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Carpet Tips
The UAE is a true paradise for lovers of handmade carpets. Here, the choice is huge, and the geography of manufacturers is perhaps the most extensive, and the quality is decent, and the prices are encouraging.
If you intend to profitably invest in an antique rug, head to the junk shop. If the desire does not extend beyond a new, but real handmade carpet (which can always be profitably sold), go in search.
The most important thing - any point of sale of carpets should be specialized! They can be seen from afar - the windows of carpet stores are generously hung with the best works, and through the remaining spaces of the glass you can see neat rows of curled carpets,
Fakes, that is, machine-made carpets, are rarely given out as man-made: either out of respect for traditions, or because of awe before Allah. If a Persian carpet costs about $ 100 for a size of 2x2 meters, then this is a good machine job.
The most important piece of advice - remember that you are buying a work of art. Therefore, take the buying process creatively: carefully consider the drawing, its smallest details, try to feel the energy of the carpet. Forget the rush!
Be sure to decide for what purpose you need a carpet. “To make it better than ...” - this is even somewhere and blasphemous in relation to manual work. The carpet should be chosen as a living creature that will serve you long and faithfully.
Decide on the size. Small carpets always favorably emphasize individual sectors of the house, make it cozy and original, complement the interior. Large ones become the main element of room decoration. Always size carpets so that seated people can place both legs on it. The same applies to furniture: if it is already on the carpet, then let it be with all legs at once, otherwise the textile structure can stretch out.
All handmade carpets designed to cover floors are wear-resistant, and there is no need to be afraid to walk on them and put furniture on them. The most durable of them are cotton-based woolen. The terrible fate for any carpet is not massive furniture legs, but the fact that they don’t walk on it. Then a moth can settle in a woolen pile and eat your treasure, and the silk will fade and stop playing. Naturally, throwing a wall carpet on the floor is already a violation of the operating rules.
It is important to decide what the pile height of the purchased carpet will be. The higher the pile, the less resistant it is to loads, the more care is required. It’s better to buy a lint-free “kilim” in the hallway, and in the bedroom you can also lay a carpet with a high pile - just try to keep a smaller part under the bed (they will not walk on it). Better yet, buy a few small rugs.
Determining the number of knots is aerobatics, which is hard to master for occasional carpet buyers. The main catch here is the complexity of the calculations. It is known to a person skilled in the art that the density of weaving by many manufacturers is indicated by a pair of numbers X / Y, where X and Y are respectively the number of knots in the weft direction and in the warp direction within the square fragment of the carpet. And you also need to consider whether the product is “layered” or “unstratified”. The density of some carpets is determined by the number of knots per square centimeter, others per square inch. In each case, its own coefficient is used for calculation.
By and large, the density of weaving cannot be the only criterion for the quality of the carpet. The larger the number of knots per selected unit of measure, the more detailed and valuable the carpet pattern. This is perhaps the only advantage of dense carpets, although, of course, they are a little longer. Due to the complexity of the process, the cost of dense carpets increases significantly, as does their value. Again, thanks to the detail of the image.
Of course, when choosing a carpet, carefully consider its inside out, if only in order to understand how hard-working and delicate the work of carpet-makers is. And listen to the seller: they usually give true information about the density of their goods.
An important role is played by the drawing itself. The main thing is that you should like the carpet itself, and not its cost - of course, if you do not invest in it for further resale.
And remember the two rules of the right buyer of carpets: bargain and do not rush. Trade with inspiration and relish - you are in the East, and he does not like buyers who ran in, looked, paid money, rolled up the carpet and ran away. Such a rhythm of life is not for the East. Sit down, tell us what you need, drink tea, talk with sellers, do not hesitate to force them to roll out more and more carpets. If the seller sees that you take the purchase of a carpet seriously, he will give a good discount and will remember him with a kind word.
Take your time to buy a carpet in the first store you come across: be sure to visit a few. Believe me, serious carpet sellers will not try to sell you the goods right away, they will give you time to think and decide, because they know the true price of your carpets very well and hope that you will understand it and return.
If the purchase is completed, and you become the happy owner of a real work of art, in addition to congratulations, take the responsibility of caring for this gentle creation.
Give the new carpet for cleaning, and be sure to wet it, since it will not bring harm to a good carpet, and dry only to the brim will fill it with chlorine. But with carpets with high pile is more difficult. They do not undertake to clean their workshops, the hope is only for oriental women who clean carpets by hand. Have it cleaned at a special workshop at least once a year.
Be sure to clean the carpet every time you clean the house. If you have already bought an expensive product, take care of it accordingly: with a special vacuum cleaner, salt, knocking out in an old-fashioned way in the yard. Periodically rotate the carpet 90 degrees on the floor so that it wears out evenly.
Remember, despite the apparent external cleanliness of the carpet, even such a stable material as wool is prone to decay (not to mention the cotton base) and is an excellent environment for a well-fed life of fungus and moth.
This is especially true of wall-mounted carpets and products rolled up or spread in damp rooms. The carpet, of course, can be kept rolled up for years, but it will slowly become sad and dull, because it was created in order to delight with its beauty.
In Dubai, handmade carpets can be bought in shops near Baniyas Square, with some five-star hotels and, of course, in large shopping centers.
One of the famous places with a lot of choice and the possibility of bargaining is the old market in Sharjah, also called the "Blue Train" or "Souk Al Markaz".
And one more thing: when you go in search of a carpet, just tune in to a pleasant mood and do not take everything too seriously. The main thing here is to approach the process creatively.
Somehow, buying carpets in a new apartment, I decided not to be guided by "vision", but by knowledge, and so frantically tried to remember everything at once that my desire to seem like a competent buyer turned into utter shame, smoothed out, albeit, with a solid discount ... for beautiful eyes .
Each time, when after another portion of a bitter-bitter healing broth I came to my senses, a huge, beautifully executed carpet appeared in front of my eyes, covering everything that seemed to be everything — the ceiling, walls, floor, in the house ... At first I looked at it simply from nothing to do, then began to find interesting intricacies, then, as if spellbound, she began to sort things out. Then I, suffering from heat and suffocating from dust, finding shelter in the tiny house of the hump-nosed, majestic resident of Kashmir, and did not think that after many years I would still clearly remember every cell of it and understand the carpets in short ...
So I involuntarily learned to “see” handmade carpets. ... Not just look at them, but see how they were created using the same technology as centuries ago. It was then that I realized that a real carpet is nothing but a “treasure thrown under my feet”.
I learned to see in each carpet how the shearing went to the paddock to choose the sheep for shearing, looking for those who had just come from high mountain pastures, where the air is clean and the grass is green. She cut them with a machine, and in some places and grandfatherly, with scissors. Moreover, he laid out the wool into several piles: from the necks and abdomens, he would sell the best, at a high price, and the rest - as lucky. The buyer, of course, will bargain mercilessly, because he needs to profitably buy wool, silk, and cotton.
Sheep wool is the main material in carpet weaving. It is soft, obedient, durable and warm. It is easy to paint and it is pleasant to work with it. Silk is expensive and beautiful. It’s difficult for them to work, it slides in the hands, and for delicate patterns, where the elaboration of details is important, it doesn’t work. But it shimmers, making the carpet “play”, and it’s nice to drive it with your fingertips. Cotton is the basis of almost all carpets, although only silk is put in the base of expensive silk.
Having collected the necessary amount of material, the purchaser will return to his factory, which works with the sweat of his face in order to earn a penny for his life. It is on small, most often family-owned factories that the best carpets are made: the most expensive and skillful. Because they do them with their hands, and not on large, soulless machines. A monogram with a family name, which sometimes costs much more than the carpet itself, is lovingly woven into each such carpet. Such carpets, in fact, have no competitors, because the difference between a handmade carpet and a machine-made carpet is exactly the same as between Monet from the Paris Museum d'Orsay and Monet from the neighboring Ikea store.
Different suits of sheep give a meager palette of natural colors: from white to brown. For the riot of colors characteristic of the East, this is clearly not enough: at the manufactory, the yarn received will be sent to paint. Once upon a time, for the variety of colors, natural dyes were used, the price of which sometimes exceeded reasonable limits. All available coloring elements were used: plants, minerals and even insects.
Blue indigo was obtained from the leaves of a tropical indigofer, yellow from saffron, curry, rhubarb and onion husk, red from madder roots, orange from henna, and black and brown from oak root, walnut husks and black tea. The dyed yarn was washed in the purest spring water or running water of mountain rivers, fixed with citric acid.
From the mid-19th century, yarn was first dyed with aniline and then chrome dyes, which were cheaper and more durable. Now it is very difficult to find a carpet, the material of which is completely painted with natural dyes, sometimes modern carpets of mixed color come across. Synthetic dyes have long been recognized and do not reduce either the quality or cost of the product, which only increases over the years.
Then the dyed yarn is rolled up into balls and taken to the spinning part of the manufactory, tightly lined with wooden frames of the machines. The best masters are young girls aged 15-17, whose eyes are sharper than adults, and their fingers are softer and more agile. A master will draw a fragment of the future pattern on a piece of paper, and knitters will go to “wind” the basis of the future carpet onto the machine. Often they work from memory, without any layouts: the knitter can unleash his talent and use his own color variations. That is why girls in manufactories are valued higher: they can recognize all the nuances of colors and patterns.
After tensioning the warp threads (necessarily very dense, so as not to weaken, God forbid, and not spoil the shape of the carpet), the craftsmen will begin the long and painstaking work of tying knots. It can take a month, maybe months, maybe a year, and maybe years. It all depends on the complexity of the pattern and the size of the product. Sometimes over one small, but difficult to execute carpet, several craftsmen work for more than one hundred days. It was at this time that the magic of the carpet was laid, knot after knot.
They knit carpets (they knit it), mainly with two types of knots: Turkish or Persian. The Persian knot ("sennech", asymmetric) is tied, twisting one of the warp threads with yarn, then passing it under an adjacent thread and bringing it back out. Such a node operates in Iran, Turkey, China and Egypt. The Turkish knot ("herdes", symmetrical) used by the carpet-makers of Turkey, the Caucasus and some areas of Iran is created when the yarn wraps on adjacent sides of the warp threads on both sides, and both ends come to the surface nearby. To save time, the masters came up with lightweight versions of these knots ("jafti"), when the yarn immediately twists four threads in pairs, which saves time, but affects the sophistication of the work.
Each row of nodules is laid with a special weft, the loops are cut to the level of the intended pile height, then they hit the executed fragment with a comb-like object, which makes the pile compact. After that, the hair cut is finished.
Carpet maker error is expensive. One extra knot, one missed one - and the whole row is removed to start it again. And if an error is discovered later and nothing can be changed, the cost of the product can drop significantly. Only a specialist or a picky person can notice a small oversight in the image of an eye the size of a rice kernel. But it is they who usually buy expensive carpets.
Finished carpets are always washed in clean running water and dried in the open air. They say that expensive carpets are sometimes thrown onto the busiest street of the village, so that people's feet, hooves and animal paws take a pile and make the carpet more noble. They say that such carpets are then snapped up in rich homes.
A real carpet, wherever and by whom it was made - a work of art. Art is sometimes even more complex than painting, and more sophisticated than music. Turn over any of these carpets, look at their seamy side, where painstaking work is hidden under a beautiful facade. Just imagine a shepherd chasing lambs, a shearer gathering wool in his arms, a purchaser tired of long trips, a dyer who does not remember the true color of his skin, female craftswomen, tying from 7,000 to 10,000 knots daily, and long days of work over that miracle that is now in front of you. Peer into it, and you will see: each of his veins is a bundle of life tied with somebody’s hands ...
Carpets are different
If all the major countries producing carpet are marked with one color on the world map, it turns out that our planet is covered by a dense "carpet belt", exactly along its very "waist": Morocco, Tunisia, the Balkans, Turkey, the Caucasus, Iran, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan , Pakistan, India, Nepal, Mongolia, China ... In this issue we will talk about the most popular types of Persian carpets, which are numerous in the UAE. Read about the rest in the following issues of Russian Emirates.
Iranian (Persian) Carpets
The most famous, reference oriental carpets. There is a belief that the history of Iran is the history of the carpet, and all oriental carpets are still called "Persian". Iranian carpet weavers cherish traditions; for many centuries they adhere to the same pictorial motifs and elements. In Iran, there are several schools of carpet weaving located throughout the country. It is by the name of the area that Iranian carpets are distinguished.
Nain
- a small Iranian town, since ancient times famous for the production of wool of the highest quality. Carpets are not woven here for so long, but their fame has already spread throughout the world. The material used is wool mixed with silk, which is placed on a cotton base. A distinctive feature of “Naina” is the presence of curves in the figure, the predominance of blue, dark blue, green tones, ivory, and the use of the “medallion” as the only image on the carpet. They love plant motifs in Nain.The quality of the Nain carpets is determined by the LLA system, which shows the number of threads on the edge of each knot on the edge of the carpet, that is, what you can count in each of its borders. The fewer threads, the higher the quality. Good quality totals 9 threads ("nohla"), 6 threads are more expensive ("sewn"), and a 4-thread "scarlet" costs fabulous money. The most famous manufactory of Nain is called Habibian. These carpets are usually medium in size.
Carpets from the ancient capital of Persia, the city Isfahanare considered the most ancient Iranian carpets, recognized in the East and beyond many centuries ago.
Their motifs are very similar to “nain”, and they can be distinguished by the base material: the wool here is tied around silk, not cotton. In Isfahan carpets, images of a single “medallion” surrounded by vines and leaves are most often used. However, other motives are also used in the design: hunting scenes, images of the "tree of life".
The Isfahans are harmonious in their symmetry. Most often they use blue, indigo and pink colors against a background of ivory. The most valuable brand in Esfahan is Seraphian, but this name is often faked. Hakiki and Davry follow him.
Not far from Isfahan, in the town of Najafabad, imitations of famous carpets are made, but on a cotton basis.
Tabriz
- Carpets created by the masters of the second largest city in northern Iran. They are especially popular with contemporary interior designers due to the muted but rich color scheme. Perhaps the most famous of Persian rugs.Saturated red and blue are usually dominant, contrasting with ivory. Modern carpets incorporate greenish, blue and brown colors. Tabriz rugs are subdivided by design. Most famous - "mahi" - resembles the back of a fish, when viewed from above. And if you carefully look that this "back" is formed by miniature fish scattered in abundance on the canvas.
Design hiriz marked using geometric shapes and very similar to Turkish specimens. Both "makhi" and "khiriz" are made from cotton-based wool.
Naksh
- floral design, similar to the cunning plexus of henna painting traditional for the East; it is always saturated and visible from afar. Carpets "naksha" are created from a mixture of wool and silk, on a silk and less often cotton basis. Today, Tabriz masters are increasingly turning to the manufacture of panels and paintings.140 km from Tehran, in the holy city Gom (Qum), knit very expensive and very beautiful silk carpets. They always cost a fortune, but in terms of beauty and density of weaving, they have no equal.
Silk rugs are made on a silk basis. In rare cases, when using wool, be sure to add details from silk in order to give the carpet “playfulness”. The “hom” designs are very diverse: these are different “medallions”, flowers, branches, fruits, berries, gardens, domes, birds and hunting scenes. It doesn’t matter what the main color range of the “goma” is - reddish-brown, dark blue, orange and pink - you will find a turquoise color on almost every carpet.
More than a dozen "names" are still being produced in Iran, but all of them are seriously inferior in popularity to the above, although their quality is decent.
Anastasia Zorina
