Hamadan | 153 x 98 cm | Nr. Z-4635

Hamadan

Delivery time	2 days
Origin	Persia
Dimensions	153 cm x 98 cm (= 1.5 m²)
Construction	hand-knotted
Material	Pile: wool (hand-spun, natural dyes) Weft & Warp: cotton
knots	90.000
Year of manufacture	1980
Condition	pre-owned, cleaned & partially restored
Edition	one-of-a-kind piece

Origin

Hamadan (also Hamedan) rugs are knotted in the area around the city of Hamadan in north-western Iran. Hamadan is one of the oldest cities in Persia and lies amid a well-watered fruit-growing region on the banks of the Qareh, at the foot of the Zagros foothills. Rug knotting has a centuries-old tradition in this region. Hamedan is a collective name, for village and nomad rugs from many surrounding places come onto the market in Hamedan. What is typical of rugs from the Hamadan region is that they are knotted with a single weft using the Turkish knot. That is to say, one weft thread is inserted after every row of knots. Persian rugs are normally knotted with two or three wefts.

Material

The technique used to make the materials for the pile of this Hamadan is over 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 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-consuming and labour-intensive as well. And fewer and fewer people still master the art of spinning 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 Hamadan are made of cotton. This versatile material is tear-resistant and elastic, which makes it particularly well suited to a hard-wearing foundation weave.

Condition

You are not the first to take a liking to this Hamadan. It has had owners before you who valued and used it. It was knotted around 1980. It has been cleaned thoroughly and is in good, though only partly restored, condition. The pile is worn in places.Parts of the border are missing on one side. In some places you can see a few white threads. That is entirely normal with older rugs. They are the knot ends of the weft and warp weave, which come to the surface over the years. In substance, this is not a major problem.The edges are damaged in places. We have not fully restored this Hamadan, because we feel it has a special charm just as it is. If that is what you would like, we will of course gladly carry on restoring the rug for you. We can bring almost any rug back to a near-perfect condition.