3'4" x 5'3" Persian Pictorial Rug | Wool and Silk | Multi-Colour

A hand-knotted pictorial piece measuring 3'4" x 5'3", worked in wool with silk and built as a single framed picture rather than a repeating pattern. The rectangular field shows a woman with long braided hair kneeling in a brick-walled room, holding a small bowl up toward an archway while three bearded men sit watching at the right. A wide rust border of scrolling leafwork closes the scene in on all four sides. Small enough to hang, and the flat even pile and clear drawing suit that use.

The design

The picture is read like a painting. At the left a heavy sea-green curtain falls in vertical folds, drawn back to reveal a terracotta wall of laid brick with a pointed arch and a lamp swinging on three chains. The central figure leans forward from her knees, bare to the waist above a striped sash and a jewelled clasp, her hair falling in dark strands threaded with pale beads, one arm raised with a shallow bowl from which yellow rays shoot upward. Below her hand a large two-handled blue urn is painted with its own small landscape of sails and cypress trees. Opposite, three elders in pale robes lean in, one cradling a second jug, and a tiny red-filled cup sits on the pebbled floor between them. An ivory signature cartouche is woven into the curtain at the upper left. The border carries a continuous rust ground of teal and apricot acanthus scrolls set with small white and crimson blossoms, held between narrow black and ivory guard stripes.

The colour

The field runs on terracotta and salmon, a warm brick tone that turns pinker across the paved floor in the foreground. Against it sit two cool families: the sea green and celadon of the curtain and the doorway, and the pale slate blue of the urns and the water in the painted vignette. Drapery is carried in cream, buttercup yellow and dusty pink with soft shading between them, so the cloth reads as folded rather than outlined. Deep brown, madder red and a dark olive anchor the sash and the recess behind the urn. The border reverses the balance, putting dark teal scrollwork on rust with apricot highlights, which is what makes this a genuinely multi-colour piece rather than a two-tone one.

The making

Hand-knotted in Persia in wool with silk used through the highlights, where it picks up light along the hair, the rays from the bowl and the folds of the robes. The knotting is fine enough to carry facial features, individual strands of hair and the beard shading seen in the close photographs, and the pile is clipped low so none of that drawing is lost. The table dates it to the 2000s and records it as unused, with ivory cotton warps left as fringe at both ends and the condition given as perfect.