Tribal rugs woven by the Afshar, a Turkic people of Iran with a semi-nomadic past, with weaving communities around Kerman and elsewhere. In the Bijar area, Afshar weavers make many of the workshop-style Bijar rugs, so the Afshar name can also turn up on Bijar pieces. Afshar rugs are typically small to mid-sized, with geometric or stylized floral designs.
A floral motif of rose bouquets found in Bijar rugs and borrowed from French carpets. It goes back to the nineteenth century, when a revival of rug weaving in Iran took its inspiration from Europe, and it is one of several outside influences on Bijar design, alongside the rugs of Isfahan and Kashan and Russian and Caucasian designs.
Rugs from the city of Bijar in Kurdistan province, northwestern Iran, and the villages around it; the name covers both fine and coarse double-wefted pieces, woven by Kurdish tribes and, in workshops, Afshar weavers. Nicknamed the “iron rugs” of Iran, they are among the heaviest rugs for their size: double wefts, symmetrical (Turkish) knots, and rows beaten down hard, often while the wool is kept wet, give a thick, dense pile. Designs run from floral, Herati, and medallion to geometric, drawing on Isfahan and Kashan as well as Russian, Caucasian, and European sources (a French-style rose bouquet among them), in jewel tones of rust, red, beige, and navy. Bijars are often small rugs or runners, large sizes are rare, and the flat-woven ends and fringes are typically braided.
Rugs woven in the Caucasus, the mountain region between the Black and Caspian seas, whose southern part lies in modern Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan; Kazak rugs were first made there in the 1800s. The label is used for the region's geometric, tribal-looking weaving, best known from Kazak rugs with large medallions, rosettes and tribal symbols, and it often describes designs that weavers elsewhere echo, as in some Quchan, Mehraban and Bijar rugs. Today's Kazak rugs from Pakistan revive this tradition.
The band at each short end of a knotted rug, between the last row of pile and the fringe, woven with weft only. The weaver passes extra weft through the warp there several times, without knots, to secure the pile and give the ends a tighter, stronger finish. It is a finishing detail of a pile rug, not a kilim rug in its own right; a fringe that has to be hidden can be tied back against it on the reverse. In Bijar rugs the fringe at this end is often braided.
Rugs woven by Kurdish tribes and villagers in Iran. In the west, Bijar rugs come from Kurdistan Province and are dense and double-wefted, while Senneh rugs come from Kurdish weaving villages around Sanandaj. In the north-east, above Mashhad, Kurdish tribes settled by the Safavids in the 16th century to guard the border weave Quchan rugs, whose designs echo their Anatolian homelands. Kurdish weavers are known for handling strong colors without disharmony, and Kurdish tribal rugs of the greater Hamadan area are usually single-wefted.
A layout in which most of the field is left open, usually one plain ground color with only a few flowers in curving lines and sometimes a medallion. It comes in three forms: a single central medallion, two or more repeating medallions, or an allover scatter of motifs with generous space between them. The composition is said to echo the cover of a Quran and is found mainly in city-style Persian rugs such as Tabriz, Kashan, Sarouk, Hamadan, and Kerman, and also in Bijar rugs. With so little pattern to hide behind, inconsistencies in the wool or dyeing show plainly.