Kars | 385 x 300 cm | Nr. Z-3322

Geometric Kars, beige with diamonds

Origin	Turkey
Dimensions	385 cm x 300 cm (= 11.55 m²)
Construction	hand-knotted
Material	Pile: wool (hand-spun, natural dyes) Weft & Warp: wool
knots per m²2	120.000
Pile height	5mm
Year of manufacture	1960
Colour	Beige, Dusky Pink
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 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.

A lightly suggested border frames the edge of this rug.

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 overall impression is dominated by beige and dusky pink. The border is worked in dusky pink, beige and light brown.

Condition

You are not the first to take a liking to this Kars. It has had owners before you who treasured and used it. It was hand-knotted around 1960. It has been thoroughly cleaned and is in good, though only partly restored, condition. The pile is worn in places. There are a few stains to report. The fringes could do with a repair. We have not fully restored this Kars, because we feel it has a special charm just the way it is. If you would like us to, we will of course carry on restoring the rug for you. We can bring almost any rug back to near-perfect condition.

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.