Subtle shifts in color within a handmade rug, often visible as horizontal bands across the field. They arise because successive dye batches never match exactly, because differences in the wool's fat and oil content make colors change unevenly with age, and, in cream areas woven from undyed wool, because the fiber changes tone as it ages. Abrash often grows more distinct with age, so in an older rug it counts as a sign of natural dyes and hand production rather than a fault, while a newer rug is still checked for even color. Machine-made and some new hand-knotted rugs imitate it on purpose.
The rounded feet-and-inches size under which a hand-knotted rug is listed, such as 9 x 12 ft (about 2.7 x 3.7 m), which only approximates its real dimensions. Persian and many other Oriental rugs are made to metric measurements and vary a little as they are woven by hand, so after conversion the actual size usually runs a few inches (roughly 5-10 cm) over or under; a rug listed as 9 x 12 ft may measure 9 ft 2 in by 12 ft 5 in (about 279 x 378 cm). Sizes are quoted width first, and the fringe is generally not counted in the length.
Standard dimensions for area rugs, typically 2'x3' (about 60x90 cm), 3'x5', 4'x6', 5'x7', 5'x8', 6'x9', 8'x10', 9'x12' (about 275x365 cm), 10'x14', 12'x15' and 12'x16', with runners usually 2 to 4 feet (60-120 cm) wide. Dealers group them as small (to 3'x5'), medium (4'x6' to 5'x7'), large (5'x8' to 8'x11') and oversized (9'x12' and up), though cutoffs vary. Because hand-knotted rugs are woven in metric units, real sizes can run a few inches off the label. A larger rug generally looks better than one too small: a good fit leaves 12-18 inches (30-45 cm) of bare floor to the walls, reaches at least the front edge of a sofa so seated feet rest on it, and extends 24 to 36 inches (60-90 cm) past each side of a dining table so pulled-out chairs stay on it.
A light do-it-yourself clean for a hand-knotted rug that freshens it and delays the next professional wash rather than replacing it. After vacuuming the front side to side, sparing the fringes, the pile is wiped section by section with a clean, preferably white, cotton towel dipped in diluted, bleach-free dishwashing foam, moving with the pile so the rug is only dampened and dries within 30 to 60 minutes. Dirty fringes are laid over a stick of wood and brushed with the same mixture, working from the rug outward.
The layer on the underside of a tufted or machine-made carpet that provides stability and structure. Primary backing holds the carpet fibers, while secondary backing adds strength and dimensional stability. The back of these carpets is typically stiff and plastic-like because it is synthetic (polypropylene, polyester or nylon), and it does not reveal the front pattern. A hand-knotted rug has no separate backing, canvas or latex layer: its back is the woven foundation, usually cotton, with the knots in plain view, softer to the touch and showing the front design.
The rotating bristled roller in the head of many upright and power-head vacuum cleaners, which beats and agitates the pile to loosen dirt. On a hand-knotted rug it is too harsh: it beats the pile down and can grab and shred the fringe, which should not be vacuumed at all. The recommended alternative is suction alone from a light canister vacuum whose head has no beater bar, passed side to side across the rug's width rather than lengthwise against the pile; if only a beater-bar machine is available, the bar should be switched off.
A step of hand-knotting in which the weaver, after finishing each row of knots and weft, pounds the row down against the rows below with a beater tool to pack the pile tight. The harder a rug is beaten, the denser and longer-lasting it turns out: Bakhtiari and Bijar weavers are known for especially forceful beating, and Bijar weavers often keep the wool wet so the weft and knots can be pounded down with more force. Because a weaver's beating force also varies over time, it is one reason hand-knotted rugs are not perfectly symmetrical.
A strip of fabric sewn along the edge of a carpet or rug to prevent fraying and give a finished look, as on area rugs and stair runners. A hand-knotted rug is normally finished differently: the weaver wraps the weft several times around the outermost warp to form the overcast, or selvage, usually a rounded, corded edge (sometimes flat, or in a contrasting wool) whose regional style helps experts tell where the rug was made.
A vacuum cleaner whose motor, filter and dust container sit in a wheeled body that follows the user, joined by a flexible hose to a wand and cleaning head, unlike an upright machine in which motor and brush head form one unit. A light canister model with a head that has no beater bar is the type recommended for hand-knotted rugs; heavy-duty and industrial machines are avoided.
Various techniques for cleaning carpets, including hot water extraction (steam cleaning), dry compound cleaning, bonnet cleaning, and encapsulation, each suited to particular carpet types, soiling levels, and drying times. Hand-knotted rugs need gentler care: side-to-side vacuuming with a canister vacuum whose beater bar is off, sparing the fringes; an occasional light wipe with diluted, bleach-free dish foam on white cotton towels, worked in sections along the pile so it dries within about an hour; and a professional wash every 5 to 10 years, every 3 to 5 in heavy traffic, and before storing a rug for a year or more.
A signed and sealed document that a dealer issues with a hand-knotted rug to record what it is: its origin, type, materials, size, knot density and age, any signature the rug carries, and often a photograph. It is commonly likened to a birth certificate for the rug. Some dealers also state the rug's value on it, which lets it serve as proof of value for an insurance claim or a later resale. Buyers use it to confirm that a rug is what it is sold as, particularly for a gift or an investment piece; its worth rests on the reputation of the dealer who issues it.
A simple check of dye stability in which a damp towel or cloth is left lying on the pile of a rug for several minutes and then examined for transferred color. Hand-knotted rugs colored with natural dyes typically show little or no bleeding, whereas hand-tufted and machine-made rugs colored with chemical dyes tend to start running, so the result serves as one clue among several to whether a rug is authentic. Even a genuine rug can bleed after a careless wash or an unattended spill.
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.
A rug construction in which the weaver ties each knot of wool or silk pile yarn by hand around adjacent warp threads on a loom, then runs a weft through the row and beats it down. The cut knot ends form the pile, the warps and wefts form the foundation, and the warp ends become the fringe. A rug can take months or even years, and the work leaves subtle irregularities: patterns not perfectly symmetrical, opposite edges a few inches different in length, an uneven fringe. Authentic Persian, Oriental and Turkish rugs are hand-knotted, unlike hand-tufted rugs (sometimes sold as “handmade”) and machine-made ones, whose backs feel stiff and evenly aligned.
A rug made by punching pile yarn through a stretched cloth base with a hand-held tufting tool and fixing the loops with a glued backing, rather than tying knots by hand around warp and weft threads. Its back shows cloth and adhesive instead of individual knots and feels less soft than a knotted rug's. It ranks below hand-knotted and above machine-made rugs, does not last as long as a knotted rug, and is not considered a genuine Persian or Oriental rug. Because it is sometimes sold simply as "handmade", the term hand-knotted is the one that identifies a knotted rug.
A loose sales label for a rug made by hand rather than by machine. It is sometimes simply another word for hand-knotted, but it is not a guarantee of it: some dealers apply it to hand-tufted rugs, in which yarn is punched through a backing with a hand-held tufting gun. Hand-tufted rugs rank below hand-knotted ones, are not expected to last as long and are not considered authentic Persian or Oriental rugs, so hand-knotted is the term to look for in a description. Machine-made rugs rank lowest.
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.
The frame on which the warp (vertical) threads are strung first and held under tension so the weft (horizontal) threads can be interlaced through them and the knots tied onto them. Hand-knotted rugs are made on simple looms, from those set up in weavers' homes to the compact, transportable ones of nomadic weavers, where every knot is tied by hand. Loom size sets rug size: nomads' small looms typically yield rugs no larger than about 4 x 6 or 5 x 7 ft (1.2 x 1.8 m or 1.5 x 2.1 m), city workshops with very large looms weave palace sizes, and the number of looms a workshop runs gauges its scale. Wooden looms in tribal and village weaving expand and contract over time, one cause of crooked rugs. Power looms such as Wilton, Axminster, and Jacquard, the industrial descendants, make machine-woven carpet.
A rug produced by industrial machinery, typically on power looms, rather than knotted by hand, usually from synthetic fibers such as polyester, polypropylene or nylon, and finished in hours rather than months. Its design looks perfectly symmetrical yet slightly fuzzy, and its edges measure almost exactly alike. The back feels stiff and plastic-like, with a regular honeycomb texture on which the pattern cannot be read. Any fringe is a uniform synthetic trim attached at the end of production, and some rugs have none, unlike a hand-knotted rug, whose fringe is its own foundation threads. Machine-made rugs are less expensive, of lower quality and wear out sooner, and are not authentic Persian or Oriental rugs.
A hand-knotted rug from the weaving lands of Asia and the Middle East, usually named for the city or region it comes from and known for intricate designs. In the trade pairing “Persian and Oriental,” Persian means made in Iran and Oriental covers the other origins, such as Turkey, Pakistan, India, Afghanistan and China, for example Pakistan-made Kazak, Oushak-design and Bokhara rugs or Afghan Khal Mohammadi rugs; used broadly, the word also takes in Persian rugs. Look-alikes from Pakistan, India or China are not Persian. Only hand-knotted rugs are authentic; hand-tufted rugs, which are sometimes sold as “handmade,” and machine-made rugs rank below. A rug’s country and city of origin tell a buyer what to expect of its typical colors and quality.
A rug in the classic style of Ushak (Uşak), a Turkish weaving city with a long tradition of classical designs. Rugs sold under the name today are commonly hand-knotted in Pakistan, in workshops set up in the 1970s, in the trade account, by owners who left Iran after an embargo. They reproduce Turkish and old Persian patterns, mostly soft floral all-over or medallion layouts with little geometric drawing, in wool from Ghazni and New Zealand on a cotton foundation. Vegetable dyes, an antique wash, several shades of one color and a short, low pile give a muted, aged look, while designers choose palettes that follow color trends. Depending on design and knot density, the same family is also sold as Peshawar, Chobi, Ziegler or Ferahan.
The largest standard size class of hand-knotted rugs, starting at about 9 x 12 ft (2.7 x 3.7 m) and running through 10 x 13, 10 x 14 and 12 x 16 ft up to about 14 x 22 ft (4.3 x 6.7 m); some size charts start the class above roughly 10 x 14 ft (3 x 4.3 m). Rugs this large suit big living rooms, dining rooms and bedrooms and come mostly from city-workshop Persian and Pakistani weaving, with some Heriz and Bakhtiari pieces and few from tribal weavers such as the Qashqai or Baluch. Workshops such as those of Sarouk also weave palace sizes beyond 12 x 18 ft on commission. Their weight usually holds them without a pad, though a pad helps under heavy furniture or in humid rooms.
Hand-knotted rugs woven in Pakistan, often by Afghan weavers, that reproduce Persian, Turkish, Turkoman and Caucasian designs; the best-known families are Kazak, Oushak, Peshawar (Chobi) and Bokhara, and Afghan-style Khal Mohammadi rugs are sometimes grouped with them. Compared with Iranian rugs they usually have softer, more muted colors that designers choose to suit modern interiors, a low-to-medium pile from antique-style washing and short cutting, and a wide choice of large sizes. Kazak production is credited to Afghan weavers in Pakistani workshops from the 1980s and 1990s, Oushak-style production to workshop owners who moved from Iran to Pakistan in the 1970s after an embargo on Iran. Because they are not woven in Iran, they are not Persian rugs.
The asymmetrical knot of hand-knotted rugs, the counterpart of the symmetrical Turkish (Ghiordes) knot. The weaver wraps the yarn around one warp thread and passes it under the neighboring one, usually working by hand without a hook. On the back of the rug the knots look staggered or diagonal rather than like tidy squares, and the pile feels softer; the knot permits finer detail and higher knot density. In Iran, a rule of thumb ties it to the central, eastern, and southern rugs (Kashan, Isfahan, Nain, Kerman), while the northwest and west favor the Turkish knot, though exceptions exist. Fine curvilinear florals are often credited to it, but Turkish-knot rugs can be just as intricate.
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.
Hand-knotted rugs from Pakistan, made in the city of Peshawar in the north of the country and also called Chobi. They copy old Persian and Turkish designs, mostly floral all-over or repeating patterns (medallions are rare, because all-over layouts suit more rooms), using hand-spun wool and vegetable dyes. The rugs are woven in darker tones, then stone-washed and left in strong sunlight, and the pile is cut short so the pattern shows, which gives a new rug an antique finish. Colors are soft and subdued, often beige-based, with deliberate light-and-dark variation that imitates aged rugs; the rugs feel thin yet wear well. The same look is also sold as Oushak, Ziegler or Ferahan.
The surface of a rug or carpet, made of upright fibers in cut tufts or loops. In a hand-knotted rug it is formed by the cut ends of thousands of wool or silk knots tied onto the warp row by row, trimmed lightly during weaving and given its final height by shearing at finishing. Pile thickness, measured from the back of the rug to the top of the pile, typically runs from low, about 1/8 to 1/4 inch (3 to 6 mm), to high, about 1/2 to 5/8 inch (13 to 16 mm). Fine, dense designs are cut short to keep the pattern sharp; higher pile suits traffic and heavy furniture, lower pile suits door clearance and humid rooms.
An industrial loom driven by machinery rather than by a weaver's hands, on which machine-made rugs are woven through an automated process, typically from synthetic or machine-spun yarns. Because no one ties knots by hand, the design comes out perfectly aligned and symmetrical, the back feels stiff and plastic-like, and the pattern and colors cannot be read from it as they can on a hand-knotted rug. The process is faster and less labor-intensive than hand-knotting, giving a less expensive rug of lower quality.
The specialist wash of a hand-knotted rug, done after weaving, again when a dealer prepares new or used stock for sale, and periodically during ownership. A skilled wash removes dirt and loose fibers and leaves the design crisp and harmonious, while a careless one leaves it hazy and can make dyes run, so the quality of the washing is a quiet factor in how a rug finally looks. Owners typically repeat it roughly every 3 to 5 years, stretching to about 10 for a rug that stays clean and coming sooner for heavy traffic or quick soiling, wash it again before storing it for a year or more, and keep it away from conventional dry cleaners.
The last production stage of a hand-knotted rug, after all knotting is done. The rug is taken off the loom, its pile is sheared to an even surface that fixes the final pile height, and it is washed professionally, sometimes with a spell in direct sun to calm colors that are too strong. Stray fibers are then trimmed away, and the rug is inspected for flaws before it goes to market.
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.
The woven-in side edge of a hand-knotted rug, made during weaving as the weft is wrapped several times around the outermost warp to form a rounded, corded band. Depending on the region, the wrapping may use wool of a contrasting color, use the warp itself, or be kept flat rather than round, so the edge is one clue experts use to place a rug's origin. The word overcasting names this same edge and also appears in lists of common rug repairs.
An edge finish in which yarn is wrapped over and over around the outer edge of a rug, by machine or by hand, forming a rounded, rope-like band. It is the usual finish on the long sides of machine-made rugs (fringe usually marks the warp ends), and the way a worn edge of a hand-knotted rug is rebuilt (the repair called overcasting). The original edge of a hand-knotted rug is normally a selvage, woven in as the weft wraps the outermost warp during weaving, rather than an applied serge. On hand-made pieces, the evenness of the serging is a quick clue to the care taken in finishing.
A size band for the smallest hand-knotted rugs, running from about 2 by 2 ft (61 x 61 cm) to 3 by 5 ft (91 x 152 cm), with 2 by 3, 2 by 4 and 3 by 4 ft in between; larger pieces fall into the medium band, which starts at roughly 4 by 6 ft (122 x 183 cm). Small rugs suit entrances, doorways, bathrooms, kitchens, hallway and staircase ends, walk-in closets, an office corner or the spot beneath a statue. Because they are light, they tend to slide and are best used with a rug pad. City, village and tribal weavings all come in this size, and tribal rugs are often woven small.
The degree to which a hand-knotted rug holds true, parallel edges and a width that stays nearly the same at the top, middle and bottom. A machine-made rug almost always measures identical at every point, but a handmade one never does exactly, because wooden looms expand and contract over time, and wool foundations, which also react to humidity, do so more than cotton ones; village and tribal weavings are especially prone to being crooked. A difference of an inch or two (2.5 to 5 cm) is acceptable, while major differences count as a flaw that lowers quality and value. It is checked by eye from a distance, against the lines of a hard floor, or by measuring the top, middle and bottom with a tape.
The grade of modern hand-knotted Kazak rugs with the highest knot density, woven in Pakistan by Afghan weavers. The tighter weave allows finer, more detailed geometric patterns, and the high-quality wool has an almost silky look and a soft sheen, in a good range of colors. It is priced in the middle of the three grades: the standard (commercial) Kazak, with the lowest density and large, bold patterns, costs less, and the Kazak Azari, with a wider range of designs and colors and thicker wool, costs more.
Colorants manufactured chemically rather than extracted from plants or animals. They dominate machine-made and hand-tufted rugs, where they give flat, uniform color, and are sometimes used for a few shades in otherwise naturally dyed hand-knotted rugs. They tend to bleed more readily than natural dyes under a damp cloth and to fade or age less gracefully. Experts read a pile that is lighter at the tips than at the base as synthetic dye faded by light, which points to a rug made in the late 19th century or later. Weavers choose between the two according to the colors they want.
One of the two main knots of hand-knotted rugs, also called the symmetrical knot (the other being the asymmetrical Persian or Senneh knot). The yarn is looped around two adjacent warp threads with both ends emerging between them, so the back shows small, even, squarish knot heads; weavers often tie it with a hook. Named after the town of Ghiordes (modern Gördes) in Turkey, it is typical of Turkey, the Caucasus and northwestern Iran (Tabriz, Bijar, Heriz, village Hamadan), where Seljuk Turks are said to have introduced it, and gives a durable, precise pile. The Persian knot is often credited with finer detail, yet knot type is a tendency, not a limit: Tabriz rugs woven with the Turkish knot reach about 500 knots per square inch (roughly 78 per cm²).
Various techniques for coloring carpet yarns, including beck dyeing (immersion in dye baths), continuous dyeing (application after tufting), space dyeing (multiple colors on a single yarn), and solution dyeing (color added to liquid polymer before extrusion). Each method offers different benefits for colorfastness, pattern capabilities, and environmental impact. In hand-knotted rugs the wool is dyed as spun yarn before knotting, with natural dyes from plants, roots, and flowers, which tend to mellow with age, or with synthetic dyes; differences between dye batches are a main source of abrash.
The number of single yarns twisted together to form a carpet yarn. Two-ply or three-ply yarns are stronger and more durable than single-ply yarns. In hand-knotted rugs, wool is first spun into threads, by hand or on a wheel, and those threads are then twisted together into thicker, sturdier strands before the yarn is dyed.