A NAQSHE on Ethereum
RugBmp
a Collection of 64 Generative Carpet map design generated and stored on Ethereum Blockchain, sometimes called the “world computer.” Each NAQSHE is drawn from a seed as a quarter, mirrored the way a carpet is designed, and written into a bitmap one byte per knot by the contract itself.
- NAQSHE
- 64
01 — History
Two and a half thousand years on a grid
Long before pixels, Persian weavers worked from a map in which every square is one knot. Each NAQSHE is made the same way, with a contract in place of the loom.
- 5th c. BCE
Pazyryk
The oldest knotted-pile carpet known was found frozen in a Scythian burial mound in the Altai mountains in 1949. Its border of horsemen and deer shows the craft was already mature some 2,400 years ago.
- 1539–40
Ardabil
Made in Safavid Persia and signed by Maqsud Kashani, the two Ardabil carpets are the classic plan at its height: a central medallion, quarter medallions in the corners, a framing border. They hang today in London and Los Angeles.
- The workshop
NAQSHE
Designers paint the carpet on graph paper, one square per knot, and weavers read it row by row like a score. A symmetrical carpet needs only a quarter drawn; the rest is mirrored at the loom.
- 2010
Living heritage
UNESCO inscribed the traditional carpet-weaving skills of Fars and of Kashan on its list of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
From map to bytes
- 01
Seed
Any whole number. It chooses the raj, how finely knotted, then the palette, the borders, the field and the medallion.
- 02
Quarter
A quarter of knots is drawn from it, 20 × 28 at the coarsest raj to 40 × 56 at the finest: the NAQSHE.
- 03
Mirror
Folded four ways into the NAQSHE, 40 × 56 to 80 × 112 knots, as the weaver would.
- 04
Bytes
Written as a raw BMP: a header, eight yarn colours, then one byte per knot.
02 — Mint
Choose a seed, mint a NAQSHE
Every number is a different NAQSHE, knotted at its own raj, from the coarse Nomad weave to the fine Workshop. The preview below is rendered live by the contract on Sepolia, so what you see is exactly what you mint. Each seed can be minted once.
BMP: rendered on-chain, as the token's own image
Type any number, or roll the dice.
Like a NAQSHE? Save its seed with the bookmark to come back to it. Kept in this browser.
The live contract always writes the NAQSHE as text into its mint.
03 — Gallery
Newly drawn
The latest NAQSHE minted, read straight from Sepolia. Open one to see it in wool, on graph paper, or as the raw bitmap the contract wrote.