AGE

Age on a rug is a condition, not a grade. A century of feet is not damage, it is the finish: the pile walked even, the colours settled, the wool polished by use. What matters is telling that apart from actual wear, and the difference is visible once you know where to look.

The three bands

Vintage covers pieces woven before about 1970, which in practice means a rug that has been on a floor for more than half a century. Semi-antique runs from the 1970s to the 2000s: old enough to have softened, recent enough that the pile is usually still full. New means recently woven, with the pile at its original height and the colours at their most saturated.

Patina against damage

Patina is even. The pile is lower than it was, but it is lower everywhere, and the colours have gone quieter together. Damage is local: a worn path where a door swung, a patch of low pile under where a chair stood, a corner where the foundation shows through. Look across the rug at a shallow angle, from the far end, and both become obvious at once.

What to check at the edges

A rug fails at its edges and ends before it fails in the field, because that is where it is handled and where a vacuum catches. Intact fringes and sound selvedges on an older rug say it was looked after. Reduced fringes are common on anything genuinely old and are not in themselves a problem.

Colour, and why old rugs stop changing

A new rug fades. Natural dyes shift in light over the first decades, which is part of why an older piece looks the way it does, and it is also why an older piece will change very little from here. If you want the colour you see to be the colour you keep, the vintage band is the safer bet. If you want depth of colour now, look at the new end.

Where each band belongs

A vintage Heriz or Bijar in wool has already proved it can take traffic and will take more. A new silk piece has not, and should not be asked to. For a hall or a dining room, age plus wool is the combination to look for. For a bedroom or a study, the question is open and worth deciding on looks alone.

Age does not mean origin

Old does not mean Persian and new does not mean Indian. Every origin here is represented across the bands, and the workshop traditions of India and Pakistan are producing pieces now at a fineness that would have been remarkable anywhere fifty years ago.