Seneh

Senneh (present day Sanandaj) is a Kurdish town in north west Iran, in what is the eastern part of Kurdistan. Like all Kurdish rugs, those of Senneh are woven in the symmetric knot on a cotton foundation, although some rare and generally older examples can have silk warps. One unusual feature is that the warps can sometimes be dyed in bands of different colours, a feature also encountered on 17th century silk rugs from Kashan. All relationship with the generality of Kurdish weaving ends with the symmetric knotting. Senneh rugs are extremely fine and have delicate patterns, including the Herati, all-over repeated botehs of remarkable elegance or other dense floral patterns made up of hundreds of tiny elements. Indeed, Senneh rugs disprove the theory that symmetric knotting is unsuitable to elegant and delicate curvilinear floral patterns. Apart from pile rugs, Senneh is also celebrated for its ghileems, which, in the flat-woven medium, echo the designs found on pile rugs; again, the majority are woven in wool with white areas often woven in cotton. There are, however, some rare silk examples. The earliest Senneh ghileems, often with the most beautiful colouring and with striped designs embellished with curvilinear trailing vine patterns, seem to date from the late-18th century; they were either woven as, or turned into various items of apparel and there are several Qajar portraits executed in the late-18th and early-19th centuries showing the Shahs and members of the royal family and aristocracy wearing what seem to be coats, waistcoats and other garments made out of Senneh ghileems. There are also some very beautiful and distinctive saddle covers both in pile and ghileem weave from Senneh.