Valuing a rug

The first sort: hand-knotted or not

It is a closed question, and it decides everything else. A tufted or machine-made rug, however large, however sound, however handsome, does not belong to the oriental rug market: its value is that of a second-hand decorative object. There is nothing demeaning in that, it is simply another market, and there is no point looking there for a collector's valuation.

Two minutes are enough to settle it, by turning the rug over and pulling on a fringe. The method is set out in the guide on recognising a hand-knotted rug. Everything that follows concerns hand-knotted pieces only.

What can be measured: density, knot, dimensions

Knot density is counted on the back, over ten centimetres in each direction. It indicates the working time and the fineness the design is capable of: a detailed floral motif calls for a density that a coarse rug does not allow. It does not make the value on its own. A nomadic rug with big knots, old and well drawn, regularly sits above a very fine workshop rug that is recent and without character.

The type of knot counts too. The asymmetric knot, known as the Persian or senneh knot, wraps the yarn round one warp thread and passes behind the other; the symmetric knot, known as the Turkish or ghiordes knot, encloses both. The first allows finer designs and more supple curves, the second gives a harder-wearing pile. There is also the jufti knot, tied on four threads instead of two: it doubles the speed of production and halves the real density. It can be spotted on the back, and it weighs downwards.

Dimensions, finally, act less through area than through format. Common living-room formats place easily. Very large rugs need a buyer with the room to take them, and unusual formats — very long narrow runners, squares outside the standard sizes — narrow the number of interested people accordingly. Measure to the centimetre, excluding the fringes, in both directions: a hand-knotted rug is never perfectly rectangular.

What can be read: origin and age

Origin is not established from the design. It is established from a body of structural evidence: type of knot, material and colour of the warp, number of weft threads between two rows of knots, the way the selvedges are wrapped, the finishing of the ends, the palette used, the decorative repertoire. A Tabriz design is copied elsewhere; a Tabriz structure copies badly. Signatures woven into a border exist on certain workshop pieces, but they too are copied and are never proof on their own.

Age is read in things that are only imperfectly imitated: wear consistent with the areas actually walked on, a back that has become supple, a patina in which the colours have softened together, and the differential oxidation of the browns and blacks, whose iron-based mordant slowly attacks the wool and hollows out the pile in those places. An old rug is not automatically more sought after than a recent rug of better making: age is an asset only if it comes with an acceptable condition.

Material and dyes

Wool is judged by its handle. A mountain wool, shorn from animals living at altitude, is rich in lanolin, supple and lustrous; it ages by gaining in sheen. A poor wool, or a wool recovered from skins rather than shorn, is dry, matt, brittle, and soils quickly. The foundation counts as well: a warp of cotton, of wool or of silk depending on the region and the period. Goat or camel hair appears on certain pieces, often in the borders or the fringes.

The dyes weigh heavily. Vegetable and animal dyestuffs — madder for the reds, indigo for the blues, weld, barks and pomegranate rind for the yellows, cochineal for certain pinks — give tones that soften with age without ever becoming dirty. The first synthetic dyestuffs appear in the second half of the nineteenth century and spread in the East from the 1870s-1880s onwards; the earliest are unstable, turning a dirty pink or bleeding at the first wash. Modern synthetic dyestuffs, which came later, are for their part very stable. The question is therefore not natural against synthetic, but good against bad dyestuff.

Abrash is not a fault

Abrash is a variation of tone within a single colour, most often in horizontal bands crossing the field. It comes from a change of dye bath during weaving, or from wool of a different clip that took the dye differently. An industrial workshop avoids it. A village or nomadic rug shows it, and there it proves that the dyeing was done as the work went along, in small quantities, with no standardised batch behind it.

It therefore pushes a valuation up rather than down, on two conditions: that the variation is clear and regular, in bands following the rows of knotting, and that it is not the result of an accident. Fading from light produces washed-out areas with soft edges, lighter on the window side. A dye bleed produces smearing round the motifs, a red that has turned the ivory ground next to it pink. Neither of those is abrash, and both bring the value down.

Condition, which decides more than all the rest

This is the criterion that moves a valuation most, and almost always downwards. Even, honest wear on an old rug is not fatal: it can be restored. What really penalises are structural damage and the chemical treatments a rug has been through. Here, in the order of severity we see, is what makes a valuation collapse.

• A rug cut down or shortened to fit a room: the loss is permanent and heavy
• Felting, recognisable by a stiff, board-like pile and by a surface that has shrunk
• A pile grazed down to the base of the knots: the colour is gone and does not come back
• An eaten warp or weft, a hole, a loss in the middle of the field
• An old dye bleed, or ivory grounds yellowed by an alkaline wash
• Selvedges redone in thick yarn, fringes cut off flush instead of being rebuilt
• A smell of urine settled in the foundation
• A back stiffened by a glue, a latex or a lining applied after the event

We regularly see pieces whose value has been eaten into by a cleaning, not by time. The restoration page sets out what can be put right and what cannot; a moth-eaten rug, for example, can be repiled, whereas felted wool never opens again.

A photograph is never enough, but it does sort

A photograph gives a design and a palette, allowing for the light. It gives neither the real density, nor the suppleness of the back, nor the state of the foundation seen against the light, nor the smell, nor the material under the fingers, nor the sound a rug makes when you fold it. A screen lies about colours as a matter of course, and a madder red photographs exactly like a synthetic red.

It is nevertheless very useful for sorting. Photograph the whole face laid flat, the back, a close-up of the back with a ruler or a coin placed on it, both ends with the fringes, one selvedge over its whole height, and every fault without hiding it — a hidden fault comes out anyway and makes the conversation start again. The valuation is free and without obligation, the visit is free too, and we reply within 48 working hours.

Three things to prepare before writing to us. Measure the rug to the centimetre, excluding the fringes, in both directions. Count the knots over ten centimetres in width and in height. Note what you know of its history: where it came from, when it entered the family, whether it has already been washed and by whom, whether it has been stored and in what conditions. A documented family provenance works no miracles, but it does place a piece.

One thing not to do: clean it before showing it. A dirty rug is valued without difficulty, dust hides nothing from anyone who looks at the back. A rug that someone has tried to revive themselves, sometimes not: a ring, a yellowing or the beginnings of felting are damage, and they are added to what was already there. Show it as it is.