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A Sign of Change in Iran: Furniture DesignIntellectual property rights are now an integral part of the debate in Tehran.
When Mohammed Hashemi (alias) decided to re-establish his workshop in Jarjud one year ago, he was in good company. Located 30 kilometres northeast of Tehran, this small village is one destination to which hundreds of artisans have been moving as part of efforts by the capital's municipality to fight pollution.
Set in a long row of shops erected on a hill overlooking the village, his carpentry does not produce your run-of-the-mill chairs, tables, or bookcases, though. It copies furniture straight out of international catalogues, the leading one of which is IKEA. In fact, the four blue letters of the giant Swedish furniture factory adorn the windows of Hashemi's small Tehrani furniture store. His father had set it up as a carpentry forty-odd years ago; recently, he decided to transform it into a copy-producer of furniture designed elsewhere.
Rather than being an exception, Hashemi is banking his fortune on a fashion that has started a decade or so ago, and is now gathering speed. When the Iran-Iraq war ended in 1988, Iranians, desperate to leave memories of hardship behind, were hungry for new styles and trends. On the municipal level, these took an exemplary form in the construction of parks in the capital, run by mayor Karbachi in the mid-19
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7/9/2004 | Viewed 7,172 time(s)
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