Old Meschkin | 376 x 85 cm | Nr. Z-3324

Old Meschkin runner, dark blue with border and diamonds

Origin	Persia
Dimensions	376 cm x 85 cm (= 3.196 m²)
Construction	hand-knotted
Material	Pile: wool (hand-spun, natural dyes) Weft & Warp: wool
knots per m²2	160.000
Pile height	5mm
Year of manufacture	1930
Colour	Dark blue, light red
Edition	one-of-a-kind piece

Origin

Meschkin Shahr is one of Iran's oldest cities. It lies about 900 km from the capital Tehran, in the north-west of the country in the province of Azerbaijan. The patterns of Meschkin rugs take their cue from traditional Caucasian designs. This old Meschkin is around 90 years old and a real collector's piece.

Pattern

The decorated surround (border) forms a beautiful contrast to the centre and shapes the transition at the edge of the rug.

In the pattern of this Meschkin it is above all the diamonds that stand out. A diamond is a rhombus standing on one of its points, and in an Oriental rug its four equal sides may be serrated, stepped or set with hooks. 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.

The background of this Meschkin is dark blue. The border is worked in light red and beige.

Condition

This Meschkin had admirers before you. It was hand-knotted around 1930. It has been thoroughly cleaned and is in good but unrestored condition. The fringes could do with a repair. The edges are damaged in places. The pile is worn in places.Parts of the border are missing on one side. We haven't restored this Meschkin, because we feel it has a special charm just as it is. If that's what you'd like, we'll gladly restore the rug for you, of course. Either way, this Meschkin will give you pleasure for decades to come.

Material

The technique used to make the materials for this Meschkin's pile is over 200 years old. The wool was dyed with natural colours 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 isn't too pale, you even need two kilograms of the dyestuff weld per kilo of wool. Spinning the wool is just as time- and labour-intensive. And fewer and fewer people still know how to spin wool by hand.

But the effort is worth it: dyeing with natural colours lets the high-quality wool keep its natural oil 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 just as much in rooms furnished in a more traditional or country style. The foundation (weft and warp threads) of this Meschkin is made of new wool.