space, the façade and the small rooms at the both side of building; but the most beautiful ornaments has been used to decorate the main room of the house. The most ornaments can be divided to paintings at walls and ceiling, Orosi windows decorating with colored glasses, plaster works at ceilings and walls, mirror pieces applies at ceiling or frame of windows and even walls that has been studied at the houses selected in this article. The houses to be studied at this article are chosen among the houses remained from Qajar destiny at Tabriz city, the reason of choosing Tabriz city for researching about its houses at that period was the importance of that city at Qajar time, at that time Tabriz was considered as the second capital of Iran and because of the trading relations with Osmania’s and Tsarist Russia and even a city where princes were have been leaving there it has accepted influences on buildings architecture and their ornaments. The houses that has been studied at that essay are chosen among Qajar house that their hall ornaments are preserved or restored; Behnam’s house, Nikdel’s house, Salmasi’s house, Saraflar’s house, Heydarzadeh’s house and Amirnezam’s house are the houses that their halls ornaments are analyzed at that article; the methods that used to develop this article was by studding historical references and field studies; so it can be concluded by analyzing the results that ornaments at the houses were built more recently at Qajar period like Behnam,Nikdel and salmasie’s houses were mostly based on elegant schemas through paintings on wall and ceilings but by the time pass, the houses that were constructed at the second half of Qajar dynast’s reign like Sarflar, Heydarzadeh and Amir nezams houses didn’t decorated by such painting schemas, instead of that new sort of ornaments based on mirror works has been started to be used to decorate the halls space; and some ornamental elements such as Orosi windows and plaster works on ceiling and walls were mostly invariant through the time at the houses were built at that period.