How To Make Sure You've Got Quality Under Your Feet
Sydney Morning Herald
Tuesday August 6, 1991
PEOPLE buying oriental rugs need to take care to understand just how wide this term is and learn how to distinguish quality from the junk which often floods the market.
First, a few definitions. As in many other areas, Australia uses both US and English nomenclature. In the US, "carpet" usually means wall-to-wall; a large portable floor covering is called a rug and a smaller one a scatter rug. In England, however, coverings smaller than nine by six feet (2.7 metres by 1.8) are called rugs, and bigger ones carpets.
In this report, all are called rugs and dimensions given in feet - a measurement followed by most export rugmakers. A wide variety of transliterated spellings for terms and places exists world-wide but the most commonly used variant in Australia will be applied.
At one time in Europe all Oriental rugs were called "Turkey" because Turkey was their point of entry. Later, they were called "Persian" because Persian political and/or cultural hegemony for some centuries extended from the Balkans to China, and this term is sometimes used generically today.
Rugmaking is said to have originated in China as early as 4000BC, though no examples from this period survive. The earliest known survivor, the Pazyryk Rug, was found frozen in southern Siberia, but is believed to have originated in Persia (Iran).
Though very early machine-made axminsters (England) have attracted some collector interest of late, collectable rugs are described as "hand-knotted"; that is, tied by hand round adjacent warps (longitudinal threads) so that the ends form a pile.
But this term is too exclusive, for kilims - pileless flatweave - where wefts (transverse threads) don't just hold knots together but help to form the pattern, as in tapestry, may be highly collectable.
Rugs are described in many ways, according to the materials used in warps, wefts and (where present) knots, production technique, design, place of origin and (rarely) master weaver.
Other things being equal, the most valuable rugs are silk, partly because of material costs but also because of the fineness of knotting: up to 800 a square inch (6.45sqcm), and in one example 2,600 a square inch.
Tribal rugs usually are all-wool and tend to deform over time while town-made rugs often have cotton warps.
Just as important as the fibre is the dye. The most collectable rugs have natural, mostly vegetable, dyes.
Though synthetic "aniline" dyes were invented in 1856, some rugmakers continued to use natural dyes.
There are two major types of knotting: Turkish (Ghiordes or symmetrical)and Persian (Senneh or asymmetrical).
Note that some Turkish rugs use Persian knots and some Iranian rugs use Turkish knots.
Kilims are mainly described according to whether the weft is complementary or supplementary.
While no two rugs are identical and there's a vast array of dominant local designs, broad patterns and repeated motifs are common to many areas. Usually there's a main and two or more minor borders right round the central field.
If one or more longitudinal borders are missing, the rugs may have been cropped to conceal damage.
The main design (eg, central medallion or tree of life) and motifs (eg, rosette or gul) may indicate to an expert the place of origin and sometimes the approximate date of a rug.
Generally, in the wilder, more tribal or village Muslim areas, the design is more abstract and angular.
© 1991 Sydney Morning Herald
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