Village rugs from the small town of Abadeh, which sits between Shiraz and Isfahan in Iran, recognized by hexagon shapes in the medallion, corners and field, usually with a small rosette at the center of the medallion, and by animal and plant motifs. The wool pile is typically on a cotton foundation and stands fairly high. At about 225 knots per square inch (roughly 350,000 per m²) the knot count is high for a village rug, which the detailed motifs require. Fields are usually dark navy or deep red with cream, yellow, orange, blue and green accents. The town is too small to have its own rug market, so the finished rugs are sold in the Shiraz bazaar.
Village rugs woven in the Azerbaijan region of northwestern Iran, where Tabriz rugs also originate (the Iranian region, not the country of that name), traditionally by families working indoors through the cold winters. Designs pass down the generations without written blueprints, each generation adding small personal touches. A dense, durable wool pile on a cotton foundation carries mostly geometric layouts, sometimes with curvilinear florals or boteh, in vegetable-dyed navy and deep reds. Knot density is commonly quoted at about 120 to 170 KPSI (roughly 1,900 to 2,600 per 10 by 10 cm), and the thick pile suits busy areas, including runners wider than about 3 feet (90 cm).
A measure of how tightly a carpet is packed. In machine-made carpet it describes the fibers in the pile and is calculated by multiplying the face weight by 36 and dividing by the pile height; higher density generally indicates better durability and performance. In hand-knotted rugs it means knot density (KPSI, knots per square inch), counted on the back and averaged over several areas (150 KPSI is about 23 knots per cm²). Like image resolution, higher density allows finer curves and sharper designs, usually with a lower-trimmed pile and more labor, but it is not the sole measure of quality: bold geometric village rugs are made at low to medium density.
The warp ends that extend past both short ends of a rug. In a hand-knotted rug the fringe is not a trim added at the end but the visible continuation of the foundation, whose warp threads can be followed through the whole rug on its back, so it is made of the same fiber (cotton, wool or silk) and shows what the foundation is made of. It should not be cut off; if it has to be hidden, it can be tied back against the reverse. Weavers cut, tie, braid or decorate it, with braided or decorated ends especially common in tribal and village rugs, and how it is finished helps identify the origin; it is also seldom perfectly even, one end often running longer than the other. A fringe attached afterward, or none at all, points toward a machine-made rug.
Bold village rugs from the Heriz area of northwestern Iran, near Tabriz, and the best-known of all Persian village rugs. A coarse, tough wool pile on a cotton foundation, usually double-wefted for extra thickness, and a low-to-medium knot density (commonly quoted at about 120 to 170 KPSI, roughly 1,900 to 2,600 per 10 by 10 cm) make them very durable; the wool's strength is traditionally credited to copper-bearing mountain water. The classic design is a large angular medallion with four corner pieces, sometimes an allover layout, in a rust red traditionally credited to copper minerals in the local river, with dark navy and cream. Bakshaish and Serapi, the latter now over a century old, are their older forms.
Village rugs from a group of villages in the Azerbaijan region of Iran, at the western edge of the Heriz weaving area and named for the village of Karaja at their center. Wool pile on a cotton foundation (very old pieces may have a wool one), Turkish knot and single weft, so the pile is thinner and softer than the usually double-wefted Heriz, and knot density is low to medium. Two bold geometric medallions with hook-like edges typically alternate down a runner, often on a different ground color with each repeat, and on wide rugs the repeated medallions read as a geometric allover, in orange-reds, blues, creams and browns. Their soft, thin pile and great lengths, some over 20 feet (6 m), make them popular as hallway and stair runners.
The number of knots in one square inch of a hand-knotted rug (KPSI; 1 KPSI is about 15.5 knots per 10 x 10 cm), counted on the back with a ruler by multiplying the knots along one inch of height by those along one inch of width, averaged over two or three areas. More knots give sharper detail, like a higher-resolution screen, and, all else equal, somewhat more durability and a higher price, but density alone does not grade quality: Heriz and Bijar are durable at low to medium counts, while floral curvilinear designs blur without enough knots. Figures run from under about 80 for coarse tribal weaves such as Gabbeh and Qashqai, through roughly 120 to 225 for many village rugs and 300 to 700 for fine city rugs such as Nain and Isfahan, to 600 to 1,000 or more for pure silk Qum.
Village rugs from the town of Malayer and neighboring villages between Arak and Hamadan, usually dated to about the 19th century and woven on an old trade route that brought in outside designs. A cotton foundation, wool pile and symmetrical Turkish knot give a finer weave than most village rugs, with the pile clipped fairly low to show detail. Diamond or hexagonal medallions, small white dots in the border ringing the medallion and a rope-like loop effect in the rug's own border are typical marks. The south-eastern, Sarouk-like style is double-wefted and thicker, with floral medallions or Tree of Life designs; the north-western, Hamadan-like style is single-wefted, geometric and lighter in color. Small rugs and runners predominate, mostly on navy, deep red or cream grounds.
Village rugs from the Mehraban district, a cluster of villages in the north of the Hamadan region beside Kurdish Iran, so Kurdish styles appear. They are single-wefted rugs on cotton, knotted with the symmetrical (Turkish) knot, with a medium pile of fine, soft, lustrous, oily wool, on dark blue, dark red, cream, camel-hair or peach fields. Older pieces are geometric, with repeating medallions and bird or animal motifs, largely made for the weavers' own use; newer ones follow American Sarouk florals. The district is known for runners, typically 2.5 to 3 ft (76-91 cm) wide and 6 to 20 ft (1.8-6.1 m) long. It is not the Meraban of East Azerbaijan, which weaves Heriz-style rugs.
A hand-knotted rug woven in Iran, the country called Persia in the West until 1935, in a tradition said to reach back some 2,500 years. It is named after the city, town, region or tribe where it was made (Tabriz, Kashan, Heriz, Baluchi) and belongs to one of three groups: city rugs woven in workshops from a blueprint, village rugs, and tribal rugs, the latter two woven largely from memory. The pile is wool, silk or a blend, on a cotton, wool or silk foundation. Look-alikes woven in Pakistan, India or China are not Persian rugs.
The skeleton of a hand-knotted rug: the warp and weft threads on which every pile knot is tied. Cotton is the usual material in city and village rugs because it barely stretches or shrinks with humidity, so the rug keeps its shape, and it is rigid enough to knot through easily; that same rigidity can carry over into the design, which reads as less fluid than on a wool foundation. Wool, and sometimes goat hair, is typical of tribal rugs, whose weavers can use one material for both foundation and pile; it gives more character but a less straight shape. Silk, being finer, permits very high knot counts. The fringes at each end are the foundation's exposed warp ends, so they reveal its material.
A rug woven by settled villagers, sitting between nomadic tribal rugs and city-workshop rugs. Village weavers have better tools, materials and dyes than nomads but work in a looser, semi-structured setting than city workshops, often from memory rather than a drawn blueprint, and some sell through the bazaar of a larger nearby city, as Abadeh's weavers do in Shiraz. Designs are mostly geometric (medallion, all-over, boteh or Herati) with fewer florals than city rugs; knot density is usually higher than tribal but lower than city rugs, and varied loom sizes give a wide size range, from small pieces and runners to large rugs. Heriz is the best-known example, alongside Azerbaijan, Abadeh, Karaja, Mehraban and Senneh; Shiraz and Bakhtiari are also counted as village work in some classifications.
A rug woven in an organized workshop, a setup typical of city weaving, where a master weaver usually oversees the weavers and design and weaving follow stricter standards. Because a workshop can buy wool in bulk and dye it all at once, its material and colors tend to be better, so workshop rugs are generally of higher quality than non-workshop ones, though not in every case. Not every workshop rug is signed. Village rugs, made in a looser, semi-structured setting, usually have lower knot densities than city rugs.