Kerman Rugs & Carpets

Kerman is probably the most famous name in Persian rug weaving and justly so, for it has been weaving totally artistically individualistic and commercially successful carpets since about 1600. Only Oushak has a longer continuous rug history. Kerman city is the seat of Kerman province, in southeast Persia. Kerman province is semi-arid and is partially surrounded by deserts and on the west by Fars Province, the home of various prolific tribal weaving groups. The province is elevated, averaging 6000 feet above sea level. Kerman is on the old road from Tehran, Kashan, and Yazd to India. The city is generally undistinguished architecturally except for the tomb of Shah Nimatullah, a fifteenth-century saint.

Kerman has never been a royal capital and therefore never the site of a royal carpet workshop. The arts and crafts industry began around 1600, possibly under the aegis of Shah Abbas who promoted Persian art and commerce. Throughout the century and later the main products were the "Vase" carpets, so-called by the vases often present in a pattern of multiplanar lattices, diagonal palmettes and garden flowers, usually on lac red grounds. Often these carpets reach 30 feet in length and are in the gallery format. The sizes indicate that the roller loom was already in use in Kerman. There are still hundreds of these sturdy carpets and fragments thereof presently extant. They are triple wefted, with thick, straight wool wefts bound by a thin, sinuous cotton or silk weft. Another, smaller group of period Kermans are the "Sanguszko carpets", named after the owner of one, with medallions, corners and animals. They are of finer weave and may have dark blue or ivory fields, besides the usual red.

Production, on a reduced basis, continued through the 18th century and only for a few decades in the 19th century. The weavers turned to woolen shawl making when demand for carpets lagged. The industry began to revive around [...]

Kerman is probably the most famous name in Persian rug weaving and justly so, for it has been weaving totally artistically individualistic and commercially successful carpets since about 1600. Only Oushak has a longer continuous rug history. Kerman city is the seat of Kerman province, in southeast Persia. Kerman province is semi-arid and is partially surrounded by deserts and on the west by Fars Province, the home of various prolific tribal weaving groups. The province is elevated, averaging 6000 feet above sea level. Kerman is on the old road from Tehran, Kashan, and Yazd to India. The city is generally undistinguished architecturally except for the tomb of Shah Nimatullah, a fifteenth-century saint.

Kerman has never been a royal capital and therefore never the site of a royal carpet workshop. The arts and crafts industry began around 1600, possibly under the aegis of Shah Abbas who promoted Persian art and commerce. Throughout the century and later the main products were the "Vase" carpets, so-called by the vases often present in a pattern of multiplanar lattices, diagonal palmettes and garden flowers, usually on lac red grounds. Often these carpets reach 30 feet in length and are in the gallery format. The sizes indicate that the roller loom was already in use in Kerman. There are still hundreds of these sturdy carpets and fragments thereof presently extant. They are triple wefted, with thick, straight wool wefts bound by a thin, sinuous cotton or silk weft. Another, smaller group of period Kermans are the "Sanguszko carpets", named after the owner of one, with medallions, corners and animals. They are of finer weave and may have dark blue or ivory fields, besides the usual red.

Production, on a reduced basis, continued through the 18th century and only for a few decades in the 19th century. The weavers turned to woolen shawl making when demand for carpets lagged. The industry began to revive around 1890 and by 1895 there were already over 1000 carpet looms in Kerman and the town of Ravar. Ravar has given its name, via linguistic corruption to “Lavar" or “Laver" Kermans, presumed to be earlier and finer than the general run of Kerman work. The industry expanded rapidly, and foreign and domestic firms got in on the action: Castelli Brothers, Milani, Dilmaghani and Oriental Carpet Manufacturers. The latter came to dominate Kerman production and export, primarily to America, between the wars. At the peak in the later 1930s there were nearly 4000 looms in the Kerman weaving area.

Kerman carpets are elegant and sophisticated, with a far wider range of pattern than any others in Persia. This is substantially due to the designer families, some of which trace back to the 18th century. Perhaps their ancestors were trained as miniature painters in 17th century Isfahan. The designers are locally famous and there is a school for carpet designers in Kerman to carry on the tradition. As a result, they can design anything: hunting scenes, adaptations of Watteau or Boucher, classical Persian patterns, shawl derived creations, panel and garden layouts, detailed millefleur-style covered grounds, detached floral sprays in the "American-style" Persian Sarouk manner but better, broken borders, French Aubusson designs with open, cartouche-shaped fields, and on and on. Antique Ravar carpets with allover patterns of cartouche medallions or panels on ivory grounds are especially valued today. No two antique Kermans are alike, in contrast to Kashan or Tabriz carpets where family resemblances are often too close for comfort. Kerman had a ready market in America and the dealers could afford the best designers to create one-off masterpieces. All the village carpets of Ravar, Rafsanjani and other outlying locales are designed in the city.

Great design is supported by great dyeing. Kerman has historically used only natural dyes. Cochineal is the red of choice, rather than madder. The dyers, through unremitting care to every part of the process, can elicit shades from orange to oxblood from cochineal. Madder is decidedly a secondary red. Indigo, weld (for yellow), pomegranate rind, straw (pale yellow), vine leaves and henna are among the other organic dyes. The Kerman dyers have mastered the art of making light, clear shades and pastels. The other weaving towns in the district, including Ravar, send the wool to Kerman to be dyed. Much of the wool for plain or open fields is dyed in the loose fiber, before spinning, to get better dye penetration and uniformity.

The Kerman carpet employs only handspun wool for the pile, and there are more than 10,000 local women in the town and nearby villages supplying the voracious industry. The wool is locally sourced and is oilier than the Kermanshah or Khorassan types. It is softer, but not too soft. It is the ideal carpet wool. The spring clip only is used for the better carpets. The wool is first machine-carded as is the practice now throughout Iran for city carpets. Kermans range in size from mats (pushtis) up to over 15 feet by 30 feet and are generally woven in houses (2 to 4 looms each) and in small factories (10 to 40 looms). The looms are all the upright roller type: the plain warps are unrolled from the upper loom beam and the finished, knotted section is rolled up on the lower beam. Hence, a rug of almost any length can be woven, unlike the Tabriz slide-around looms on which carpets of no more than twice the loom height can be executed. The asymmetric (Persian) knots count about 220 to 350 per square inch, but there are antique scatter pieces in shawl textile boteh patterns with close to 600. The pile is medium to low. The alternate warps are depressed, giving a ribbed back. The foundations are all cotton, with two thicker wefts bound by a third, thinner, sinuous weft, the same structure as on the 17th century carpets. In Kerman, some things never change! Women do most of the actual weaving, although the overseeing master weaver may be male.

Kerman carpets have influenced the local Afshar tribal weavers and early Afshars copy 19th century Kerman rugs. Often fine tribal pieces with botehs whose designs are adapted from Kerman shawls or very fine Kerman rugs are encountered. Other antique Afshars copy Kermans so closely (depressed cotton warps, allover patterns, complex borders, light grounds) that it takes an expert to distinguish them. Of course, there are Kerman copies from India, but they can be easily found out with their restricted palette, stiff and overly symmetric designs and double wefts. There is really nothing quite like, or even like at all, a Kerman. Never has been. Never will be.