How old are most Persian rugs on the market?

The dated field runs from 1800 to 1960, with more than seventeen hundred listings carrying a clean year. The mass sits between 1880 and 1930, and two decades alone, the 1900s and the 1920s, account for well over eight hundred of them. Earlier decades thin out fast. Dates of 1850 and 1860 do appear, attached to a Senneh kelleh, a silk jajim, a Kerman millefleurs prayer rug and a Sauj Bulagh carpet.

Why do so many listings say Heriz?

Heriz is the most-named weaving group in the archive, at more than twice the count of the next group. Around half of those titles read Heriz carpet, and thirty are Heriz runners. It sits in north-west Persia, and that region dominates the category generally: west, north and north west between them appear in hundreds of titles.

What sizes do these come in?

The spread is wide. At one end are mounted bag faces and mats of around 52 x 54cm; at the other, a 407 x 480cm Karadja carpet, a 495 x 380cm Khorasan and a stair runner logged at 32 feet. Narrow runners are a recurring line, several under 90cm wide against lengths of four to six and a half metres. Room-size carpets of three and a half to five metres are common enough.

Are the dates in titles documented?

Often they are the dealer's estimate rather than a record. Eighty-three listings are dated only to the nineteenth century with no decade, and a handful fall back on Edwardian, Victorian or c.1900. Where a decade is given, treat it as a placing within the broad 1880 to 1930 band that holds most of the category.

Which unusual forms turn up?

Alongside rugs and carpets the category carries kilims, soumak panels, sofrehs, jajims, mafrash and khorjin bag faces, plus embroideries. Together these are a minority, under a tenth. Rarer still are one-offs: a Qashqa'i baby cradle, a horse blanket cover, a wheat-sack or tacheh, a Rasht silk-on-felt embroidery, a khalamkari, a Zoroastrian embroidery and a velvet ikat from Yazd.

Do these rugs carry maker names?

As a rule, no. They're listed by weaving group or region, and a scan of the archive returned no makers of any consequence. Where a named weaver or workshop does appear in a title, it happens once or twice at most. So the identifying information is geographic: Heriz, Tabriz, Karaja, Bidjar, Qashqai, Baluch, Kashan, Mahal, and so on.

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Antique Persian Rugs

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Hand-knotted wool rugs, carpets and flatweaves from Iran and its borderlands, made for floors, seating, storage bags and animal trappings, and listed by weaving group or region rather than by any maker.