Persian Sanandaj (Senneh) Carpet – Allover Design

Senneh, (present day Sanandaj), is a Kurdish town in Kurdistan, north-west Persia, and was an important regional centre and provincial capital of Persian Kurdistan in the early 19th Century during the reign of Fath’Ali Shah. Like all Kurdish rugs, those of Senneh are woven with the symmetric knot on a cotton foundation, although some rare and generally older examples can have silk warps. One unusual feature is that the warps can sometimes be dyed in bands of different colours, a feature also encountered in 17th century silk rugs from Kashan. All relationship with the generality of Kurdish weaving ends with the symmetric knotting. Senneh rugs are generally extremely fine and display delicate finely drawn patterns, including the Herati, all over repeated botehs of remarkable elegance or other dense floral patterns made up of hundreds of tiny elements. Indeed, Senneh rugs disprove the theory that symmetric knotting is unsuitable to create elegant and delicate curvilinear floral patterns. Apart from pile weavings, Senneh is also celebrated for its kilims, which, in the flat woven medium, echo the designs found in their pile rugs; similarly the majority are woven in wool with white areas often woven in cotton. There are, however, some rare silk examples. The earliest Senneh kilims which seem to date from the late 18th century, display beautiful colouring with striped designs embellished with curvilinear meandering vine patterns. They were either woven as, or turned into various items of apparel and there are several Qajar portraits executed in the late-18th and early-19th centuries showing the Shahs and members of the royal family wearing what seem to be coats, waistcoats and other garments made from Senneh kilims. There are also some very beautiful and distinctive saddle covers both in pile and kilim weave from Senneh.

Persian Sanandaj (Senneh) carpet handwoven from wool in Iran. Allover design bearing the Paisley (transliterated from Farsi as Boteh) motif.

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.