Ardebil | 110 x 80 cm | Nr. Z-2901

Ardebil, light red with border

Origin	Persia
Dimensions	110 cm x 80 cm (= 0.88 m²)
Construction	hand-knotted
Material	Pile: wool (hand-spun, natural dyes) Weft & Warp: cotton
knots per m²2	120.000
Pile height	5mm
Year of manufacture	1950
Colour	Light red, Yellow
Edition	one-of-a-kind piece

 

Origin

Ardebil is the birthplace and also the burial site of the Safavid dynasty (1501 to 1722), which mattered so much to Persia and to the art of rug knotting. This rather modest provincial town today owes its fame to the so-called Ardebil rug from the mosque of Ardebil, knotted in the 16th century and bought in the second half of the 19th century by the German Oscar Strauß on behalf of the Ziegler company.

Traditional Ardebil rugs are predominantly geometric in design and show Caucasian influences. They are, however, easy to tell apart from Caucasian rugs. The pile wool is less lustrous and drier than the wool of Caucasian pieces. Most Ardebils also have a cotton foundation (weft & warp). Floral patterns occur only in exceptional cases, and then mostly in geometricised form.

 

Pattern

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

This Ardebil is adorned with the so-called Mehrab or Mihrab motif. Mehrab refers to the Islamic prayer niche in mosques, which marks the qibla, the direction of prayer towards Mecca. Rugs bearing the Mehrab motif are traditionally used by Muslims for prayer and are therefore especially treasured.

Light red and orange dominate the overall impression. The border is worked in light red, dark blue and beige.

 

Condition

You aren't the first to take a liking to this Ardebil. It has had owners before you who valued and used it. It was hand-knotted around 1950. It has been thoroughly cleaned and is in good, though only partly restored, condition. The fringes on one side and the edge along a stretch of around 1.5 metres could do with a repair. We haven't fully restored this Ardebil because we think it has a special presence just as it is. If you'd prefer otherwise, we're happy to carry on restoring the rug for you. We can bring almost any rug back to near-perfect condition.

 

Material

The technique used to prepare the materials for the pile of this Ardebil is more than 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 dye per kilo of wool. For a strong yellow that isn't too pale, you even need two kilograms of weld dye per kilo of wool. Spinning the wool is time- and labour-intensive too. On top of that, fewer and fewer people still know how to spin wool by hand.

But the effort is worth it: dyed with natural colours, the high-quality wool keeps its natural lanolin content. Wool that has been naturally dyed and hand-spun creates fascinating, shimmering 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 style. The weft and warp threads of this Ardebil are cotton. This versatile material is tear-resistant and has some give, which makes it especially well suited to a hard-wearing foundation.