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 a large share 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 type of Sarouk woven mainly in the 1920s and 1930s, with patterns and colors adapted to what international buyers, above all in the United States, appreciated, and very popular there. It is also known as Mohajeran Sarouk. Its floral design later served as a model for newer Malayer and Mehraban rugs.
A flat-woven decorative carpet originally produced in France, characterized by floral designs, medallions, and architectural elements in pastel colors. Traditional Aubussons were handwoven tapestries used by French nobility.
One of the three principal design families of Persian rugs, alongside geometric and Herati: patterns of flowers, leaves and vines drawn in flowing curves. It dominates city and workshop rugs such as Tabriz, Kashan, Kerman, Sarouk, Nain and Isfahan, where high knot density allows fine detail, and it typically draws on forms such as the Shah Abbasi design and rosettes. Floral motifs, though known to weavers earlier, are said to have become common in Persian rugs from the 16th century. Floral rugs come in two layouts: with a central medallion, where flowers and branches are smaller, or allover, with larger flowers.
A style of rug drawing built from angular shapes such as hexagons, diamonds and squares, outlined by straight lines, in contrast to the flowing curves of floral designs. It goes back to some of the oldest Persian rugs, before floral designs, and is typical of village and tribal rugs (Heriz, Hamadan, Zanjan, Abadeh, Karaja, Qashqai, Kazak, Turkmen), though city workshops such as Tabriz also weave it. Many shapes carry symbolic meaning. It comes as an allover pattern, a single central medallion or repeating medallions, and geometric rugs are known for strong borders. Because the shapes need little fine detail, a low-to-medium knot density is enough, as in Heriz and Karaja rugs, and Heriz is still known for durability.
A round, flower-like ornament in which petals radiate evenly from a center, like a blossom seen from above. From about the 16th century, as floral design entered Persian rugs, weavers began placing a rosette at the center of the field, which produced the central medallion of floral city rugs, as in the circular rosette medallion with scrolling lines on a round Shah Abbasi Tabriz. On Abadeh rugs a small rosette worked in navy, red or cream marks the center of the medallion, one way to tell the type apart. Rosettes also repeat along borders, as in Tabriz and Bakhtiari rugs, and among the vines and palmettes of Sultanabad rugs.
Rugs from Tabriz, the large northwestern Iranian city and former Safavid capital, and its surrounding villages, where weaving is traced back at least to the 1500s. Weavers use the Turkish knot and small metal hooks, which give very regular, symmetrical patterns, usually on a cotton foundation (silk for the finest pieces), often double-wefted, with a short-clipped to medium pile. Densities run from about 50 to 500 knots per square inch (roughly 8 to 78 per cm²), silk-foundation pieces can exceed 600, and silk highlights lend vibrancy to floral designs. Some workshops weave only silk-and-wool rugs, favoring pastels. Tabriz offers the widest range of designs and colors of any Persian source: medallion, floral, Herati, hunting and vase patterns, plus most pictorial portraits. A rug sold as “Tabriz-style” is not necessarily woven in Tabriz.
A former Mashhad (Mashad) workshop whose rugs, no longer woven, are hard to find and are regarded as collectors' pieces. Typical examples have a cream ground with delicate floral designs on very thin branches, an allover layout with only a vaguely defined central medallion, and soft, subdued colors such as peach, blue and cream. The wool is described as soft, lanolin-rich wool from young sheep, which makes the colors look shinier. Weaving reportedly ended by the mid-1980s, because the next generation did not want to continue.