Rug and carpet, any decorative textile normally made of a thick material and now usually intended as a floor covering. Until the 19th century the word carpet was used for any cover, such as a table cover or wall hanging; since the introduction of machine-made products, however, it has been used almost exclusively for a floor covering. Both in Great Britain and in the United States the word rug is often used for a partial floor covering as distinguished from carpet, which frequently is tacked down to the floor and usually covers it wall-to-wall. In reference to handmade carpets, however, the names rug and carpet are used interchangeably.
Handmade carpets are works of art, not only in relation to their intended purpose as floor coverings. Indeed, so high has artistic expression risen in many Oriental carpets that they have been considered in the East on a par with objects of exceptional beauty and luxury which masterpieces of painting have been in the West.
Elements of Design
Most designs consist of an inner field—the pattern in the centre of the carpet—and a border. The latter serves, like the cornice on a building or the frame on a picture, to emphasize the limits, isolate the field, and sometimes control the implied movements of the interior pattern. The design of inner field and border ought to harmonize pleasantly, but not unite.
Detail of a Chinese carpet with an allover floral design framed by several contrasting borders, c. 1900.
Detail of a Persian rug from Senneh (Sanandaj), Iran, 19th century. A tapestry-woven wool rug, it has an allover identical repeat pattern of bōtehs in rows. In the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Full size 1.65 × 1.19 metres.
The border comprises at least three elements: a main band, which varies greatly in width according to the size of the rug and the elaborateness of the field design, and inner and outer guard stripes, subordinate bands on either side of the main band. Guard stripes may be the same kind on both sides of the main band or different. The field is quite often decorated with an allover pattern, a panel composition, or a medallion system. The allover pattern may be of identical repeats (see photograph), either juxtaposed or evenly spaced, though the latter, while common on textiles, is rare on carpets; or it may be of varied motifs in a unified system, for example, different plant forms of about the same size, but even this freest type of design almost invariably includes bilaterally balanced repetitions. The various motif type of design is found most typically in garden carpets, formalized representations of the parks or woods that were a feature of Persian palace grounds.
Another type of allover design appears to be entirely free but is actually organized on systems of scrolling stems, notably on the east Persian carpets of the 16th and 17th centuries.
Already by the Upper Paleolithic Period, circa 40,000 BC, the value of panel subdivisions in controlling patterns had been discovered in a simple rectangular version. Panel systems have been, from 4000 BC, a basic form of design, for by that time pottery painters were already devising varied systems. On carpets it gives the simplest division of the field, generally a diagonal lattice as on an embroidered carpet found in an excavated tomb (1st century BC–1st century AD) at Noin Ula in northern Mongolia; the diagonal scheme also occurs in Sāsānian capitals and Coptic tapestries. But one characteristic field design of the Persian court carpets of the Shāh ʿAbbās period, the so-called vase pattern, is constructed from the ogee, a motif that became prominent in Middle Eastern textile design in the 14th century. Simple rectangular paneling—really a large-scale check—is typical of one style of Spanish rugs of the 15th and 16th centuries. The commonest form of medallion composition is one in which the more or less elaborate motif is superimposed upon the centre of a patterned field and is often accompanied by cornerpieces, which are usually mere quadrants of the central medallion (see photograph). In use, too, are multiple-medallion systems: either a succession or a chain of medallions on the vertical axis; two or more forms of medallions alternating in bands, a scheme typical of the Turkish (Ushak) carpets of the 16th and 17th centuries; or systematically spotted medallions that may or may not be interconnected or that may interlock so that the scheme becomes an elaborate lattice.
In the Persian carpets of the 15th–17th century, there are typical multiple design schemes. The simplest is perhaps that of a medallion superimposed on an allover design, but typical are such subtler inventions as two- or three-spiral stem systems, sometimes overlain with large-scale cloud bands, all intertwining yet each carried through independently to completion. While finer vase carpets with double or triple ogival lattices, at intervals that are staggered, with each center and tangent motifs, also serving other functions in the other systems. This great multiplicity of independent motives, which at first glance appears, thus turns out, on closer scrutiny, to be most ingeniously contrived and firmly controlled.
Stripe systems are used occasionally, either vertical or diagonal, but this conception is more natural to shuttlewoven fabrics, and, when employed in the freer techniques of rug weaving, is probably an imitation of textiles.
Design execution
The designs are transferred in several ways. The design may be transferred directly into the carpet from the mind and hand of the weaver, or it may be indirectly transferred from a pattern drawn on paper. With this latter technique, a rug may be executed directly from the pattern, or the design may first be transferred to a cartoon. This is a full-sized paper drawing, squared, with each square representing one knot of a particular color. The weaver places this upon the loom and translates the design directly onto the carpet. This cartoon is used for reproduction of very intricate designs and as a master pattern for the production of more than one carpet. Many of the finest Oriental rugs, which achieve a magnificent effect through wealth of detail, are thought to have been woven from cartoons drawn by manuscript illuminators. Such methods of transfer necessarily introduce irregularities into the pattern that, since they are indications of the artistic individuality of the maker, constitute a special charm in the handwoven carpet. The major aesthetic difference between handmade and machine-made carpets is that in the latter, mechanical transfer of design creates a uniformity of pattern, obliterating signs of individual workmanship.
Colour
Only natural dyes were used from the earliest times until the late 19th century. Some came from plants: madder, indigo, sumac, genista, woad; some from mollusks and insects. Most have been improved by the addition of various chemicals, such as alum, which fix colours in the fibre. The exception has been dark brown to black dyes, with a high iron-oxide content that tends to decompose fibers. All other natural dyes have proven excellent: the remarkable beauty and subtlety of color and durable. Much of the charm of antique carpets depends on the slightly varying hues and shades obtained by these natural dyes—the result called abrash in the trade. In the 19th century, synthetic aniline dyes were developed. They quickly became popular, first in Europe, and after 1860, in the East. But, later on, their bright colours and poor durability were thought to outweigh the advantages of brilliance and quick application and natural dyes regained favour with many craftsmen. Today, though much improved as to subtlety and fastness, synthetic dyes are still often preferable to natural ones.
Materials and technique
Most carpets are made of sheep’s wool, which is durable, dyes readily, and handles easily. Camel hair wool or goat wool is rarely used. Too dull to make an attractive pile, cotton’s strength and smooth yarn make it ideal as a warp (see below); it is used in the East for the entire foundation or for the warp only.
Silk is so expensive that its use is restricted, but no other material produces such luxurious, delicate rugs, displaying subtle colour nuances of particular charm in different lights. Some of the finest 16th- and 17th-century Persian carpets are entirely of silk. It has never been used for knotting in Europe, but often since the 15th century it has augmented wool in the weft of European tapestries.
Linen was used in Egyptian carpets, hemp for the foundations of Indian carpets, and both materials are used in European carpets. Since about 1820, jute has been used in the foundation of machine-made carpets.
Knotted pile carpets, combining beauty, durability, and possibilities for infinite variety, have found greatest favour as floor coverings. Weavers long ago began to produce pile fabrics, or fabrics with a surface made up of loops of yarn, probably trying to combine the advantages of a woven textile with those of animal fleece. Knotted pile is constructed on the loom on a foundation of woven yarns, of which the horizontal yarns are called weft yarns and the vertical are called warp yarns. These colored pile yarns, of which the pattern is composed, are strongly knotted to two warp yarns in such a way that their free ends rise above the woven foundation to form a tufted pile or thick cushion of yarn ends covering one side of the foundation weave. The knots are worked in rows between interlocking, tightly drawn weft yarns that hold each row of knotted tufts firmly in place within the foundation. When a row of knots is tied, it is beaten down against the preceding rows with a heavy malletlike comb so that on the front the pile completely conceals both warp and weft. Where an area has been woven, the pile ends are sheared to an even height: short on the more aristocratic type and as much as an inch on some shaggy nomadic rugs.
knots in handmade carpets
Knots used in handmade carpets.
There are various ways of knotting the pile yarn around the warp yarn. While the Turkish, or symmetrical, knot is used mainly in Asia Minor, the Caucasus, Iran (formerly Persia), and Europe, the Persian, or asymmetrical, knot is used principally in Iran, India, China, and Egypt. This knot was formerly known as the Ghiordes knot and the Persian as the Senneh-Sehna- knot respectively. The Spanish knot, used mainly in Spain, is different from both of the aforementioned types in that it loops around just one warp yarn. After the 18th century, it became extremely rare. The kind of knot utilized affects the delicacy and tightness of the pile. Knotting each pile yarn by hand is comparable to setting small pebbles in a mosaic, and expert execution is vital in achieving a beautiful finished product. Angular-patterned carpets requiring only a coarsely knotted pile are easier to produce than those with curvilinear and finely patterned designs, which call for finer material and a much more densely knotted pile if their intricate designs are to be clearly reproduced. Some Chinese carpets have less than 20 knots per square inch (3 per square centimetre); certain Indian ones, more than 2,400. The highest density can be achieved with the Persian knot.
Metal-covered thread can be added to the pile, heightening its colourfulness. The gold and silver thread used in this procedure lies flat against the woven foundation, giving the appearance of low relief. Metal-covered thread wears quickly and loses its lustre, however, making it less suitable for floor coverings than for hangings.
Many carpets do not have knotted pile. Called kilims, they are woven similarly to tapestries. This means that the weft yarns of a given color area never pass into another area. If the weft yarns of different color areas are hooked around adjacent warps rather than around one another or around warp yarn, small slits are created when different colors meet. In soumak carpets, one or two rows of colored pattern weft alternate with an invisible functional weft. Weft wrapping with passes of alternate rows given a differing direction, or slant, produces a herringbone effect.
Embroidery has rarely been used on floor coverings. Embroidered rugs are almost exclusively European and American, except for certain Turkmen kilims and Turkish cicims —ruglike spreads or hangings—and some felted or jute-backed Indian and Kashmiri rugs decorated with chain stitching. Only relatively strong backings can be used. Coverage-the-entire-surface designs of counted stitching in European embroidered rugs exist in the form of, for example, the cross-stitch of the Arraiolos rug and the gros point and petit point of needlepoint.
Ornament and imagery
Individual motifs.
Three principal classes of motifs are employed: geometric; conventional, or stylized; and illustrative, or naturalistic. The geometric repertoire is built up from variations and combinations of meanders, polygons, crosses, and stars. The meanders, chiefly for borders, range from the simple serration employed from the earliest times to fairly complex hooked forms, characteristically the angular “running wave,” or “Greek key,” which again is very ancient. Small trefoil (trilobed) motifs are used for guard stripes in the Caucasus, central Iran, and India. The chief among the polygons employed are the lozenge and the octagon. The Maltese cross is commonly used as is the gamma cross, or swastika. Purely geometric stars are almost always based upon the cross or the octagon. Many of these patterns, which are elementary and very old, must have had their origin in basket-weaving and the cognate mat-plaiting of reeds, for they are equally natural to both techniques; but in rug-weaving they have survived chiefly in the work of Central Asia, Asia Minor, and the Caucasus, in both pile-knotted and flat-woven fabrics.
One of the principal, or at least best-known, stylized motifs of 16thand 17th-century Persian carpets is the so-called arabesque—an ambiguous term that generally suggests an intricate scrolling-vine system. Basically, two asymmetrical members cross at an acute angle, forming a lilylike blossom, and then describe curves in opposite directions, readily continuing into further scroll systems. This highly individual form was begun in China in the late Zhou period (c. 600 BC), notably on a few bronze mirrors, and beautifully developed during the Han dynasty (206 BC–AD 220). It appeared in Persia in the 12th century, on pottery and architectural stucco ornament, probably under the influence of the Chinese form.
Directly traceable to China are the cloud knot and cloud band, or ribbon—both in use by the Han period at least and with a continuous history thereafter. The cloud knot, a feature of the Persian court carpets of the time of Shāh ʿAbbās, was continued to the end of the 18th century. The cloud band became important in 16th-century carpets; it was used, with especial elegance and skill, by Persian designers and probably most beautifully in Turkish court carpets, which owed a great debt to Persian inspiration. Cloud band and knot motives from Syrian textile design move into Asia Minor with the Ottoman Turkish conquest in the 15th century, becoming typical of one group of 16th–17th century Turkish carpets.
Great rug and carpet design motifs
Palmettes, a second major class of stylized motifs dominant in a considerable range of carpet designs from Asia Minor to India, originated in Assyrian design as stylizations of the palm tree, a symbol of vitalistic power that was often, if not always, associated with the Moon. Many of the almost uncountable variations which developed through the centuries continued to refer directly to the palm. As early as the 1st millennium BC, however, others derived from the lotus blossom, a complementary motif connected primarily with the fertility symbolism of the Sun. Other designs included the pomegranate, another fertility symbol, while still another group included the vitalistic emblem of the vine, this last design built upon the single leaf. The forms of these four main types of palmettes occurring in Oriental rug designs stand directly descended from styles current in textile designs from the 4th century onward and are often modified by Chinese influences. The forms of the 16th and early 17th centuries developed these into beautiful, naturalistic blossom forms, where flowers like the Chinese peony sometimes rival the more abstract and stylized lotus. Meanwhile, even the lanceolate leaf, itself so often combined with palmettes in east Persian designs, is also nearly always conventionally stylized. Chalice, fan, and half-palmette—all evolved from the palmette and occurring in Oriental rugs—also appear in 17thand 18th-century European designs.
Especially prominent among the more naturalistic plants are cypresses, which symbolize life eternal, and blossoming fruit trees, symbolizing resurrection. Willows and jasmine flowers dominate the Shāh ʿAbbās vase carpet, while tulips feature in Turkish court carpets. Many minor foliate and floral forms never had any specific botanical identification, though they give a realistic effect. Naturalistic red or pink roses were very common in European designs by the mid-16th century. They appeared, under European influence, in Oriental designs, particularly Persian, during the later 19th century.
The most important illustrative motifs, other than naturalistic plants, are those connected with the garden and the hunt: many small songbirds (in Persia, especially the nightingale); the pheasant, taken over from China and much favoured in the 16th century; occasionally the peacock; lions and a semiconventional lion mask, sometimes used as the centre of a palmette; tigers; cheetahs; bears; foxes; deer of numerous species; goats, sometimes picturesquely prancing; the wild ass, a fleet prey; ferocious-looking Chinese dragons, and the gentle qi-lin, a fantastic equine also imported from China. Fish swim occasionally in pools or streams or are conventionally paired to suggest a shield, or escutcheon, in the borders of the carpet. Huntsmen, almost always mounted, are the most common human figures, but musicians also appear. Angels occur occasionally.
The underlying theme of both the stylized and naturalistic vocabularies is almost without exception fertility or abundance. The huge golden stellate medallion in the great Persian carpets of Ardabīl, for example, developed from the multiple-pointed rosette which from time immemorial had symbolized the Sun. At its centre four lotus blossoms float upon a little gray-blue pool, symbolizing the source of rain in Heaven. Thus, it represents the two essential vitalizing elements: Sun and water. From it, issues a complex system of tendrils and blossoms, proof of its magical potency.
While it is always reiterated that in the Oriental carpet design there is a flat surface pattern, even where small details are plentiful, in European designs one finds a greater tendency towards the illusionistic effects of painting which very often has shading and picturelike composition with architectural motifs, and even portraiture. This tendency was particularly strong in the French carpets of the 17th and 18th centuries.
Symbolism of overall design
In addition to the symbolism inherent in individual motifs incorporated into the design of the carpet, the total design—indeed, the carpet itself—can be symbolic, as are some of the earliest Persian designs. The ultimate example is the Spring (or Winter) of Khosrow Carpet made for the audience hall of the Sāsānid palace at Ctesiphon (southeast of Baghdad) in the 6th century. That carpet has not chanced to survive, but according to written records it represented a formal garden with watercourses and paths, and rectangular beds filled with flowers, and blossoming shrubs and fruit trees. The yellow gravel was represented by gold; and the blossoms, fruit, and birds were worked with pearls and various jewels. The outer border, representing a meadow, was solid with emeralds. Made of silk, and measuring about 84 feet square, the carpet must have been overwhelming in splendor when the great portal curtains of the hall were drawn back and the sunlight flooded the interior.
This dazzling carpet symbolized the divine role of the king, who regulated the seasons and guaranteed the return of spring, renewing the fertility of the earth and assuring prosperity. On another plane, it represented the Garden of Eden, a symbol of eternal paradise—indeed, the English word “paradise” is ultimately derived from the Persian word for “walled park.” With its flowers, birds, and water features, this garden was to convey not just deliverance from the harsh desert but the promise of eternal happiness.
This most magnificent of carpets impressed all who saw it, more so the Persians. For them, it haunted their imagination for centuries and became almost a legend in history, poetry, and art. For over a thousand years, Oriental craftsmen made vain attempts to imitate it; and though its literal representation has long since vanished, the idea of the Garden of Eden survives in pattern after pattern of Oriental design. The garlands, vines, flowers, trees, animals, and beasts all try to compose a landscape picturing hunting scenes or game, lakes with water birds, and frequently images of supernatural or celestial beings, such as jinn, houris, or a gathering of the blissful righteous at a banquet or dance. But accompanying verses support the image, lyrically extolling the carpet as a garden, for example, or a blooming meadow and comparing its beauty to that of the Garden of Eden.
Uses of rugs and carpets
Carpets developed as coverings for beaten-earth floors in Central and western Asia. Since time out of mind, carpets covered the floors of house and tent as well as mosque and palace. Floor coverings serve an aesthetic as well as a practical function in the homes of wealthy Eastern families. Rugs are usually designed to fit into a conventional layout, partly to allow for simultaneous display; the size and shape of a carpet are determined by the position it is to occupy in the layout. There are normally four carpets. The largest, called mīān farsh, typically about 18 × 8 feet (5.5 × 2.5 metres), goes in the centre. Flanking the mīān farsh are two runners, or kanārehs, which are mainly used for walking and which measure some 18 × 3 feet (5.5 × 1 metres). The principal rug, or kellegi, averaging 12 × 6 feet (3.7 × 1.8 metres), is placed at one end of the arrangement of three carpets, so that its length stretches almost completely across their collective widths.
The intended use sometimes determines both design and size, as in the prayer rug, or namāzlik. Design, naturally linked to religious imagery, is characterized by the mihrab, or prayer niche (an imitation of the prayer niche in the wall of a mosque), the apex of which could be pointed toward Mecca. But other religious motifs also appear, such as hanging lamps, water jugs, or “hand prints” to mark the place of the worshiper on the rug.
Until the mid-17th century, Asian carpets imported into Europe were considered too precious to serve as permanent floor coverings. They would have been put on the floor only on church holidays or in an aristocrat’s presence; otherwise, they might have been hung on the wall or used to cover tables, benches, and chests; and, particularly in Italy, they would have been hung over balconies as decoration during festivals. Taking this European attitude in mind, the Egyptian manufacturers created several unusual shapes and sizes for the European market: square, round, and cruciform carpets, obviously designed for tables rather than floors. During the 17th century, the fashions of covering the entire floor with costly knotted carpets evolved. On the other side, the boom in antique-carpet prices in the mid-20th century resulted in choicer pieces ending up back on the wall.
Aside from serving as floor coverings, Oriental carpets have had quite a number of other uses. They made handsome curtains, served as tribute money, and often as gifts from one state to another. They were used as blankets, canopies, coverings for the opening of tents, and as tomb covers. They have also made excellent saddle covers and storage bags to be used in tents. Such modest carpets were always close to the lives of the people, who treated them tenderly and wove into them life-preserving symbols. More farfetched, other uses have included helping in the death of al-Mustaʿṣim, Baghdad’s last calif—who in 1258 was wrapped in a carpet and beaten to death—and dramatically enhancing Cleopatra’s arrival in Julius Caesar, when she stepped out of an unrolled rug. Less well-documented instances have seen them assume magical properties and take flight.
Periods and centres of activity
Oriental Carpets.
Oriental carpets refer to those made in Western and Central Asia, North Africa, and the Caucasus region of Europe. Rug design, in western Asia at least, had gone beyond felt and plaited mats before the 1st millennium BC. A threshold rug represented in a stone carving (now in the Louvre) from the 8th-century-BC Assyrian palace of Khorsabad (in modern Iraq) has an allover field pattern of quatrefoils (four-leafed motifs), framed by a lotus border. Other Assyrian carvings of the period also show patterns that survive in modern designers’ repertories.
The oldest known examples of knotting were found during an excavation of royal graves, dating from the 5th to the 3rd century BC at Pazyryk in the Altai Mountains of southern Siberia. There were various articles of felt with appliqué patterns and a superb carpet with a woolen pile, knotted with the symmetrical, or Turkish, knot which is now in the Hermitage. This rug may be of Persian origin and is 6 × 6.5 feet (1.8 × 2.0 metres) in size. The composition of the central field features a checkerboard design, each square containing a star-floral pattern. Its two broad borders, the inner one with a frieze of elk, the outer one with a frieze of horsemen.
One need not necessarily assume that knotting was the only, let alone the most, significant technique for carpet manufacture. Felt carpets were in use for a long time in Central and East Asia, as magnificent 1st-century-AD specimens from Noin Ula in northern Mongolia or those in the Shōsō Repository in Nara near Ōsaka show, which date from the 1st century BC to the 1st century AD and are in the Hermitage, or those in the Shōsō Repository, Japanese Imperial storehouse, in Nara near Ōsaka, dating from before the 8th century. The figure pattern rugs with gold mentioned by Greek and Arab writers were probably woven or embroidered and, together with the expensive ones, exhibited on the wall as well as on the floor. The most famous is the large carpet made in the 6th century for the Sāsānid palace in Ctesiphon, but other Oriental courts, such as the caliphate at Baghdad, also used valuable carpets.
In the 13th, 14th, and 15th centuries, Asia Minor and the Caucasus produced coarse, vividly coloured rugs with stars, polygons, and often patterns of stylized Kūfic writing. A special group with simple, highly conventionalized animal forms was also woven; the most important of these carpets are represented by seven fragments of strong, repeating geometric patterns in bold colours—red, yellow, and blue—found in the mosque of ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn Kay-Qubād I at Konya in Anatolia and now in the Museum of Turkish and Islāmic Art, Istanbul. They probably date from the 13th century. In the State Museum of Berlin and in the National Museum of Fine Arts at Stockholm are two primitive rugs, one, a highly conventionalized dragon-and-phoenix combat, the other, stylized birds in a tree. Both of these rugs are probably early 15th-century Anatolian.
Later, many rugs of finer weave, more delicate patterns, and richer colour—mostly geometric and possibly from Asia Minor—appeared in Europe. They were depicted by Flemish painters, such as Hans Memling, Jan van Eyck, and Petrus Christus, with such skill that the separate knots are sometimes visible. Many of these designs are repeated in the Bergama district of Asia Minor and the southern Caucasus today, which complicates dating work.
Persia
Little is known concerning the production of Persian carpets for the first two millennia of their existence. Soil, climate and, straightaway neighbours made Iran the most natural home of the carpet and gave it so commanding a lead that little serious competition was experienced from elsewhere. The Mongol invasion of the 13th century had greatly depressed Persia’s artistic life, only partly restored by the renaissance under the Mongol Il-Khan dynasty (1256–1353). Although the conquests of Timur (died 1405) were in most respects disastrous to Persia, he favoured artisans and spared them to work on his great palaces in Samarkand.
Under Timur’s son and successor, Shāh Rokh (died 1447), art flourished, including, almost certainly, carpets. Their production—exclusively by palace workshops and court-subsidised looms—gave them unity of style; and a sensitive clientele and lavish royal support guaranteed perfect materials and the highest skill.
In the fifteenth century, the art of the book, already considered for many centuries to be the supreme artistic accomplishment and already having behind it centuries of superb achievement, reached a degree of elegance and sophistication unknown either before or since. The richest and most elegant patterning was to be found everywhere: in the bindings, frontispieces, and chapter headings, and in the miniatures themselves, the canopies, panels, brocades, and carpets that furnished the spaces. These most beautiful designs were variously appropriated by the other arts and account in no small measure for the special character of the court carpets of the period, the variey of color, the ingenuity, the imaginative range of pattern schemes, the superlative draftsmanship that is at once lucid and expressive.
Among the products inspired by book illumination were the medallion carpets of northwest Persia, which have a large central medallion connected on the long axis with pendants or cartouches, and quarter-section designs of the medallion in the corner areas. Used first on ornamental pages and bindings of Persian books, the arrangement works well on carpets, serving easily as an effective center and permitting several layers of designs to overlap because the medallions, covering several vine and flower patterns at once, allowed such compositions to serve several different uses, underlining the necessity for flexibility. These are depicted less formally than in previous cases, and new motifs-in particular from painting, be it landscape, animals, or humans-also entered the field.
The most beautiful illuminations were later translated in one of the special court ateliers, perhaps at Tabrīz or Solțānīyeh, onto carpets. Among the who knows how many but perhaps 12 or so surviving examples are the world’s most famous carpets, each a masterpiece of superlative design, majestic size, purity and depth of colour, and perfection of detail. The best known of these are two carpets from the mosque at Ardabīl in eastern Azerbaijan, Iran, dated 1539–40. The better condition, having been impeccably restored, is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London; the other, cut down, is in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. A very rich design of stems and flowers overlies a velvety, lustrous indigo field, the whole dominated by a complex medallion. One of the most beautiful of northwest Persian rugs is that known as the “animal” carpet, half of which is in Kraków Cathedral, Poland, and half in the Museum of Decorative Arts, Paris. Of far greater historical importance, and in beauty surpassing all rivals, is the great “hunting” carpet in the Museo Poldi Pezzoli in Milan, inscribed: “It is by the efforts of Giyath-ud-Din ʿJami that this renowned carpet was brought to such perfection in the year 1521.” A scarlet and gold medallion dominates a deep blue field, covered with an angular network of blossoming stems, across which hunters dash after their prey.
These carpets, many expert observers believe, comprise the supreme achievement in the entire field of carpet design. Nevertheless, other royal manufactories also turned out numerous beautiful rugs. Especially expensive silk carpets with figure designs, such as the celebrated silk hunting carpet in the Applied Art Museum in Vienna, were most likely woven in Kāshān, the silk center of Persia. There, too, smaller silk medallion carpets were woven in the later 16th century, their designs mostly variations of the original medallion scheme. The court manufacture of Kāshān also wove silk carpets with an unquestionably regal style.
What are generally considered the standard vase carpets—due to the flower vases in their designs—are from Kermān. The design typically comprises several lattice systems with profuse blossoms and foliage. Most of these carpets survive as fragments; of the rest only a scant 20 are intact, the finest of which is in the Victoria and Albert Museum. The rugs were apparently not for export but for court and mosque. Made on a solid double warp, their boardlike stiffness holds them flat to the floor. In Iran they are still called “Shāh ʿAbbās” carpets after the monarch of that name. This, typically of the period, gained wide influence of the Persian style eventually reaching the carpets of Kurdistan and the Caucasus and even the Indian court carpets besides the embroideries from Bukhara.
In the later 17th century, growing luxury and increasing wealth demanded the production of so many gold- and silver-threaded carpets that these were soon available in bazaars, and more than 200 of those were even exported to Europe. Some were made in Kāshān, but many of the finest came from Eṣfahān. They have affinities with European Renaissance and Baroque idioms, with their high-keyed fresh colours and opulence. The Polish nobility ordered many gold-threaded rugs from Kāshān; for Poland and Persia had close relations in the 17th century. For the reason that there had been a rug- and silk-weaving industry using gold thread in 18th-century Poland, these imported Persian rugs, while they were thought Polish when first exhibited at the Paris exposition in 1878, nothing quite similar having then been found in Persia itself, got dubbed accordingly ever afterwards tapis Polonais, or “Polonaise carpets,” and the name has stuck. The type degenerated in the later 17th century, materials deteriorated, weaving and designs coarsened.
Throughout 17th-century Persia, slotting refinement went with slackening inspiration. Silk carpets woven to surround the sarcophagus of Shāh ʿAbbās II (died 1666) in the shrine at Qom (in central Iran) stand as the last really fine achievements in Persian weaving. Even Orienta list s have mistaken their finish for velvet; the drawing is beautiful, the color varied, clear, and harmonious. The set is dated and signed by a master artist, Niʿmat Allāh of Joshaqan.
At the end of the 17th century, nomads and townspeople were still making carpets using dyes developed over centuries, each maintaining a strictly authentic tradition. Many of these more modest rugs are often quite beautiful in design and good in material and technique but emanate from the “low school.”. Here was developed a fine rug industry that provided a variety of beautiful rugs ranging from the individual town and village products, such as the greatly admired Saruks with their medallion pattern; Serabands with their repeating patterns on a ground of silvery rose; Ferahans with their so-called Herati pattern—allover and rather dense in design with a light-green border on a mordant dye that leaves the pattern in relief. The early Ferahans (a number are known, dated to the end of the 18th century) are worked on fields of a dark lustrous blue with a delicately drawn open pattern. Later Ferahans degenerated in colour, material, and design. “Low school” rugs maintained their standards down to the later 19th century when the insatiable Western demand undermined their artistry, but in the 20th-century fine weaving in Persia was somewhat revived.
Turkey
The Turkish rugs, from the 16th century onwards, either followed Persian designs—indeed, were possibly worked by immigrant Persians and Egyptians—or followed native traditions. The former, made on court looms, displayed exquisite cloud bands and feathery, tapering white leaves on grounds of pale rose relieved by blue and emerald green. Rich, harmonious colours and broad, static patterns characterise Turkish patterns that embellish stately carpets designed for mosques or noble residences. They are a far cry from the animated, complex designs characteristic of Persians, in which major, minor, and subordinate patterns frequently play off against one another in delicately jarring and resolving dissonances.
The Turkish styles are best represented by the products of Uşak in western Anatolia, whose central star medallions in gold, yellow, and dark blue rest on a field of rich red. So-called Holbein rugs, like Caucasian carpets (see below), have polygons on a ground of deep red, dark green, or red and green; they often have green borders and conventionalized interlacing Kūfic script. Just such a carpet is depicted in a portrait of Georg Gisze by the 16th-century German painter Hans Holbein the Younger—hence the name. Similarly, the handsome carpet pattern of interlacing yellow arabesques on a ground of deep red appears so often in the paintings of the 16th-century Venetian artist Lorenzo Lotto that carpets bearing this motif are called Lotto carpets. Carpets with a muted deep red ground of wonderful intensity, patterned with small medallions, hail perhaps from Bergama. In the 17th century they developed into a type known as Transylvanian, so called because so many of them, particularly prayer rugs, were found in Transylvanian churches. They are nonetheless purely Turkish, with rich, quiet colours and sturdy designs. The majority are dominated by a fine red, though a few have faded to the color of old parchment.
In the 17th century the so-called “bird carpet,” or White Ushak, with conventionalized motifs suggesting birds, developed. Surviving examples are serenely beautiful, with fields of soft ivory and various discreet colours.
Eighteenthand 19th-century “low school” rugs from Asia Minor continued the tradition of blending sober patterns and luxurious colours. The Yürük “low school” rugs, made by nomadic Anatolian peoples such as the Kurds, have charmed collectors with their wide range of rich colors and the use of simple patterns, generally geometric, organized in bold designs that often have a diagonal rather than vertical emphasis. However, the chief creation was the prayer rugs that were more plentiful among the Turks than among the other faithful. Handsome pieces were woven in Anatolia at Melas, Konya, Lâdik, and Kırşehir, Lâdik’s being the most brilliant, both in colour and pattern. The most famous Anatolian prayer rugs came from Ghiordes and Kula, mostly in the 18th and 19th centuries; and in the United States they became the first passion of the collector. Regions like Smyrna turned out a great number of utility carpets for the West.
The Caucasus
Weaving rugs in the Caucasus dates back at least to medieval times, evidenced by fragments of knotted-pile carpet dating from the 13th and 14th centuries, which were uncovered in a few cave complexes in Georgia. There is also evidence that in the 17th century, the Persian Shah ʿAbbās established manufactories, whose production included carpets, in the Shirvan and Karabagh districts, to which may be attributed a surviving group of large 17th- and 18th-century carpets. Among them were the avshan (geometrized calyx and stem), the harshang (crab), and a bold lattice design with stylized animals, including dragons, in the interstices. Probably these carpets were based on Persian prototypes, although they are characterized by bold, vigorous designs rather than the traditional Persian fineness of weave.
In the first half of the 19th century, Caucasian weaving continued as a folk art, but late in the century, the great demand from the West for carpets brought about a rapid expansion of weaving. The major producing regions included parts of Dagestan, centered on the city of Derbent, the towns and villages of the Kuba district in the north-east of Azerbaijan, and many parts of the old khanate of Shirvan, such as the villages around Baku and Shemakha and areas located just to the north of the Iranian border. These were known for a relatively short-piled weave of medium fineness, woven with the symmetrical knot, as are all Caucasian rugs, usually on a woolen foundation with some uses of cotton.
Rugs from Western Azerbaijan and also those from the villages between T’bilisi in Georgia and Erivan (Yerevan) in Armenia are more coarsely knotted with a longer pile. The strong primary colours combined with bold geometric designs, give an astonishing vigour to so many of these rugs known as Kazakhs in the trade. At times those from the general Karabagh region inhabited by both Armenians and Azerbaijanians seem to emulate the Kazakhs in boldness; others however, with a repetition of geometric motifs, relate them more to Shirvan rugs.
Among the kilims there are examples with horizontal stripes; others have repeating stylized palmettes. They were woven in the areas of the pile rugs of the Shirvan, Kuba, and Kazakh types, as well as Georgia.
Another form of pile carpet in a type of weft wrapping, known as soumak, was also woven in several parts of the Caucasus, although the major output probably centred around the town of Kusary in the Kuba district. These pieces are characterized by a thick padding of loose threads at the back.
Turkistan
The medieval Turkmen people emerged during the late first millennium as pastoral nomads in the lands between powerful city-based states. Gradually, they increased in power, and by the 19th century, one tribe had grown dominant over others: the Tekke of the oases of Merv (now Mary) and Tedjend (now Tejen). Indeed, they had woven rugs for centuries, and after most of them became settled, they continued making rugs in sizes and shapes suitable for the nomadic life they had lived in felt tents. The main carpet of this dwelling ranged around 6 × 10 feet (1.8 × 3 metres), and the Turkmen also wove smaller pieces as door coverings, bags for storage, long, narrow bands to encircle the tents, and decorative trappings.
Important rug-weaving peoples include the Tekke, whose main carpets are characterized by a certain gul, or octagonal motif, repeated in rows across the rug. Similar rugs were made by other people, such as the Saryk and Salor, but in most cases with different guls, which are also tribal identifying marks. Another tribe is that of the Yomut Turkmen, who reside mostly in northeastern Iran and weave main carpets of many types, some in which the guls have been adapted from Persian palmettes. More scattered, the Chaudor and Arabatchi also weave rugs of specific designs, while the Ersari, now largely settled in Uzbekistan and northern Afghanistan, have woven a coarser rug with large guls; these are usually sold as Afghans.
Turkmen rugs are usually asymmetrical in knotting, except for those of the Saryk and Yomut tribes, some of which are symmetrically knotted. They are almost all wool; some tribes use cotton in the wefts. There are occasional patches of silk used as highlights.
United kingdom and Ireland
The introduction of carpets from Turkey was soon followed by the growth of a native craft in the United Kingdom, though intact specimens from the 16th and 17th centuries number only about a dozen. They are characterized by a hemp warp and weft, a medium-fine woolen pile, and the symmetrical knot. The ground is invariably green, and there are so many shades of the other colours that the whole number of tints is greater than in Oriental carpets. The designs can be divided into two groups. In the first are usually found English patterns, similar to modern embroidery, frequently with heraldic devices and dates. The oldest specimen, dated 1570, belongs to the earl of Verulam. In the second group are many pieces of carpet knotting—called at the time “Turkey work”—imitating Oriental designs and made to cover chairs and stools. As the demand for carpets became greater during the 18th century, factories were established at Paddington, Fulham, and Moorfields, near London, and at Exeter and Axminster in Devon. Axminster worked on well into the 19th century, when it merged with the Wilton Carpet Factory at Wilton, Wiltshire, which still operates. The industry dwindled and almost disappeared with the advent of mechanization until about 1880. The craft was revived by the English artist and poet William Morris. A factory opening in Donegal, Ireland, dates back to the late 19th century, and in the 20th century, many small rugs have been knotted by handicraft societies.
Scandinavia
Scandinavian work differs little in concept, though differing nationally in colour and motif. Abundant are handmade products for floor coverings, coverlets, and upholstery of benches, chairs, stools, and pillows. Techniques dating from the Vikings—probably imported by them from Turkey—are continued in Swedish and Finnish rugs, called rya rugs. Knotted work includes pieces with pile on either side, many symmetrically knotted on three warps, and braided and woven patchwork carpets with interwoven strips. Geometric designs, rooted in the native arts, are common, appearing for example, in opulent “wedding carpets.” Design was influenced also by Dutch tapestry flower motives.
Eastern Europe
Of all the knotted rugs, the Mazovian ones from East Prussia are the most Oriental in character; yet, at the same time, they are probably the most deeply rooted in peasant traditions. On the other hand, many other textiles completely untouched by west European influence came from southeast Poland, Ukraine, and southern Russia. Some are characterized by very ancient textile motifs, such as simple stripes and forceful color harmonies, while others have geometrical designs that, though very much like those of the Orient, seem to be quite independent of them. As in the Balkans, so in these regions, kilims are common. In Romania government promotion and the interest taken by contemporary artists in folk idiom stimulated modern production during the 20th century.
European folk carpets
Indeed, the making of carpets is so universal in European folk art that it would most likely have developed anyway without oriental stimulus. For these tradition-bound products, most varied techniques are represented in the work, the designs of which remained unchanged for generations. It embraces floor coverings, chest covers and bedcovers, and draperies, most of modest size or pieced together, many made in sets. The range of colors is very limited, for even the raw materials were homespun. Machine-made carpets overwhelmed home products in the later 19th century but a conscious revival and renewal followed in the 20th century.
North America
Although the technique of knotting has not been employed by the Native Americans, flat-woven floor rugs and blankets have been made by many tribes since the earliest days of their known history. Cotton was the principal material together with various fibres and dog’s hair before sheep were introduced in the 16th century and wool became dominant. The designs are abstract, being mainly striping and a zigzag, or “lightning,” motif. The colors range from black, white, yellow, blue, tan, and red, the last very often predominant. The Pueblo and Navajo peoples are probably the most skillful carpet makers.
Rugs were made by colonists in a variety of ways: knitting; crocheting; braiding strips of material and then sewing the plaits together, either in blocks or spirally; and embroidering on a coarsewoven foundation. Hooking—that is, drawing strips of material through a woven foundation—began about the turn of the 18th cent, and became extremely popular; early examples have floral, geometric or animal designs and are very colourful. The early settlers did not produce any knotted carpets. In 1884, however, a factory founded in Milwaukee and later moved to New York City began to weave carpets in the traditional designs of Europe. In the 1890s a branch of the English Wilton Royal Carpet Factory made Axminsters at Elizabethport, New Jersey; and a few beautiful, flat-woven carpets in French Baroque and Neoclassical designs were produced about the turn of the century by a tapestry factory in Williams Bridge, New York. After this, machine weaving, which began in the United States in the late 1700s, gradually displaced handweaving.
