Kars | 340 x 90 cm | Nr. Z-4492

Geometric Kars runner, dark blue with border and diamonds

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 way a room is furnished and never takes attention away from the furniture, the decoration and the architectural details. It creates a pleasant atmosphere without dominating the style of the room.

In the pattern of this Kars 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 the Oriental rug. In the Islamic world it carries a symbolic meaning: it stands for the immortality of the soul. That is why it is so often found as a filler motif.

The background of this Kars is dark blue. The border is worked in light brown and dark brown.

Condition

You are not the first to take a liking to this Kars. It has had owners before you who valued it and used it. It was hand-knotted around 1985. It has been cleaned thoroughly and is in good but unrestored condition. The fringes could do with a repair. On one side, a close look reveals that part of the border is missing. We have not restored this Kars, because we feel it has a special charm 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: dyeing with natural colours lets the high-quality wool keep its natural oils. 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, comes into its own as a contrast in modern interiors, but just as much in rooms furnished in a traditional or country-house style. The foundation (weft and warp threads) of this Kars is made of new wool.