A budget shortcut in hand-knotting in which each knot is looped around four warp threads instead of the two spanned by the symmetrical (Turkish) and asymmetrical (Persian) knots. It speeds up weaving but gives a much looser, sparser weave: a jufti rug can weigh about half as much as a regular-knotted rug of the same size, and its patterns look fuzzy, pixelated and less detailed, usually plain with open space. It is hard to spot from the back, so weight and pattern clarity are the best clues; the rugs wear less well and are cheaper. It turns up, for example, in lower-grade Kerman pieces.
Fine Persian carpets from Kerman in southern Iran, a city on the old Iran-India trade route and one of the historic rug-weaving centers, famed for its master dyers. Designs vary widely: florals and allovers, tree of life, hunting, garden and open-field layouts, fine “spring” florals of tiny flowers, and the distinctive “vase” technique. The pile is usually soft kork wool on a cotton foundation, sometimes silk-and-wool or pure silk. One rug can hold 15 to 30 colors, mostly deep reds, several blues, green and cream, with pastels such as champagne, lime green, pink and gray-blue in newer pieces. Roughly half of Kerman rugs, from lesser workshops, use the jufti knot, a shortcut yielding a sparser, lower-quality weave.