Kars | 242 x 162 cm | Nr. Z-4243

Geometric Kars, rust red with border

Origin	Turkey
Dimensions	242 cm x 162 cm (= 3.9204 m²)
Construction	hand-knotted
Material	Pile: wool (hand-spun, natural dyes) Weft: wool (hand-spun, natural dyes) Warp: wool
knots per m²2	150.000
Pile height	4mm
Year of manufacture	1970
Colour	Rust red, Beige
Edition	one-of-a-kind piece

Origin

This Kars rug was knotted by Caucasian people living around the town of Kars. With just under 90,000 inhabitants, Kars lies in north-eastern Anatolia, some 45 km west of the border with Armenia and 65 km south of the Turkish-Georgian border, at an altitude of 1768 m.

Pattern

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

The abstract, geometric composition is what gives this Kars its understated elegance. The pattern flatters the design of the room and never draws attention away from the furniture, the decoration or the architectural elements. It settles beautifully into any setting and complements the furnishings of a room in a subtle way.

The background of this Kars is rust red. The border is worked in rust red, beige and dark blue.

Condition

You are not the first to take a liking to this Kars. It had owners before you who valued it and used it. It was hand-knotted around 1970. It has been thoroughly cleaned and is in good but unrestored condition. The fringes could do with a repair. The pile is slightly worn. A section of the border of about 26x5 cm is badly damaged. We have not restored this Kars because we feel it has a special presence just as it is. If you would like us to, we will of course be happy to restore the rug for you. Either way, this Kars will give you pleasure for decades to come.

Material

The technique used to make the materials for the pile of this Kars is over 200 years old. The wool was dyed with natural colours and spun by hand. Dyeing with natural or plant dyes is more involved, more expensive and more time-consuming than dyeing with chemical colours. For a luminous red, for example, you need roughly one kilo of ground madder root as dye 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 takes time as well. On top of that, fewer and fewer people still know how to spin wool by hand.

But the effort is worth it: because it is dyed with natural dyes, the high-quality wool keeps its natural lanolin 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, works beautifully as a contrast in modern interiors, but just as well in rooms furnished in a traditional or country-house style. The weft threads of this Kars are made of Wool (hand-spun, natural dyes). The warp threads are made of wool .