Tabriz rugs

A city in the north-west, three ages of production

Tabriz is the capital of Iranian Azerbaijan, in the north-western corner of the country, a few hours from the Turkish border. It has been weaving since Safavid times and was, in the sixteenth century, one of the homes of classical Persian design. What circulates today, however, belongs to a shorter history: commercial production at Tabriz starts up again in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, when trading houses reorganise the city's workshops for export to Europe.

The pieces that come through fall into three periods. Those of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, now few in good condition. Those of the 1930s to the 1970s, which make up the bulk of what is found in Belgian homes. Those from after 1980, often very fine, frequently signed, woven for a Gulf clientele as much as a European one. A Tabriz of 1900 and a Tabriz of 1995 have little in common beyond the knot.

The hook, the Turkish knot and counting in raj

Tabriz uses the Turkish knot, known as the ghiordes or symmetric knot: the woollen yarn straddles two warp threads and comes back out between them. It is a stable knot, one that holds an angular outline well and stands up to traffic. The city also has a tool of its own. Here the knot is tied with a handled hook, the qollab, where most Persian centres knot with the fingers and cut with a knife. The hook allows high rates of work and a pile of great regularity.

The foundation is almost always cotton, warp and weft, with two weft passes between two rows of knots; on very fine qualities the warp may be silk. The pile is wool, often kork on the better pieces, and it is not unusual for silk to pick out an outline or a petal. The pile height is modest, of the order of four to eight millimetres, and drops lower still on very dense rugs.

Locally, fineness is not counted per square metre but in raj, that is, in the number of knots over seven centimetres of warp. Thirty raj denotes an everyday rug, forty a good workshop rug, fifty to sixty a fine quality, seventy and above an exceptional piece. Translated into knots per square metre, that covers a considerable range, from around 150,000 to nearly a million, the conversion tables varying with the ratio between rows and knots. No other Persian centre spreads so wide under a single name.

Identifying: variety as a signature

The Tabriz repertoire is the widest in Persia, and that width is in itself a clue. The city copies everything and reinterprets everything: central medallion with corner spandrels, the Herati sprig known as mahi, hunting scenes, trees of life, prayer mihrabs, compartmented gardens, versions of the famous Ardabil rug, and even figurative compositions. The palette leans towards ivory, brick, indigo blue and beiges, with a marked preference for ivory and rust grounds.

Faced with an Indian or Pakistani copy of the same design, a few points settle matters more reliably than style does. The back of a Tabriz is crisp, the rows well aligned, and the symmetric knot can be read there. The local wool is springy, a little dry under the fingers; the copies often use a softer imported wool, whiter at the base, and a mercerised foundation cotton that shines. A chemical wash meant to age the piece leaves a surface softened uniformly, without the abrash variation that successive dye baths bring. Finally, on a hand-knotted rug the fringe is the continuation of the warp: an added, sewn-on fringe shows on the back and is enough to conclude.

What makes the value of a Tabriz

Since the name is not enough, everything turns on criteria that can be checked. Density first, counted on the back over ten centimetres in both directions. Then the quality of the wool: a well-spun kork wool keeps its suppleness and recovers its lustre after washing, a poor wool stays dull whatever is done to it. The nature of the dyes, vegetable or synthetic, and above all their stability. The state of the pile, which is measured at the base of the tuft and not at its tip. The integrity of the selvedges and the fringes. Format, finally, a large regular rug being rarer than a small rug of the same quality.

Master workshops, whose name is sometimes woven into a cartouche in the border, form a category apart. A signature is not to be read as a guarantee: it is copied without difficulty, and it often covers several qualities within a single workshop. We note it, then we value the rug on what the back shows. The method is set out in the guide valuing a rug.

What a Tabriz asks of the workshop

In washing, old pieces with vegetable dyes call for a serious fastness test: madder reds and certain indigo blues can bleed onto the white cloth, and an adjacent ivory ground forgives nothing. Rugs from the 1960s to the 1980s sometimes pose the opposite problem, with synthetic reds poorly fixed in the first place. In both cases we fix before washing, wash below 30 °C with a neutral soap, and rinse until fully neutral. The protocol is that of any wool rug.

What gives way first on a Tabriz is the selvedges. The low pile leaves the edge exposed, and a rug that is moved by pulling on its border loses first its overcasting, then its edge warp. Taken in hand early, it is simple work; taken late, the foundation has to be rebuilt before it can be overcast again. The fringes go the same way. A pile worn down flat, by contrast, cannot be made good everywhere: repiling restores material over a limited area, it does not recreate a new rug, and on a fine design the repair stays legible in raking light.

The silk highlights complicate the rest. They stand up badly to alkalinity, heat and brushing, and lose their polish faster than the wool around them. We treat them separately, by hand, and we sometimes refuse a localised stain removal on them rather than dull the silk to remove a mark.