How a Persian rug is made
Three sets of threads and two kinds of knot: what a pile carpet is made of, and what its back reveals that its front conceals.
Rugsفرش
In Persian a carpet is a *farsh*, simply ‘that which is spread’. These are stories of what has been spread on Iranian floors: how a rug is knotted and dyed, the great carpets that survive, the one that does not, and how to read the ones we live with.
All of Rugs
Madder, indigo and abrash
Before synthetic dyes, every colour in a Persian rug came from a root, a leaf, a husk or a rind. The shifts in shade they left behind are part of how an old rug is read.
The Pazyryk carpet
The oldest known knotted-pile carpet survived in a frozen Siberian tomb. Who made it, and where, is still argued.
The Ardabil Carpet
A dated, inscribed Safavid carpet more than ten metres long, signed with a line of Hafez and the name of Maqsud of Kashan.
The garden carpet
Water channels, fish, cypresses and flowering trees: a garden carpet maps the Persian *chahar bagh* onto wool, seen from above and from the side at once.
Reading the motifs
A handful of motifs recur across Persian rugs. Knowing their names makes a rug easier to read; it does not turn them into a code.
The city workshops
City carpets are woven to a drawn design, in workshops, by many hands. Each city has its own handwriting.
Village and tribal weaving
Woven from memory rather than from paper, on looms that sometimes travel, village and tribal rugs make up much of Iran’s weaving.
Kilim, soumak and jajim
Not every Persian rug has a pile. The flatweaves of villages and tents are lighter, quicker and often bolder.
The Spring of Khosrow
The most famous carpet in Persian history survives only as a description: a garden in silk and jewels, cut to pieces as war booty.