Senneh Rugs

Senneh is the old name for Sanandaj, the capital of Kurdistan, and it marks the finest weaving the Kurds produce. The contrast with Bijar, sixty miles away, is the whole story: where a Bijar is thick and stiff, a Senneh is thin, light and flat, with a knot so small and a pile so short that the back reads almost like canvas.

The classic field is Herati, an all-over lattice of rosettes and curved leaves repeated across the ground, worked at a scale that only a fine weave can carry. Prayer formats with a stepped mihrab are common, as are small medallions on an ivory or indigo ground. Borders are narrow and precise rather than emphatic.

Because a Senneh is thin, it works where a heavy rug cannot: over another rug, under a door that has no clearance, on a wall. It is also the Kurdish rug most often collected rather than walked on, and antique examples are judged on the regularity of the knotting as much as on the drawing.