Gabbeh Rugs

Gabbeh is the plainest and the thickest rug in Persia, and the only traditional Persian rug that a modern interior takes without argument. The word means raw or unclipped, and that is the technique: a small number of knots per inch, a long shaggy pile, and no drawn design at all.

Luri and Qashqai weavers in the Zagros made them for their own use rather than for sale, which is why the designs are what they are. A field of one colour, a handful of stepped blocks, a line of animals walking nowhere in particular, a stylised tree. Often the ground is undyed wool in its natural cream, camel or grey, with madder and indigo used only in flashes.

The pile is the selling point. A Gabbeh is genuinely soft and genuinely warm, it is the rug to put where people sit on the floor, and its coarse structure makes it forgiving of the traffic that would flatten a fine city rug. Colours are usually vegetable-dyed and mellow noticeably in the first years.