Old Afshari | 158 x 104 cm | Nr. Z-2899

Mottled old Afshari, dark red with border and motif

Origin	Persia
Dimensions	158 cm x 104 cm (= 1.6432 m²)
Construction	hand-knotted
Material	Pile: wool (hand-spun, natural dyes) Weft: wool Warp: cotton
knots per m²2	160.000
Pile height	5mm
Year of manufacture	1930
Colour	Dark red, golden beige
Edition	one-of-a-kind piece

 

Origin

The Afshar (also Afschar) were an important Oghuz tribe. The "i" in the name Afshari corresponds to our preposition "of". So Afshari means rug of the Afshar. Originally the Persian Afshar lived in north-western Iran, on the Afghan border. Part of the tribe was forcibly resettled to south-eastern Iran, near the city of Kerman, which lies on the Silk Road. Here rug knotting became an important source of income for the Afshar. Ever since the resettlement, the Afshar have also been known for their distinctive hand-knotted Afshar rugs. Some Afshar rugs are also traded as Sirdjan rugs. The rugs have red and blue tones and mostly geometric patterns. The most widespread pattern has a field in the middle 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 real collector's favourite. The symbol-laden "Ahura Mazda", which translates roughly as Lord of Wisdom, adorns this one-of-a-kind rug. At its centre, though, stands a scene in which a soldier fights a lion – at least that is our reading of the motif.

 

Pattern

The ornate border forms a wonderful contrast with the centre and shapes the transition at the edge of the rug.

The surface of this Afshari has a mottled look. The shifts in hue and the light-and-dark shading of the pile yarn make the colours shimmer and help the rug hide everyday dirt. These so-called colour shifts, known as abrash, make the rug look livelier. The mottling occurs because the wool of this Afshari was hand-spun. During dyeing, the natural dyes are absorbed to differing degrees.

The background of this Afshari is dark red. The border is worked in golden beige, blue-grey and dark red.

 

Condition

You are not the first to take a liking to this Afshari. It had owners before you who valued it 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 on one side and the edging on one side need repair. We have not fully restored this Afshari, because we feel it has a special presence just as it is. If that is what you would like, we will of course be happy to carry on restoring the rug for you. We can bring almost any rug back to a 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 weld dye per kilo of wool. Spinning the wool is time-consuming and labour-intensive as well. What is more, fewer and fewer people still masfewer and fewer people still master the art of spinning wool by hand. 

But the extra effort pays off: dyeing with natural colours lets this high-quality wool keep its natural lanolin. Naturally dyed and hand-spun, the wool produces fascinating patterns that shift and shimmer in the light. The charm of hand-spun wool, with its slight irregularities and natural shades, comes into its own as a contrast in modern interiors, but just as well in rooms furnished in a more traditional or country-house style. The weft threads of this Afshari are made of wool. Cotton was used for the warp threads.