From Tehran to South Kensington: A Sarikhani Fellowship journey

By Hamid Abhari, Sarikhani Research Fellow

It was a summer morning in Tehran when the war sirens blared. My suitcase lay packed by the door, ready for a flight that would never take off. In the days that followed, I watched the news with anxiety, wondering when I could finally depart. What was meant to be the start of my fellowship at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) turned into weeks of uncertainty.

When flights from Tehran were repeatedly cancelled and the skies remained closed, I decided on another route. I crossed the border into Turkey by land and undertook a long, 48-hour journey before finally boarding a plane to London. Stepping into Heathrow on 5 July, just in time for the start of my six-week fellowship, I carried with me not just luggage, but a heart heavy with the turmoil I had left behind, and a hopefulness for the work that lay ahead.

Arriving in London, I felt a mix of relief and excitement. I was about to begin my role as the first Sarikhani Fellow at the V&A, a position made possible by the V&A Museum and the Sarikhani Foundation’s passion for Iranian art. My name is Hamid Abhari, an architect and project manager from Tehran, and this museum had already been part of my professional journey for more than a decade. My collaboration with the V&A began in 2013 and grew steadily over the years, culminating in my contribution to the Epic Iran exhibition in 2021, where I created a 3D architectural visualisation based on the Mirza Akbar scrolls and projected their intricate vaulting designs onto historic Iranian buildings.

Walking through the gate of the museum this time, however, I was returning not as a visitor or an external contributor, but as a resident researcher. Dr Fuchsia Hart, the Sarikhani Curator for the Iranian Collection, welcomed me with a warm smile. Under her guidance, I would spend six intensive weeks in the summer of 2025 exploring a collection of objects close to my heart and history.

Unrolling the Mirza Akbar Drawings

At the centre of my fellowship was the Mirza Akbar Drawings, a remarkable group of 19th-century Iranian architectural scrolls once belonging to a guild of builders in Qajar Tehran. They reached London in 1877 when the South Kensington Museum acquired them from Caspar Purdon Clarke, who had collected them during his work in Tehran. As Dr Moya Carey has shown, Clarke obtained the drawings at a time when Victorian Britain was eager to learn from global design traditions, but knew very little about Persian architecture. To make them accessible for study, he cut and remounted the long scrolls on large boards, transforming a working archive of Iranian master builders into one of the earliest records of Islamic architectural design preserved in a European museum.

For me, as a researcher from Iran, these drawings are far more than historical artifacts. Each time I unrolled a scroll in the V&A’s study room, I felt I was opening a direct link to the past. The paper bore the marks of countless hands: faint compass points, guidelines, and small corrections that revealed both discipline and creativity. Amid the geometry of arches and arabesques, I discovered unexpected details, tiny birds, animals, and angels drawn between the lines, as if the draftsmen had quietly signed their work and left traces of imagination within the precision of their craft.

The most captivating sheets depicted karbandi vaults, the Persian system of ribbed vaulting that forms star-like domes through intricate geometric intersections. Many of these drawings functioned as teaching tools, combining technical clarity with artistic beauty. Looking closely, I could still see where a compass had turned or a line had been pressed slightly deeper into the paper, physical evidence of an ustad, a master builder, passing on knowledge through drawing. In those quiet study-room moments, I could imagine a 19th-century builder in Tehran unrolling the same designs on a construction site, guiding masons as they shaped plaster and brick. That sense of continuity, from paper to structure, from Tehran to London, reminded me that these drawings are not silent relics but living voices of an architectural language that continues to inspire.

From paper to brick: sharing a lost art

Midway through my fellowship, I gave a lunchtime seminar titled ‘From Paper to Brick’ to share my research with colleagues in the Asia Department and beyond. Standing in Seminar Room A at the V&A, I introduced the story of the Mirza Akbar Drawings and their journey from Tehran to London, reflecting on how they resonated with Victorian curiosity about Islamic architecture. During the presentation, I explained the principles of karbandi vault construction and outlined the main categories of these designs in Iranian architecture, showing how each type could be identified among the drawings. On the screen, I displayed images of intricate geometric vaults in red and black ink and compared them with photographs of historic Iranian buildings that embody the same design logic. At one point, the visual harmony between a drawing and its built counterpart drew an audible reaction from the audience. In that moment, the phrase “from paper to brick” was no longer just a seminar title but something visible before our eyes, bridging centuries of craftsmanship and study within the walls of the museum.

Drawing workshop

One of the most memorable moments of my fellowship was a hands-on drawing workshop I led for colleagues at the V&A. A small group of curators gathered around a big table in the V&A’s Study Room, where I had prepared sheets of paper, rulers, and pencils. Our task was to draw a simple Karbandi pattern, following the same steps an ustad might have taught an apprentice long ago. We began by finding the centre of our ‘ceiling’, marking it with a pinhole, and swinging arcs to establish the grid of the vault. Soon geometric stars and polygons began to emerge on the page. By the end, each participant held up their drawing and compared it with an example from the Mirza Akbar series that I had chosen as a reference. This workshop gave us a renewed appreciation for the anonymous Iranian draftsmen whose steady hands and precise knowledge created the scrolls that survive today.

A visit to the Sarikhani Collection

A special highlight of my fellowship was a visit to the Sarikhani Collection. The collection, renowned for its outstanding range of Iranian art spanning five millennia, has become a major centre for research and collaboration, lending key works to exhibitions such as Epic Iran. During my visit, I had the chance to view several remarkable pieces that spoke to different chapters of Iran’s artistic history: a Sasanian royal bronze bust from the 5th century AD, a folio from the Shahnameh of Shah Tahmasp, Qaran Unhorses Barman (about 1525 – 35), and a group of lustre tiles from the Emamzadeh Yahya shrine in Varamin (1262). Encountering these objects in person was profoundly moving, a reminder that Iran’s heritage is not only preserved in archives and museums but lives on through those who continue to study, share, and be inspired by it.

Reflections and Future Plans

As my fellowship drew to a close, I often found myself retracing the journey that brought me here. In the span of a few months, I went from a war-torn delay in Tehran to sketching starry vaults on the other side of the world. The experience reinforced for me the power of cultural heritage to connect people across time and space. It also highlighted the importance of collaboration. Working closely with Dr Fuchsia Hart and the V&A team, I saw firsthand how museums serve as custodians of knowledge that might otherwise be lost or overlooked. The Mirza Akbar Drawings survived tumultuous times and still speak to us today. My hope is to amplify their voice.

During my fellowship I also had the privilege of meeting Dr Mark Morris, Senior Curator of Architecture at the V&A. Our conversation opened up exciting possibilities for the future of the Architecture Gallery. We discussed how the Mirza Akbar Drawings, with their unique insight into Qajar design practice, might be displayed in the new gallery space, giving them visibility alongside other global architectural traditions. For me, the prospect of these drawings reaching a wider public audience, not only through research but also through display in the museum’s permanent galleries, is one of the most promising outcomes of this fellowship.

Looking back, I see this fellowship as the beginning of many more exchanges between Iran and the V&A. The Sarikhani Fellowship has set a valuable precedent, and I hope future scholars from Iran will continue this dialogue, bringing new perspectives and taking new insights home. Personally, I leave the museum with renewed energy and gratitude. The objects I studied, the people I met, and the stories I discovered have all become part of my own story. As I return to Tehran, I carry with me a deep sense of connection—between past and present, between paper and brick, between Iran and Britain. Through this fellowship, those hands have met in a symbolic handshake of art and understanding, and I step forward with the hope that this bridge will continue to grow, one drawing, one vault, one story at a time.