Flowing ornament of interlaced, scrolling vines, tendrils and leaves that curl in rhythmic spirals, often drawn in mirrored symmetry. In rugs it appears in the fields and borders of city pieces such as Kashan and Tabriz, alongside floral sprays, palmettes and vases, and in Shah Abbasi designs it swirls with vines around the central medallion.
The spiraling, leafy vine scroll also called the arabesque, which links the main elements of a rug’s field or border. In Nain weaving the name is also given to a less common design in which several star-shaped medallions are scattered across the field like a constellation.
A type of Anatolian carpet with a lacy arabesque of yellow scrolling lines on a red ground, named after the Venetian painter Lorenzo Lotto, who showed such carpets in his paintings. The pattern belongs to the late Renaissance, so recognizing it gives a rough age for a rug, although modern reproductions of old designs exist and the pattern alone does not prove that a rug is antique.
A Kashan workshop tied to the master weaver Hadji Mollah Mohammad Hassan Mohtasham, whose late 19th-century rugs are credited with reviving classical Kashan weaving. Its rugs are noted for refined, densely worked drawing in the Kashan manner, with floral and herbal sprays, palmettes and arabesques, including the medallion-and-corner layout on an ivory or red ground. The name is attached to rugs from the late 1800s into the first half of the 20th century and is regarded as a mark of top quality in Kashan rugs.
A stylized fan- or palm-leaf-shaped flower motif whose petals or leaves spread from a single base. It is repeated in the fields and borders of city rugs such as Kashan and Tabriz, usually alongside arabesque scrolls, rosettes, and floral sprays. In Sultanabad rugs the palmettes are drawn oversized and set among angular vine scrolls in an allover pattern.