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

Ardebil

Delivery time	2 days
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	120.000
Year of manufacture	1950
Condition	pre-owned, cleaned & partially restored
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.

Material

The technique used to make the materials for the pile of this Ardebil is more than 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 per kilo of wool. Spinning the wool is labour-intensive and time-consuming too. On top of that, fewer and fewer people still know how to spin wool by hand.

But the effort is worth it: dyeing with natural colours allows the high-quality wool to keep its natural oil content. Wool that has been dyed with natural colours and spun by hand 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 made of cotton. This versatile material is tear-resistant and elastic, which makes it particularly well suited to a hard-wearing foundation.

Condition

This Ardebil has a story to tell. It was knotted around 1950. It has been thoroughly cleaned and is in good but only partly restored condition. The fringes on one side and the edge along a stretch of roughly 1.5 metres could do with a repair. We have not fully restored this Ardebil, because we feel it has a special charm just as it is. If that is what you would like, we will of course happily take the restoration further for you. We can return almost any rug to a near-perfect condition.