Old Afshari | 152 x 115 cm | Nr. Z-3094

Old floral Afshari, rust red with border

Origin	Persia
Dimensions	152 cm x 115 cm (= 1.748 m²)
Construction	hand-knotted
Material	Pile: wool (hand-spun, natural dyes) Weft & Warp: wool
knots per m²2	150.000
Pile height	5mm
Year of manufacture	1930
Colour	Rust red, Dark blue
Edition	one-of-a-kind piece

Origin

The Afshar (also Afschar) or Afshars were an important Oghuz tribe. The "i" in the name Afshari corresponds to our preposition "of". Afshari therefore means rug of the Afshars. Originally the Persian Afshars lived in the north-west of Iran, on the Afghan border. Part of the tribe was forcibly resettled to the south-east of Iran, near the city of Kerman, which lies on the Silk Road. Here rug knotting became an important source of income for the Afshars. Ever since that resettlement, the Afshars have also been known for their distinctive hand-knotted Afshar rugs. Some of their rugs are also traded as Sirdjan rugs. The rugs come in red and blue tones and mostly have geometric patterns. The most widespread pattern has a field in the centre holding one or more square rosettes. It is thought that this central field represents a stretched animal hide. This old Afshari is around 90 years old and a true collector's piece.

Pattern

The edge of the rug is framed by a decorative border. The border forms a beautiful contrast with the centre.

The lavish floral motifs of this Afshari are elegantly drawn and full of variety. The graceful plant symbols, depicting blossoms, leaves and branches, are artfully intertwined.

The background of this Afshari is dark blue. The overall impression is also dominated by rust red and dark blue. The border is worked in beige, rust red and dark blue.

Condition

You are not the first to take a liking to this Afshari. It has had owners before you who treasured and used it. It was hand-knotted around 1930. It has been thoroughly cleaned and is in good but only partly restored condition. The fringes could do with a repair. We have not fully restored this Afshari, because we feel it has a special charm exactly as it is. If that is what you would prefer, we will of course gladly carry on with the restoration for you. We can bring almost any rug back to near-perfect condition.

Material

The technique used to make the materials for the pile of this Afshari is over 200 years old. The wool was dyed with natural dyes and spun by hand. Dyeing with natural or plant dyes is more complicated, more expensive and more time-consuming than dyeing with chemical colours. For a luminous red, for example, you need around one kilo of ground madder root as dyestuff per kilo of wool. For a strong yellow that is not too pale you even need two kilograms of the dyestuff weld per kilo of wool. Spinning the wool is time- and labour-intensive as well. And fewer and fewer people still know how to spin wool by hand.

But the effort is worth it: because it is dyed with natural colours, the high-grade wool keeps its natural lanolin content. Wool dyed with natural colours and spun by hand creates fascinating, shifting patterns. The charm of hand-spun wool, with its slight irregularities and natural shades, comes into its own as a contrast in modern interiors, but equally in rooms furnished in a more traditional or country-house style. The foundation (weft and warp threads) of this Afshari is made of new wool.