Heriz rugs: large format, hard wool, Turkish knot

Villages at the foot of the Sabalan

Heriz is not a town of workshops but a district of villages, east of Tabriz, in Iranian Azerbaijan, at the foot of Mount Sabalan. The weaving there is domestic: village looms, a design handed down from mother to daughter and from workshop master to weaver, no manufactory organised on European lines.

Commercial production starts at the end of the nineteenth century, in good part for the American market, which was asking for large solid rugs for large rooms. That destination explains the shape of the Heriz: it is found in 2.5 × 3.5 m, 3 × 4 m, 3.5 × 5 m far more readily than in small formats. It is the dining-room rug par excellence, and one of the few that commonly exists in the dimensions of a Brussels town house.

The name covers several villages and several qualities. Gorevan denotes coarser pieces, Mehravan and Ahar neighbouring qualities, Bakhshaish the oldest and the most sought after. Serapi is not a village but a market term: it denotes old Heriz rugs, generally from before 1900, finer and with a softer palette. These words often appear on shop labels without much rigour.

A wool and a knot made to last

The knot is Turkish, symmetric, as at Tabriz. The warp and the weft are cotton and thick, with a double weft between the rows of knots: this gives a heavy, thick rug whose back is slightly domed and sounds solid when struck with the flat of the hand.

The density is low, generally between 50,000 and 150,000 knots per square metre. Compared with an Isfahan, the difference is a factor of five or ten, and it is entirely deliberate: the number of knots does not make the value of a Heriz. The pile is high, of the order of eight to twelve millimetres, which amounts to a considerable reserve of wear.

That leaves the wool, which is the real subject. The flocks on the slopes of the Sabalan give a hard, springy wool, rich in grease. That is what explains the longevity of these rugs: a greasy wool repels waterborne soiling, bends without breaking and lies back down after traffic. An old Heriz whose pile has been polished by a hundred years of footsteps takes on a lustre that few rugs reach, and that no treatment reproduces.

A design drawn freehand

The composition is recognised from a distance: a large angular medallion, star-shaped or a notched lozenge, taking up a wide part of the field; massive spandrels in the four corners; a field filled with serrated leaves and geometricised scrolls. Nothing is rounded. Everything is drawn in angles, the direct consequence of the symmetric knot and of weaving carried out without a full cartoon.

The palette is dominated by rust and brick, with navy blue, ivory, touches of bottle green and salmon. Old Serapis have a lighter and softer range: pale terracotta, sky blue, ivory, often on a less crowded field.

The design is taken up from memory, without a full plan. The two halves of a Heriz are therefore never strictly identical, and bands of abrash — the variations in tone due to successive dye baths — are frequent. These are not faults. They are even the best argument against a copy: Indo-Heriz rugs and Romanian or Chinese pieces of the same design are symmetrical to the millimetre, their wool is soft and white at the base, and a chemical wash gives them that uniformly faded tint which resembles no real ageing.

**Detail**Red rug with ivory fringes on a pale wooden floor

What makes the value of a Heriz

Age and wool come before all the rest. A Heriz from before 1900 in good condition is a collector's object; a Heriz from the 1970s is a very good working rug, and the gap between the two is not made up by any technical criterion. Then come the condition of the pile measured at the base of the tuft, the regularity of the shape, the integrity of the selvedges, the frankness of the colours and the absence of a chemical wash.

The shape deserves a special mention, because it is peculiar to large formats. A rug of three metres by four, woven on a village loom over months, can come off the loom trapezoidal or buckling if the warp tension has shifted. That is partly corrected by drying under tension, never completely. A large Heriz that has stayed square, with no losses and no crude repairs, is rare, because these rugs have spent their lives on the floor. That is also what makes them of interest when we buy.

Solid does not mean maintenance-free

In washing, a Heriz is fairly comfortable to handle: the wool is greasy, the high pile takes firm brushing in the direction of the pile, and the thick cotton foundation tolerates water well. Two reservations. The weight first: a large Heriz soaked with water becomes very heavy and must dry flat on a rigid surface, never hung, or it will distort under its own weight. The colour next: madder reds and certain old blues can bleed in the fastness test, and an adjacent ivory makes the slightest bleed visible.

What gives way first is the selvedges, along the whole length, because a rug of this size is moved by its edge and catches under furniture. Then come the fringes, then the pile in the room's natural line of traffic. All three can be repaired, and it is better done early: a broken selvedge lets the weft unravel row by row. The borders and selvedges page describes this work.

What cannot be made good: a field worn down to the weft over a large area. An area is rewoven and reknotted; a whole rug is not remade. And a Heriz that has been through a chemical wash has lost part of its wool grease: it remains usable, but the lustre and part of its resistance have gone, and that is not given back.

Frequently asked questions

My rug is not quite symmetrical, is that a fault?

No, it is the norm on a Heriz. The design is taken up from memory, without a full cartoon, and the two halves always differ a little. Likewise, the bands of slightly different tone — abrash — come from successive dye baths and are sought after on old pieces. It is the industrial copies that are perfectly symmetrical.

Serapi, Gorevan, Mehravan: do these words change anything?

Yes, but less than the labels suggest. Gorevan denotes a coarser quality, Serapi the older and finer Heriz rugs. These terms are used very loosely in the trade. We look at them as indications, and we judge the piece on the wool, the density and the condition.

How do I know whether it is a genuine Heriz or an Indian copy?

The knot first: symmetric on a Heriz, most often asymmetric on an Indian copy. Then the wool: hard and greasy against soft and cottony. Finally the colour: a chemically washed copy has a pale, uniform tint over the whole surface, without the bath-to-bath variation always found on a village rug.

My large Heriz is buckling and no longer lies flat, what can be done?

That comes from uneven warp tension or from earlier drying badly carried out. Drying flat under tension, in the workshop, often corrects a good part of the distortion. An old, settled distortion is never corrected entirely; we say what we think we can recover before we start.

It has an old stain, does that rule out buying it?

Rarely. Sabalan wool is greasy and holds waterborne soiling less than others do, and an old organic stain often comes out in the bath. What weighs more on a Heriz is the wear of the pile and the state of the selvedges: on a large format, an edge broken over three metres costs more, in labour, than a stain.

Can a Heriz go in a corridor or a hallway?

Yes, it is one of the few origins made for that. High pile, hard wool and a symmetric knot make it a rug for traffic. Provide an underlay, vacuum both faces regularly, and give it a half-turn once a year to spread the wear.

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