MAIN GUIDES
Persian Rugs
Turkish Rugs
Caucasian Rugs
Turkmen rugs
The Best Rug Dealers

Persian rugs: The Complete Guide to Persian Rugs

An Identification Puzzle

Buy oriental carpets
100% handmade area carpet and rugs from Tibet.
Modern and traditional design. Armenian too!
www.TufenkianCarpets.com Can't afford Tufenkian Carpets?
Visit the ONLY official Tufenkian carpet outlet.
Discontinued and one of kind rugs.
www.TufenkianOutlet.com Need a custom area rug?

If you can dream it, we can weave it.
Custom area rugs by Tufenkian

Oriental Rugs: North Khorasan Kurd Ghoochan Rug

Hi Barry-

I recently purchased this very dirty and damaged rug--hopefully, with a nice bath, the colors will really sparkle. (Don't worry, I'm not trying to do it myself.)

It was sold to me as a Qashqa'i, but I'm suspicious. It's symmetrically knotted with a very coarse weave (less than 50 kpi), double wefted, wefts and warps are all dark brown wool. Where the pile is full it's about a eighth of an inch long. The handle is really floppy. People have told me it looks Kurdish or maybe from the southern Caucuses--that boteh design is found all over the place, I know, but . The figures on along the border are really wild--like big, colorful cockroaches. I've never seen them before.

I've attached two photos and can send more.

I love the rug--I have a soft spot for sad, beat-up old pieces that other people don't value much because of their condition but were once very beautiful. I'm curious to find out where it came from.

RugNotes is on my top five favorite Internet sites. Keep up the good work!

Thanks,

Geoff

Persian Rugs: Ghoochan Rug There are people like John Wertime, Ambassador Bill Eagleton, and Parviz Tanavoli, who can identify rugs because they were over there and learned it in the field. Then there are guys who grew up in rug businesses like James Mark Keshishian A.S.A. or Mark Topalian. Then there are the connoisseurs like Wendel Swan who have painstakingly mastered it as an art. But really most dealers and many experts are not that good at attributing rugs. I don't get the Qashqai attribution at all. Outside of that it is Persian, tribal, and symmetrically knotted nothing about this one says Qashqai to me. Once I discarded Qashqai my next thought was Kurdish and I was thinking Northwest Persia. Then I got looking at the border and the red field. They say North Khorasan Kurd to me.

Hello Geoff,

There are people like John Wertime, Ambassador Bill Eagleton, and Parviz Tanavoli, who can identify rugs because they were over there and learned it in the field. Then there are guys who grew up in rug businesses like James Mark Keshishian A.S.A. or Mark Topalian. Then there are the connoisseurs like Wendel Swan who have painstakingly mastered it as an art. But really most dealers and many experts are not that good at attributing rugs. I don't get the Qashqai attribution at all. Outside of that it is Persian, tribal, and symmetrically knotted nothing about this one says Qashqai to me. Once I discarded Qashqai my next thought was Kurdish and I was thinking Northwest Persia. Then I got looking at the border and the red field. They say North Khorasan Kurd to me.

Attribution is just a small point. The important part is that the rug looks great. I love the color. The green in the botehs is very pretty, I certainly can not tell if all the colors are vegetal but they look it on my monitor.

Best wishes,
Barry

An Identification Puzzle

Index

A

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

I

J

K

L

M

N

O

P

Q

R

S

T

U

V

W

X

Y

Z