Rare Malayer Pictorial King Hushang Rug

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 pattern 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. Malayir 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 rugs 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.

Pictorial rugs depicting figures are a significant genre of subject matter seen in rugs made following the ‘revival’ of Persian carpet production which began in the 1870’s onwards. Images of real or mythological historical figures appeared in rugs predominantly made in the major Persian city centres of rug production, namely, Kerman, Kashan, Tabriz and Esfahan. Frequent subject matter included Eastern and European rulers and leaders, biblical figures, characters from legend, stories and poetry. The depictions are seen in varying degrees of realism depending on the skill of the weavers, and the intentions of the designer (Ustad). Persian Tribal rugs also began to depict such figures and subject matter generally presented in a much more simplistic and naïve style of representation based on their own ancient traditions of rug pattern drawing.

Pictorial figural scenes are extremely rare in Persian Malayer rugs. In this Persian Malayer rug, the mythical king Hushang is depicted in an interior scene with supporting characters including symbols of good and evil.  Such a scene is frequently depicted in pictorial rugs from the ‘revival’ period, though rarely seen in Persian Malayer rugs. Whilst the weavers of Malayer are particularly well known for creating finely detailed patterns they are adept at creating patterns displaying powerful bold designs drawn in a style associated with tribal traditions as can be seen in this pictorial scene. The figures are large, drawn geometrically, totemic in style and which could aptly be described as cartoon like in modern day terms. The colours are bold, bright and jewel like with strong tones of red, tangerine and blue offset superbly against the earth toned background rendering a powerful statement of intention. The colours are from an extensive Persian Malayer rug palette, the tones of which indicate that this Persian malayir rug was made around 1900.

This is a fine and rare Persian Malayer rug which displays a characteristic ‘revivalist’ pictorial scene. The design demonstrates the versatility of the skilled Malayer weavers able to create varying styles of rug design to great artistic effect.

Malayer Pictorial King Hoshang Rug. This piece was handwoven in Iran. 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.