Bijar | 96 x 71 cm | Nr. Z-4642

Bijar, light red with border, medallion and diamonds

Origin	Persia
Dimensions	96 cm x 71 cm (= 0.68 m²)
Construction	hand-knotted
Material	Pile: wool (hand-spun, natural dyes) Weft & Warp: cotton
knots per m²2	360.000
Pile height	12mm
Year of manufacture	1970
Colour	Light red, cream white
Edition	one-of-a-kind piece

Origin

This rug was knotted in Bijar, in the province of Kermanshah in north-western Iran. Bijar rugs are among the sturdiest and finest Oriental rugs. The majority of the population in Bijar are Kurds.

In the Kurdish Bijar, a particularly thick and extremely hard weft yarn is beaten into the weave. The result is a board-stiff rug that is exceptionally hard-wearing. The younger Bijars in particular are decorated with the typical Herati pattern, also known as the fish pattern.

Pattern

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

In the middle of this Bijar's central field lies the symmetrical centre, also known as the medallion. The design of the field is subordinate to the medallion, so that the medallion appears to float on the field.

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

The background of this Bijar is cream white. The overall impression is also dominated by light red and cream white. The border is worked in light red, turquoise and dark blue.

Material

The technique used to make the materials for the pile of this Bijar 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 isn't too pale, you even need two kilograms of the dyestuff weld per kilo of wool. Spinning the wool is time- and labour-intensive as well. What is more, 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 lanolin content. Wool that has been dyed with natural dyes 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-house style. The weft and warp threads of this Bijar are made of cotton. This versatile material is tear-resistant and elastic, which makes it especially well suited to a hard-wearing foundation.