10'2" x 11'8" Persian Bakhtiar Rug | Multi-Color Garden Panel Design | Excellent Condition

This 10'2" x 11'8" Bakhtiar is the garden panel format that made the weavers of the Chahar Mahal valleys famous, worked here at a generous room size with 48 separate compartments across the field. The pile is 3/8" wool on a cotton foundation, heavy and tightly packed, with the crisp black outlines and clean panel grid that separate a well drawn Bakhtiar from a hurried one. Colors are deep and varied rather than matched, which is exactly how these rugs were made: each square drawn and dyed on its own terms. The rug lies flat, the pile is even from end to end, and the ivory fringe and selvages are intact. It arrives with a certificate of authenticity, and at 10 by 12 it is an easy fit for a large room seating area where all four sofa legs sit on the wool.

Design and Motifs

The field is a khesht, or brick, layout: a lattice of squares, each framed by a narrow ivory and navy stripe of stars, each holding its own garden scene. Rows alternate between cypress trees with curved tips, arched flowering shrubs, vases spilling blossoms, diagonal trellises of small leaves, star rosettes set in a plain ground, and 8 petal medallions with radiating palmettes. A few panels carry weeping willows drawn in rows of tiny hooks, others a single large boteh turned to one side. Nothing repeats in a strict cycle, so the eye keeps moving across the surface. The main border runs a red ground filled with large serrated palmettes and rosettes joined by an angular vine, flanked by ivory guard stripes carrying a running flowerhead, and the corners are resolved cleanly rather than cut off. It is drawn in the straight line, angular vocabulary of village weaving, and the scale of the motifs suits the size of the rug.

A Multi-Color Palette Built Panel by Panel

The palette is the reason to buy this rug. Panel grounds move between soft lilac and lavender, tomato red, deep burgundy, midnight navy, coral pink, terracotta and warm ivory, with a scattering of dark brown and small touches of green in the flowering shrubs. Because every square sits inside its own black and ivory frame, the shifts read as deliberate blocks of color rather than noise, and the lilac squares in particular lift the whole field and keep the reds from going heavy. The border returns to a strong madder red with black and ivory palmettes, which pulls the perimeter together and gives the composition a firm edge. Abrash, the gentle banding that comes from small dye lots, shows in a few of the red and navy panels and is a hallmark of genuine village dyeing. Against pale oak, dark walnut or a neutral stone floor, the multi-color field does the decorating on its own.

Bakhtiar Weaving in the Chahar Mahal Villages

Bakhtiar rugs come from the villages of Chahar Mahal va Bakhtiari, in the high country southwest of Isfahan, where settled Bakhtiari families weave in towns such as Shalamzar, Saman, Chalshotor and Boldaji. The wool from these pastures is coarse in the best sense, springy and high in lanolin, which is why a Bakhtiar takes traffic for decades and still shows its drawing. The weave here is the classic village construction, a symmetrical knot on a cotton warp and weft, beaten down firmly so the back reads as a tight, even grid, as the folded corner photograph shows. That combination of sturdy build and ambitious garden drawing is what has kept the panel design in demand since the early 20th century, and a piece of this size in this condition is a practical heirloom rather than a fragile one.