What is Zarbaft?

Zarbaft or gold weaving is one of the fields of handicrafts.

Zarbaft or Zari  is a delicate and very expensive fabric whose yarn or thread is made of pure silk and its wefts are colored silk and one of the wefts is glabton yarn which can be gold or silver.

Zari is the most exquisite and legendary Iranian textile that had a world-wide reputation in its heyday and is now an example of it adorning museums and other art centers in Iran and other countries of the world and has a long history in terms of texture and production.

The gold or woven fabric is woven with gold or silver threads, which are called “golabeton”. To make golabeton yarn, a thin strip of gold or silver metal is wrapped around a silk thread.

In the production process, the gold metal is first melted and then pulled through a series of holes whose diameter gradually decreases until the diameter of the metal thread reaches the diameter of a human hair.

These long strips are taped to flatten them and then wrapped around a silk thread. The method of producing golabeton yarn was the same in gold production centers in Safavid Iran and it is still produced in this way in some cities.