New NaqqaliBEST ShahnamehBeautifully Envisioned and Specifically Tailored
Five hundred years ago, the royal workshop in Tabriz spent years making a Shahnameh for one reader, the young Shah Tahmasp: more than two hundred and fifty paintings, gold on every page, often called the finest illustrated book Persia ever produced. A BEST Shahnameh is made the same way, for one family: yours. You choose how it looks, who its heroes are, and what it says to the people who will inherit it.
The set
Three hardcover volumes of about six hundred pages each hold the complete Shahnameh in our English verse, every couplet set in illuminated borders, with paintings, maps and illuminated headpieces throughout. A softcover Study Guide of about two hundred and fifty pages carries the notes, the glossary, the genealogies and the maps. Each volume sits in its own slipcase, and the whole set in a presentation case. All three volumes are delivered together.
What you choose
The cover
Leather, cloth or something rarer; tooling, colours and title; your name or family crest.
The characters · Become Rostam
Everyone wants to be Rostam. Cast yourself, your spouse, your children and your friends as the heroes and heroines of the poem, and they stay themselves from the first page to the last.
The pictures
Any style at all, applied to every picture in the set. The eight below show one moment, Rostam lassoing Rakhsh, as it might appear in your copy.
Preface and dedication
Written for your family, to open the first volume.
The layout
The ornament of the borders, the colours of each story cycle, which moments become full-page paintings.
Gilding
Silver, gold or both: on the headpieces, the borders, the page edges, the cover.
The binding
Made by hand for your set alone.
The case
Each volume in its own slipcase, the whole set in a presentation case made to your design.
One moment, eight ways
Rostam chooses his horse: he throws his lasso over the colt Rakhsh and fights off the white mare that defends him. Here is that moment in eight of the styles we can paint your set in. These are only a beginning: any style you can describe, we can make.
Pelātin: the poem in its own titles
The Shahnameh begins بنام خداوند جان و خرد, “In the name of the Lord of wisdom and mind.” For a Pelātin family, we took that opening line in its calligraphy and poured into its letters the fifteen couplets of the exordium in our English verse. The lettering follows the pen: it swells in the broad sweeps and narrows in the fine strokes, so that from across the room you see the Persian, and up close you read the English.
In their finished set, every Farsi title in the three volumes, some 950 of them, carries the couplets of its own section: more than 50,000 couplets, written into the lettering of the poem itself.
Three ways to commission
NoqrehSilver
From $30,000
- Your cover from our house designs, with your name or family crest
- Your preface and dedication
- Every picture in the style you choose
- Silver gilding on the headpieces and page edges
- Custom binding
TalāGold
From $100,000
- Everything in Noqreh
- A cover designed for you
- Become Rostam: you and your family as the key characters
- Your choice of ornament and picture placement
- Gold leaf on the headpieces and borders
- A presentation case made for you
PelātinPlatinum
From $250,000
- Everything in Talā
- A one-of-one cover and case
- The whole cast re-imagined to your direction
- The pictures directed by you, panel by panel
- A hand-lettered opening and a hand-painted frontispiece
- Calligraphic titles: each Farsi title filled with its own English verse
- Gold throughout
Every commission includes a four-hour consultation in person, a signed and numbered colophon, and delivery of the complete set six months after the consultation.
How it’s made
Every couplet of the translation was made by hand. Language models served us only as a dictionary would.
Each picture begins as a digital study, refined through many rounds until the composition is right. Then an illustrator takes it over and reworks it individually, to fit the story, the setting and the characters as the poem describes them. The most important pictures and maps are printed at 17 × 22 in and painted by hand before they return to the book.
The gilding is laid by hand, and the binding and the case are made to order for each set.
The commission
- Write to usTell us a little about the Shahnameh you imagine. We reply personally.
- ConsultationFour hours together, in person: the style, the cover, the cast, the ornament, the gilding, the words.
- DesignWe prepare your cover, your cast and sample spreads in your chosen style, and refine them with you until they are right.
- MakingOur illustrators finish every picture by hand, the most important by brush; then printing, gilding and binding.
- DeliveryAll three volumes, the Study Guide and the case, together, six months after the consultation.
Begin a commission
Write to us and we will arrange your consultation.
Write to Editor@newnaqqali.com