Rugsville Kashan Maharaja Ivory Rust Wool Carpet 2' x 3'

Kashan carpets have been the formal Persian carpet for as long as the form has had a name. Court patronage at Kashan dates to the sixteenth century, and the medallion-and-pendants composition that the workshops settled on is still the template for what most buyers read as a classical Persian rug.

Around 0.2 million hand-tied knots over about three months, with One weaver sharing the loom. The wool is hand-spun, the dyes plant-derived, the cartoon worked out on graph paper before a single warp was strung.

The composition

The palette is built around ivory and rust, with the secondary tones held back so the principal colour does the work. The slight tonal shifts in the ground are the trace of small-batch dyeing, where each vat carries its own register and no two areas of the field read identically. Up close the irregularity is visible as life; from across the room it gathers into a single considered colour. The composition is read as a whole. The piece reads differently against morning light than against evening lamp; the saturation lifts in daylight and tightens after dusk.

What you are buying

The pricing reflects the workshop economics of hand-knotted weaving at this density. Antique carpets in the same tradition, when they reach Christie's, Sotheby's or Rippon Boswell, are routinely catalogued at multiples of this figure. The rug appreciates with use rather than depreciating, and the wool tightens into the foundation as the piece settles into its working life.

The piece in a room

2' x 3' fits the foot of a smaller bed, the side of a sofa, or a quiet doorway. The rug is meant to be encountered slowly at this size, with the foot tracing the geometry of the field as the body moves across it. The wool carries enough body underfoot that the piece reads as warmth as much as colour.

Conservation

A hand-knotted carpet at this density runs for decades on simple regular care. Rotate twice a year, vacuum on suction once a week, and keep the rug out of standing moisture and pet contact. Conservation cleaning by a wool specialist every five to six years preserves the plant dye and clears foundation dust that vacuuming will not reach. The wool tightens into the foundation as the rug settles in, and the colour deepens slowly across the first decade.

Reference

• Medium: hand-knotted wool on cotton foundation
• Dimensions: 2' x 3' (61 x 91 cm)
• Construction: Persian asymmetric knot, hand-tied row by row
• Knot count: approximately 0.2 million knots
• Hands: 1 weaver, about three months
• Pile: 8 to 10 mm, hand-spun wool
• Dye: vegetable, small-batch copper-vat process
• Origin: India

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