Old Gabbeh | 150 x 105 cm | Nr. Z-3596

Lightly framed old Gabbeh, beige with diamonds

Origin	Persia
Dimensions	150 cm x 105 cm (= 1.575 m²)
Construction	hand-knotted
Material	Pile: wool (hand-spun, natural dyes) Weft & Warp: wool
knots per m²2	90.000
Pile height	10mm
Year of manufacture	1970
Colour	Beige
Edition	one-of-a-kind piece

Origin

Gabbeh rugs are knotted by nomads who live in the province of Fars near the city of Shiraz. In Persian, Gabbeh is the name for high-pile rugs that were slept on. Classic Gabbeh have imaginative, naive geometric patterns and are very colourful. Modern Gabbeh today mostly come in plain and monochrome designs. Even so, you can still find stylised motifs from the everyday life of the nomads in the rugs, such as goats, camels, dogs, plants or people. Gabbeh rugs usually come in natural cream, brown and grey tones, but you can also find lively yellow, red or blue. This old Gabbeh is around 50 years old and a real collector's piece.

Pattern

In the pattern of this Gabbeh it is above all the diamonds that catch the eye. A diamond is a rhombus standing on one of its points, whose four equal sides may be serrated, stepped or hooked in an Oriental rug. The diamond is one of the oldest basic forms in the Oriental rug. In the Islamic world it carries a symbolic meaning: it stands for the immortality of the soul. That is why it is found so often as a filler motif.

A lightly suggested border frames the edge of this rug.

The surface of this Gabbeh has a mottled look. The shifts in tone and the light-and-dark shading of the pile yarn make the colours shimmer and help the rug hide soiling. These so-called colour shifts, known as abrash, give the rug a livelier character. The mottling occurs because the wool for this Gabbeh was hand-spun. During dyeing, the natural pigments are absorbed to varying degrees.

The colour of this Gabbeh is beige.

Condition

You are not the first to take a liking to this Gabbeh. It has had owners before you who valued and used it. It was hand-knotted around 1970. It has been thoroughly cleaned and is in good but unrestored condition. The fringes could do with a repair. The pile is evenly worn. We have not restored this Gabbeh because we feel it has a special charm just as it is. If you would like us to, we will of course gladly restore the rug for you. Either way, this Gabbeh will give you pleasure for decades to come.

Material

Gabbehs are knotted by hand from hand-spun wool and dyed with natural colours. The hand-spun wool gives the rugs a grainy yet soft surface. Traditionally, Gabbeh rugs were used for sleeping. They invite you to sit and lounge about in the living room, but they are also excellent in hallways and dining areas.

Hand-spun wool is always a little irregular. When it is dyed, the natural pigments are taken up to differing degrees. This makes the rug look more alive, giving rise to what are known as abrash colour shifts, that is, light and dark shadings of the same colour. These changes in the shade of the pile yarn always run across the length of the Gabbeh and make the rug forgiving when it comes to dirt. The foundation (weft and warp threads) of this Gabbeh is made of new wool.