motifs on woven wool: plump grapevines, India-style scenes or typical Esfahani illustrations. We had hardly entered his workshop before I became fascinated by the old man with the thick glasses. His friendly face glowed with warmth and intelligence. When asked where Kurosh and I know each other, I hesitated and waited for Kurosh's version.
"Here we can speak openly."
Hassan is a gifted story-teller, and besides his craft, which he describes in detail, the wonderful days of youth, the "days of freedom", are a recurrent theme of his. Sympathetically, he keeps patting Kurosh's leg.
"What is youth when so much is forbidden?"
He talks longingly of the elegant tourists in the seventies who came to the city from all over Iran and the rest of the world.
"And now? Business is lousy. The few Japanese and Europeans can hardly find the way here. If it weren't for Kurosh bringing groups here now and then, I'd be out of work quickly."
He takes at least three days to print a cover the size of a double bed. I had never imagined how much work was involved in these blankets Hassan taught me to truly appreciate. "And you two? Probably don't even know where to meet undisturbed, right? I could hardly believe it when he offered us his workshop.
"Friday afternoons there's no one in the caravansary. I'll give you the key for the main gate. No one will come here."

By now I had taken off my headscarf and enjoyed this relaxed oasis, sat in shirt and pants next to Hassan and tried my hand at printing. I quickly realized that it was not only the amount of color, the pressure and the right speed when pressing the wooden stamp that came from years of practice. To me it seemed much more difficult to measure out the pattern. How many stamps next to each other were needed to make a round pattern about two meters across? The stamps are not to overlap, and a gap cannot be closed afterwards. "After ten years, you get it," Hassan offered consolingly. His own children are not interested in this hard handwork, so his art is in danger of extinction. He is happy to be photographed at work, and I enjoy the pretty forms in his workshop. I would not dare express any desire to buy something so I appealed to Kurosh in English. How can I possibly pay a fair price? A normal deal is fully out of the question under these circumstances. And there is no way I want one of these pieces as a gift. Finally I ignore Hassan's protestations and determine the price myself. Kurosh will send more blankets to Germany later. It is difficult for me to choose, and Hassan is talked into explaining the various patterns to me. "They're similar to the patterns found in carpets. Sometimes I print a medallion in the middle of a blanket and order the pattern in a circle around it."
I point to a drop-like India-style motif I have come across frequently.
"What do these drops mean?"