Bakhshaish Village Rug

[Heinz Kamping Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Heinz Kamping]

Today I have a rug that I believe is a Bakhshaish village rug.

It has beautiful madder and indigo colors with a pronounced abrasch, and some natural-colored camel wool. The weaver apparently miscalculated the layout and had to compress the height of the medallions in the upper section, as the overall length of the rug was already determined by the warp threads.

In each of the four corners, there is a white-ground cartouche with a date. With a bit of imagination, I read it as: (12 and 50?) 1250 = 1834. Could my interpretation of the date be correct?

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Armenian. Armenian letters

[Joseph R. Putnak Member Find all posts View Profile Close Joseph R. Putnak]

Dear Heinz, all;

Very nice, old rug! Probably Bakhshaish or Serab; in any case within the Heriz sphere of influence. The use of camel's hair for part of the ground color would not be so unusual, and one way natural camel's hair can be easily distinguished from dyed wool is its fuzzier appearance on the back of the rug.

The apparent inscriptions within the cartouches do not resemble any Arabic numbering systems that I am familiar with. Perhaps they are letters from the Armenian alphabet. If so, does anyone know their meaning?

Joseph

[Joe Lawrence Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Joe Lawrence]

Just a quick google search revealed a very close match to the number “1”