studio chahar
Shash Boat
Dustakoo Village, Qeshm Island, Iran. Spring 2024.
The Shash is the smallest wooden boat in Iran, built from the stems of the date palm tree, which are called gord. In the spring of 2024, the Studio Chahar team and the Gouron Rural Cooperative Company worked with master craftsmen of Dustakoo village to recreate a Shash in a week.
It was once the main fishing vessel of every household on the island, and today very few people know how to build it. The goal was to create documentation for the future recreation and preservation of this technical craft.
The work begins with the palms themselves. The craftsmen gather fallen fronds on the shore, split the stems with an adze, and choose the long ones that curve in the right way. They lay these ribs side by side in layers, bind them with cord, and shape them into a narrow hull with a raised bow.
Timber crossbeams and pegs, as in the original Shash, hold the shape, and a rail runs around the edge. Nothing in the boat comes from outside the palm grove except the timber and the cord.
The boat is not a museum piece. It is in use, and in the photographs a man kneels in it and paddles across the shallow water. The as-built drawings record it as an axonometric, an elevation, an exploded set of parts and a sequence of the making, so that others can build it again.
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