While there are many popular and recognizable Persian rug styles, perhaps the most classic of all classic vintage and antique rug styles is the Antique Persian Kashan carpet.
WHAT IS AN ANTIQUE PERSIAN KASHAN CARPET?
The antique Persian Kashan carpet comes from the eponymous Persian city of Kashan, which is located within the larger province of Isfahan. Kashan has been renowned for its rug weaving for ages, tracing all the way back to the Sassanian Empire from 224 to 642 CE, and then more prominently during the Safavid Dynasty in the 16th – 18th centuries, when it was a center for trade, silk manufacture, and carpet production.
Kashan rugs are the prototypical “city rugs”, with a tight weave, small-scale curvilinear designs, and fine articulation of varying floral motifs that boggle the mind with how intricate and expressive they can be.
Kashan is located on the edge of the Great Salt Desert, high above sea level within the Zagros Mountains. This location was perhaps the biggest and most significant corridor between Isfahan and the eastern provinces of Persia, allowing for an all important flow of goods and materials through the region.
Kashan rugs utilize an exceptional grade of lustrous lamb’s wool with high lanolin content and fine fibers. This high level wool allows for a better quality of rug weaving, with this superior grade of wool woven onto a cotton foundation. Similarly, many Kashan rugs incorporate silk and sometimes even metal, silver, or gold thread in their weaving, making for truly exceptional carpets of rare beauty and value.
Antique Persian Dabir Kashan, 11’7” x 8’9”, circa 1910, #27705
THE DABIR KASHAN
While the regular antique Persian Kashan carpets were already the paragon of beauty and fine weaving, with their lustrous, high lanolin content wool and masterful craftsmanship, a level even higher than this was the Dabir Kashan.
The Dabir Kashan rugs emanated from the highly respected Dabir workshop within the city of Kashan, and utilized an even higher grade of wool than the regular Kashan rugs, as they favored the superior grade of wool known colloquially as “kork” wool.
This “kork” wool was even finer, more lustrous, and more delicate than the already high grade wool used for Kashan rugs, allowing for the Dabir Kashan rugs to achieve an even greater level of intricacy of design, and a truly outstanding level of curvilinear expression in the hand-knotting of these wool rugs.
Antique Persian Manchester Kashan, 27’9” x 15’0”, circa 1900, #23993
THE MANCHESTER KASHAN
While the standard Kashan rug is woven with lustrous and supple wool, and the Dabir Kashan is woven with an even higher grade of “kork” wool, then perhaps the next level beyond that would be the Manchester Kashan rug.
In most cases, the name of a rug indicates where the rug is woven, which in this case, might suggest that these Kashan rugs were woven in Manchester, England. That is not quite the situation here, but there is a correlation, in that Manchester Kashan rugs are an extremely fine grade of Kashan rugs woven in Persia at the turn of the twentieth century, utilizing specialized merino wool imported from Manchester, England.
At that time, there was a renaissance in Persian rug weaving, with English importers setting up workshops further northwest in Persia, and reorienting the rug production of such areas as Tabriz and Sultanabad to better suit the tastes of wealthy buyers in Europe and the Americas.
As a part of this import of European influence, there was a select grade of Kashan rugs woven with this imported merino wool from Manchester, which would otherwise not be available in Iran. These Manchester Kashan rugs were extremely rare and expensive, leading to this new category of ultra high-end, customized Manchester Kashan rugs becoming something that was woven in Iran with Persian techniques and design sensibilities, but as a collector item primarily for export to the West.
Antique Persian Mohtesham Kashan, 17’0” x 13’8”, circa 1890, #27815
THE MOHTESHAM KASHAN
If there is a spectrum of antique Persian Kashan rugs, with the already spectacular standard Kashan rugs at a high level, and with the Dabir Kashan rugs at an even higher level, and the Manchester Kashan being at a level even above that, then perhaps the highest level of that spectrum would be the Mohtesham Kashan rug.
The Mohtesham Kashan rug is renowned as being one of the finest rug styles ever created, with an outrageously fine weave, being hand-knotted by some of the best craftsmen in Persian history, the namesake of which is Hadji Mollah
Mohammed Hassan Mohtesham.
These revered Mohtesham Kashan rugs were woven with some incredible intricacy and dexterity that the mere mention of the name “Mohtesham” to a rug dealer or carpet collector instantly signifies the best of the best, and the creme de la creme of antique Persian rugs.
Left: Antique Persian Mothesham Kashan Prayer Rug, 6’7” x 4’6”, circa 1890, #28354; right: Antique Persian Silk Pictorial Kashan, 6’6” x 4’0”, circa 1880, #27529
THE PRAYER RUG AND THE PICTORIAL KASHAN
Persian rug weavers were mostly adherents of the Islamic religion, where prayer is performed by kneeling on the ground on a rug, and with that rug having a prayer cornice, called a mihrab at one end.
Along those lines, the usage of a higher grade of rug during these prayers would indicate a greater level of reverence and respect being shown by those utilizing them. Enter the Mohtesham Kashan Prayer Rug.
Small versions of the revered Mohtesham Kashan rug would be woven with these prayer cornice designs, leading to a sub-category of Mohtesham Kashan Prayer (or Meditation) Rugs. These became highly sought after at that time, and are still highly collectible today.
Another variation on the theme of smaller-sized Kashan rugs would depict something other than the typical floral motifs and medallions, which was the Pictorial Kashan, in which the Kashan rug would envision a landscape, or in some cases, people.
In rare instances, they would depict both, with the addition of poetry.
The collectible rug pictured here is a synthesis of all of these elements, as it is an antique Persian Kashan rug, circa 1880, with silk pile and an extraordinarily fine weave, and depicts two people within a prayer rug format.
In this case, the two people depicted here are the star-crossed lovers, Leyli and Majnun of ancient Persian lore, who were a poetic pair of doomed lovers, equivalent to Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.
To add to the mastery on display here, the border is replete with phrases of the poetry from the story of these doomed lovers, which further reinforces the legend of the Mohtesham Kashan rug, as it echoes the founder Mohtesham’s own standing as a descendant of a 16th-century ancestor of the same name, who himself was one of the most revered poets of his time.
All of the Kashan rug styles discussed in this article are still popular in the United States, Europe, and beyond. The world’s largest selection of these rugs can be found at Persian Gallery New York.
