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.
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.
An all-over floral composition in which sprays of flowers, rosettes and leafy branches, often arranged in symmetrical pairs, are spread across the field, typically without a central medallion to hold the eye. The Persian word afshan means “scattered” or “sprinkled”. The open, airy layout can be seen, for example, on the pale ivory ground of some Sarouk rugs.
A layout in which a motif or pattern is spread across the whole field instead of being organized around a central medallion. The motif can be flowers joined by vines, leaves and blossoms (sometimes with birds and animals), angular geometric shapes, or repeating units such as boteh, gul and herati; a barely noticeable center may remain. A geometric allover either repeats one shape or runs as a continuous pattern whose shapes vary, often with a different ground color inside each. With no strong midpoint, an allover rug sits comfortably anywhere in a room, including odd-shaped ones; in floral versions the flowers are drawn larger, on thicker branches, than in a floral medallion rug.
Flowing ornament of interlaced, scrolling vines, tendrils and leaves that curl in rhythmic spirals, often drawn in mirrored symmetry. In rugs it appears in the fields and borders of city pieces such as Kashan and Tabriz, alongside floral sprays, palmettes and vases, and in Shah Abbasi designs it swirls with vines around the central medallion.
Colorful rugs of the Bakhtiari, a Zagros Mountains tribe that was nomadic until much of it settled southwest of Isfahan in the 19th century and whose weaving now spreads across more than 200 villages; smaller pieces tend to be tribal work and larger ones come from the region's villages. The foundation is usually cotton under a wool pile from the tribe's own sheep, though some small tribal pieces are wool throughout, and every row is beaten down so hard that the pile ends up dense and long-lasting. The signature layouts are the garden panel design (Khesti, also spelled Kheshti), a grid of framed squares that each show a garden scene meant as a view of paradise, and the medallion-and-corner design with a semi-geometric center medallion. Deep red and dark navy are the usual field colors.
Tribal rugs woven by the Baluch people of the border region between northeastern Iran and Afghanistan, who sell them in the bazaar of Mashhad because they have few buyers nearby. The designs blend Turkish, Persian, and Caucasian influences and stay closest to Turkmen weaving, which came first: repeating guls (flowers set in octagons), boteh, tree-of-life motifs, and prayer designs, mostly on dark navy, red, or brown fields with ivory and dark-purple accents, though newer pieces run lighter. The thin pile is wool, usually on a wool foundation. Because the weavers move around and cannot set up large looms, rugs are small, typically 4 x 6 ft (1.2 x 1.8 m), 5 x 7 ft (1.5 x 2.1 m) or smaller, and runners reach only about 10 to 12 ft (3 to 3.7 m) long and 1.5 to 5 ft (0.46 to 1.5 m) wide.
Rugs woven today chiefly in Pakistani workshops by Pakistani and Afghan weavers who rework older Persian-Turkmen designs rooted in Central Asia; in the trade they count as Oriental rather than Persian rugs. The hallmark is an allover repeat of guls, stylized octagonal (sometimes diamond-shaped) flower motifs, on a field most often red, then cream, sometimes blue or green, and more recently black, with black, peach, blue, and green accents, all in plant-based dyes. The pile is soft, silky-looking 100 percent wool on a cotton foundation, medium in height, and some pieces come oversized; a finer grade has higher knot density, more detailed drawing, and premium Ghazni wool.
A teardrop-shaped motif with a curved upper tip, ubiquitous in Persian and Kashmiri weaving for centuries. The Persian word is glossed as “budding flower or plant,” and the motif stands for growth and regeneration; it is also read as a cypress that bends in the wind but rarely breaks, a flame, a seed, a pine cone or a stylized almond. When Scottish mills began imitating Kashmir shawls in the 19th century, the boteh became known in the West as “paisley,” after the town of Paisley. In rugs it usually repeats throughout the field, notably in Tabriz, Sarouk, Kerman, Mashhad and Malayer pieces.
An animal fiber from camels, used less often in rugs than wool, cotton or silk and found mostly in tribal Persian rugs. Its natural warm tan tone has also become a color name: camel hair is a recurring field color in Mehraban rugs, alongside dark blue, dark red, cream and peach, so the phrase can refer to the fiber or merely to the shade.
A rug woven by Turkmen tribes to hang over the doorway of a yurt rather than lie on the floor. Its characteristic design divides the field into four quadrants (often called the hatchli or cross layout), traditionally read as a protective symbol guarding the threshold. Because they were made for a doorway, authentic ensis share a remarkably consistent size — roughly that of a door.
The central area of a rug inside its borders, where the medallion, allover pattern, garden panels or other main design are set. Rug descriptions commonly name the field color, meaning the background shade of that area (for example dark red, dark blue, cream or camel), as distinct from the highlight colors used for motifs and accents. In an open-field design most of the field is left as one background color, with widely spaced motifs and a large share of empty space.
A floral rug built around one central medallion, either a single large flower or a cluster of small blooms joined into one shape, often echoed by smaller medallions above, below and beside it. The medallion is traditionally said to stand for the sacred lotus. Because it takes up field space, the flowers and branches are smaller and thinner than in allover floral rugs. The design is typical of Tabriz, Kerman, Sarouk and Kashan, and its strong center makes it a natural focal point of a room.
A layout in which the field is divided into a grid of framed, mostly square panels, each holding its own imagined garden of flowers, plants, trees and birds, usually on a single background color of its own. Scenes vary, from cypress trees and villas to lakes, deer in a forest or a tree of life, and in some rugs the panels carry the four seasons. Weavers treat each panel as a window onto paradise and a sign of hope for a bright future. Best known from Bakhtiari rugs, it is also woven in Tabriz, Sarouk, Kashmar, Kerman and Qum. The Persian name Kheshti comes from khesht (“brick”), after the square frames.
A layout in which one large angular medallion stands at the center of the field, with separate corner designs and a much lighter pattern over the remaining ground, so the medallion is the clear focal point. Smaller geometric medallions often sit above and below the main one. It is typical of village and tribal rugs such as Heriz, Abadeh, Zanjan, Karaja and Qashqai, and is the angular counterpart of the floral center medallion.
A narrow band running alongside the wide main border of a rug, framing it and completing the boundary around the field much as a frame surrounds a painting; it is also called a secondary border. Many Sarouk rugs, for example, wrap a much thinner secondary border around the primary one, and wide floral borders, as on some Tabriz and Kashan rugs, are often edged by narrow guards. The broad main border and its slim guards together form a hierarchy of bands that sets off the design.
An octagonal or polygonal, stylized flower motif repeated in rows across the field of Turkmen rugs. The same repeat is typical of Baluchi rugs, where a flower sits inside each octagon, and of Bokhara rugs, woven chiefly in Pakistan after Turkmen models. In older Turkmen rugs each tribe (Tekke, Salor, Ersari and others) typically kept its own gul, so an expert can often tell the tribe from the motif, whereas modern pieces mix guls freely. The word means “flower” or “rose” in Persian, though the shapes are highly geometric rather than naturalistic.
A classic Persian design built on a diamond repeated across the field, with a small flower or leaves inside each diamond and curved leaves at its sides; the leaves are read as stylized fish, said to circle a lotus. The name comes from Herat, the city in Afghanistan where the design is said to originate; it is also called the fish design, and Mahi means “fish” in Persian. It is one of the three main design families, woven as an allover pattern or around a central medallion with diamonds inside and outside it, and it sometimes appears as a thin border. It is common in Tabriz, Sarouk, Mashhad, Moud, Bijar, Hamadan, Abadeh, Zanjan, Kerman and Kashan rugs.
The rust red for which Heriz rugs are best known, usually set with dark navy and cream in the field and border. According to local tradition, the weavers keep the dyed wool for a while in a river of the Heriz area that carries copper minerals, and the copper shifts the dye to this rustic tone, which is why the color is tied so closely to Heriz.
A geometric drawing built around six-sided shapes, best known as the hallmark of Abadeh rugs, where a large hexagon spreads over the field, often with smaller ones toward a central rosette medallion. Abadeh weavers developed it to make their rugs stand out from other rugs of the region. Hexagonal or diamond-shaped medallions are also typical of Hamadan and Malayer rugs, and older Zanjan rugs set a hexagonal medallion around the center medallion as a frame.
A pictorial layout in which the field is filled with animals in the chase or in flight, such as leopard, stag, fox, rabbit and birds. Some examples hold well over a hundred different animals, and a few carry a second scene in the border instead of the usual flowers, for instance herons, cranes or deer resting under blossom trees. The design is woven in Isfahan, Qum, Kerman and Tabriz rugs. The Persian term shikargah (also shekargah) means “hunting ground”.
The spiraling, leafy vine scroll also called the arabesque, which links the main elements of a rug’s field or border. In Nain weaving the name is also given to a less common design in which several star-shaped medallions are scattered across the field like a constellation.
Fine Persian carpets from the city of Kashan in central Iran, a weaving center since the 17th-century Safavid era, when the rulers holidayed there and furnished their villas with local rugs. The pile is typically all wool, often imported Manchester wool, of medium height on a cotton foundation; silk-and-wool pieces are mostly older. Designs are formal and vary little: a central medallion, a medallion with matching corner pieces or allover florals, plus a rare design called Darbari, reportedly with little or no border. Rugs of about 5 by 7 feet (1.5 by 2.1 m) and smaller show more variety, such as tree of life, vase and bird patterns. Classic colors are deep red, navy and cream; yellow or green fields are rare, and newer rugs are softer pastels.
Bold geometric rugs originally woven by Armenian weavers in the southern Caucasus in the 1800s, in what is now Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan, with large-scale patterns, tribal motifs and many medallions. Today they come mainly from workshops in Pakistan, where Afghan weavers have recreated the designs since the 1980s and 1990s in hand-spun Ghazni wool and vegetable dyes, in softer modern colors such as beige, teal, indigo, and rust red, often with a red field against a cream medallion and border; India also makes Kazak-style rugs. The low-to-medium pile is cut short and stone-washed for an antique look. Grades are commercial (lowest knot density), Super (finest knotting, silky wool), and Kazak Azari (Heriz-inspired designs, thicker pile, best wool, highest price); examples measure about 121 KPSI (roughly 1,900 knots per 10 x 10 cm) to 169 KPSI (roughly 2,600).
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.
The widest band framing the field of a rug, usually flanked by one or more much thinner guard borders. Its color normally differs from the field, and its ornament, such as floral vines, vases, rosettes or geometric repeats, runs around all four sides. In city rugs the pattern is expected to turn cleanly at the corners, whereas tribal rugs are less likely to keep it continuous. Under a dining table mostly the border stays visible, so its color and design deserve extra attention when choosing a rug.
A large motif at the center of a rug's field, around which the rest of the design is organized; the large central medallion is said to have been introduced in the Safavid era (16th-17th centuries). Floral medallions, typical of city rugs such as Tabriz, Kashan and Sarouk, are often read as a lotus blossom, and the motif has also been read as mirroring the interior dome of a mosque; geometric ones, often hexagonal or diamond-shaped, mark village and tribal rugs such as Heriz and Zanjan. A medallion may stand alone, come with four corner pieces, be flanked by smaller medallions above and below, or repeat down a runner. Rugs with no central motif are called allover. In a well-made rug the medallion sits at the center and the corners mirror one another, as closely as handwork allows.
A layout built around one large central medallion with a matching motif set into each of the four corners of the field. Kashan rugs typically use it, with the corner pieces usually in the same color as the medallion, and it also appears in Hamadan, Bakhtiari, Kashmar, Heriz and Tabriz rugs. Village and tribal examples tend to be geometric, while Bakhtiari medallions are often semi-geometric, ringed by geometric motifs and filled with florals.
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.
An arch- or doorway-shaped niche woven at one end of a prayer rug's field, echoing the niche of a mosque that marks the direction of Mecca. It is the focal point of the rug and reminds the person praying that they stand in a sacred space. The drawing ranges from a bare outline of a doorway to an architectural rendering with columns and fine detail.
An all-over repeating pattern of round flowers linked by a diamond lattice of vines, usually with the blossoms rendered in white or yellow on a dark blue or red ground. Beloved in Kurdish, Baluchi, and northwest Persian weaving, the design reads from a distance as a field of stars. Its name is popularly traced to a legendary patron, Mina Khan.
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.
A stylized fan- or palm-leaf-shaped flower motif whose petals or leaves spread from a single base. It is repeated in the fields and borders of city rugs such as Kashan and Tabriz, usually alongside arabesque scrolls, rosettes, and floral sprays. In Sultanabad rugs the palmettes are drawn oversized and set among angular vine scrolls in an allover pattern.
Tribal rugs woven by Kurdish weavers around Quchan, north of Mashhad in northeastern Iran, a border region where the Safavid rulers settled Kurdish tribes to help guard the frontier. A wool or goat-hair foundation carries a wool pile at about 120 knots per square inch (roughly 186,000 per square meter), high for tribal work. Geometric medallion or all-over designs in strong red, blue or ivory fields resemble Caucasian rugs and, above all, Anatolian ones, since the weavers' ancestors came from Anatolia. Compact looms keep sizes small to medium, seldom wider than 6 ft (1.8 m) or longer than 13 ft (4 m).
Persian rugs from the city of Qum (Qom), a comparatively young weaving center whose rugs are known for the highest knot density of any Persian type. About nine in ten are pure silk on a silk foundation, at roughly 600 to 1,000 knots per square inch (KPSI; about 93 to 155 per cm²); the rest, with kork wool or silk-and-wool piles, run about 300 to 700 KPSI (about 47 to 108 per cm²). Designs are floral medallions, hunting scenes and pictorials, mostly in soft pastel, ivory, gold and green tones (a pistachio-green field is prized) on light or dark grounds. Newer rugs usually carry a workshop signature, older ones often do not. The local water is said to soften and brighten silk, so silk rugs from across Iran are sent there for washing.
A layout in which two or more medallions run down the field in place of a single central medallion, which suits long runners where one medallion would look lost. The medallion outline usually stays the same while its inner pattern and ground color change from one medallion to the next. Karaja runners alternate two distinct medallions, and on wider Karaja rugs the columns of medallions read like a geometric allover pattern. The design is typical of geometric rugs such as Karaja, Heriz, Abadeh, Quchan, Shiraz, and older Mehraban, and it also appears in floral open-field rugs.
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.
A long, narrow rug for hallways, entryways, staircases and kitchens, or placed in twos and threes beside a bed. Standard runners are about 2 to 3 ft (60-90 cm) wide and wider ones 3 to 4 ft (90-120 cm), with lengths from about 6 ft (1.8 m) to around 40 ft (12 m); Hamadan and Karaja are known for the longest. Heriz, Azerbaijan and Hamadan runners typically come wide, while wide Tabriz, Sarouk and Karaja runners are mostly older pieces. In a hallway, leave about 12-18 inches (30-45 cm) of floor at each end. Because a single medallion looks lost on so long a field, geometric village runners often repeat a medallion, varying its inner pattern or color between repeats; Karaja alternates two distinct medallions.
Popular, durable Persian city rugs from Sarouk, a town in central Iran about 50 km (31 miles) north of Arak, prominent from the 19th century and exported to Europe and America. A cotton foundation carries a medium-to-thick wool pile, at times with silk highlights, usually tied with the Persian knot (some older pieces use the Turkish knot) at medium-to-high density of up to about 320 knots per square inch (roughly 50 per cm²). Floral, medallion and allover designs, with some Herati, boteh and pictorial patterns, appear on beige, ivory, cream, navy or red fields, the red leaning toward orange or rust, usually with a thin secondary border. American Sarouks, woven mainly in the 1920s and 1930s, adapted designs and colors to U.S. taste, and many were re-dyed to a preferred rose red.
The ornament set into each of the four corners of the field around a central medallion, usually echoing the medallion's motifs or color; in Tabriz rugs the corners are often made by dividing the medallion design into four and using one part per corner. Spandrels complete a medallion-and-corner layout, and in a well-made rug the corner pieces match one another and sit symmetrically.
Antique Persian carpets from Sultanabad, the former name of the Arak region of Iran, a newer weaving center that flourished under the Qajars in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and supplied European and American buyers. Their typical layout is an allover field of oversized palmettes, lotus blossoms, floral sprays and angular vines, recalling the Shah Abbasi pattern in a rustic village manner rather than the precise curvilinear drawing of city rugs. Indigo or midnight blue with rust or brick red, gold and olive is a classic palette. Because Sultanabad no longer exists under that name, antique examples are scarce and command higher prices.
A design in which one large, elaborate tree rises through most of the field, surrounded by botanical ornament, with birds, animals and flowers spread among its branches. The tree can also occupy a single panel of a garden-panel rug or appear as a border pattern. In Persian tradition it stands for the connection between earth and the environment, is also read as a link between heaven and earth, and symbolizes strength, wisdom and the continuity of life. It is woven in Tabriz, Kashan, Isfahan, Kerman and Malayer rugs and in Baluchi rugs.
Tribal rugs woven by Turkoman (Turkmen) nomads, whose forebears came from the Afghan and Uzbek region and who later settled in the Turkmen region of Iran. Rows of octagonal guls (“flowers”) cover a deep red, reddish-brown or occasionally cream field, accented in black, blue, green or beige; prayer designs also occur. Foundation and pile are usually wool, said to come from the soft undercoat of Karakul sheep, though a cotton foundation is occasionally used. In older pieces each tribe kept its own gul design, whereas newer rugs freely mix them. Turkoman designs inspired Bokhara and Khal Mohammadi rugs and are the Persian design closest to Baluchi work, which they predate; the low-to-medium pile suits places where doors swing over the rug.
A sampler rug: a small piece woven not for the floor but as a three-dimensional pattern reference, showing sections of borders, medallions, and field designs that a workshop could combine into full-size carpets. Essentially a weaver's catalogue in carpet form, vagirehs let master designs travel between villages without paper. Antique examples, particularly from Bidjar, are now sought-after collector's items in their own right.
A layout of vases holding flowers, spread across the rug, often with one large vase at the center surrounded by smaller ones around the medallion, the arrangement then repeated over the whole field. In Persian tradition the flowering vase stands for growth and opportunity, and it is also read as a symbol of abundance and paradise. The design is typical of Kashmar rugs and is also found in Bakhtiari, Tabriz, Sarouk, Qum and Kashan rugs; in Kashmar and Kashan rugs vases can also appear in the border.