Fine Persian Malayer Large Gallery Carpet

The Hamadan district is home to around fifteen hundred towns and villages producing rugs of varying technical qualities and encompassing an extraordinary variety of design styles based on traditional nomadic tribal designs and formal town and city workshop styles. Often rugs from this district combine a mix of both tribal and town styles into one rug, which often presents original works of woven art. It is invariably difficult to establish the exact place of making in Persian Hamadan district rugs due to their versatile and varied designs. However, there are a few towns within the district which can reasonably be identified as the centre of production due to consistent characteristics displayed in their rugs. Malayer is one such centre.

Persian Malayer rugs are technically that much finer than neighbouring town and village products, and tend to produce distinctive decorative designs combining formal floral designs based on city work shop tradition, and combining traditional tribal designs. The quality of the materials tends to be more superior with the use of soft lustrous wool used as the pile material. The colours used in Persian Malayer carpets are from an extensive traditional Malayer palette and includes a magnificent range of rich saturated colours combined together to create appealing ‘stand out’ decorative patterns. These features place Persian Malayer rugs as significantly superior to other Persian Hamadan district rug producing centres.

This magnificent Persian Malayer large carpet displays all the characteristic attributes associated with fine Persian Malayer rug weaving. The design is formal, presenting a complex detailed repeat pattern appearing to be made up of rhombus and rhomboidal tiles each enclosing various flower heads in a repeat format, a version of an established design referred to as ‘Mina Khani’. Such an arrangement is clearly made by skilled experienced weavers. Each floral element in this fine Persian Malayer carpet is finely drawn and defined in a variety of wonderful complementary saturated colours including varying tones of red, blue ochre, green and ivory magnificently juxtaposed to present a superior decorative image. It is rare to see such a wide range of colours in one piece used so effectively by weavers from this region. It can be seen that there is a difference in the blue background colour, the band of dark blue is replaced by a lighter blue shade. When seen, the term used to describe this change of colour is known as ‘abrash’ and is either applied deliberately by the weavers to create originality and a sense of movement to the design, or is done by accident whereby the original dyed batch of colour has simply run out, and the weavers have chosen the nearest tone of colour associated to the original colour to continue the rug. Either way ‘abrash’ presents an endearing feature invariably enhancing the overall image ensuring originality of the end product. The ivory border encloses a geometrically drawn ‘totemic’ border pattern consistent with tribal tradition. The pattern may represent linked bird forms, or meandering flowering vines issuing pairs of leaves, and is open to interpretation, in any event, this border acts as a magnificent contrast to the formal activity of the main field pattern.

This Persian Malayer large carpet is a superb decorative example of type and origin, made with fine lustrous wool with a technically detailed formal design presented in a magnificent range of harmonic jewel like colours which epitomises the best of Persian Malayer woven artistry, clearly made by highly skilled and experienced weavers.

Fine Malayir large gallery aspect Persian carpet handwoven from wool Malayer, Iran. The allover design is called Mina Khani with a characteristic repeated floral motif. Colour palette is that of a neutral complexion with light navy base complemented by red, yellow and green.

For further information please contact us and our team will be pleased to assist you. All pieces in the collection are under the auspices of Essie Sakhai, one of the world’s foremost experts and collectors of fine handmade Persian rugs and carpets.