Costume de ville des Persannes

Technique: Steel engraving with watercolour
Date: c. 1840
Dimensions: 350 × 265 mm (framed)

This is an original hand-coloured engraving, not a digitally printed copy. Bought in France. Framed in Cape Town.

Illustrating the public dress of a woman in Astarabad (the former name of Gorgan, Iran) at least two centuries ago, this image was first produced by the engraver Ferdinand Wachsmuth, then re-engraved by Choubard (active 1810–1837). The latter’s finer “stipple” version is what we have here, albeit without a definitive print date.

Worn more widely in the past, the chadari – a burqa with a mesh face panel – is today almost exclusively associated with Afghanistan, where it frequently comes in blue. In Character & Costumes of Afghaunistan (1843), Captain Lockyer Willis Hart describes women’s dress in the capital Kabul thus:

When going out of doors they draw on leggings of cloth, footed with horse leather and gartered at the knee, and envelope their persons in a large garment, called a ‘Boorka posh’, having eyelet holes in front, which completely prevents their being recognised in the streets.

The frame is a custom-painted dark blue.