11.5" x 18" Persian Qum Pure Silk Baby Rug | Workshop Sample, 900 KPSI | Black Field, Ivory Medallion
Before a buyer in ordered a room-size Qum silk rug, the workshop sent him one of these. A baby rug, 11.5" x 18" of pile with a long ivory silk fringe at each end, is a full working sample: the same pure silk pile on a silk foundation, the same 900 knots per square inch, the same dyes and the same drawing as the big pieces, made small enough to post. This one is a floral medallion on a black ground, and it was woven exactly the way a full-size Qum is woven: the silk alone in it costs about $240 at today's prices before a single knot is tied, and a weaver spent about 4 months tying roughly 180,000 of them. It is brand new and has never been used. A certificate of authenticity from Rugs.net accompanies the rug.
Design and Motifs
At the center a small black diamond holds a salmon pink 5-petal blossom with a blue eye, surrounded by 4 olive and burgundy buds and a ring of coral rosettes. Around it an ivory medallion, lobed and pointed at both ends, carries a ring of 8 fan-shaped leaves in powder blue and peach with mint green blossoms between them, then a second ring of red and blue flower sprigs, and the whole is framed by a scalloped burgundy and powder blue arabesque outline that curls into hooks at every lobe. Beyond the medallion the black field is a garden: clusters of ivory, coral, salmon and burgundy blossoms on pale green stems, hooked boteh and paisley forms in gold and rust filled with tiny flowers, and a large pink tulip pendant at the top and bottom center of the field. Nothing on the black is left empty. The border is ivory and carries a running vine of burgundy and rust boteh alternating with coral rosettes and small blue and mint blossoms, guarded by a thin blue stripe and a rust outer line, and a plain black selvage finishes the rug before the fringes.
Colors of This Black and Ivory Qum Silk Rug
The field is a true jet black, not navy, and in silk it does something wool cannot: it reads as matte from straight on and as a dark mirror from an angle, so the flowers on it seem to float. The medallion and the border are a warm ivory that turns to pale gold where the silk catches the light, and the burgundy that outlines the medallion is a deep wine red that darkens to near-black in its own shadow. Inside the flowers the palette is unusually wide for a piece this size: powder blue and a stronger denim blue in the medallion leaves and the field sprigs, a clear mint green in the buds, salmon and coral pink in the blossoms and the tulip pendants, a rust orange and a burnt gold in the boteh, an olive green in the stems, and small touches of white in the rosette centers. Because it is silk, every one of those colors shifts a shade lighter or darker as you move around the rug, which is the effect the sample was made to show a buyer.
Qum Silk Sample Rugs and What They Are For
Qum in central Persia is the town of pure silk, and its workshops compete on knot count and materials above everything else; the finest Qum rugs run 800 knots per square inch and beyond, and this sample is at the top of that range. Sample rugs, called wagireh in the trade, were woven so that dealers abroad could see and touch the quality before committing to a large order, and because the workshop was selling on the strength of them, they were never the place to cut corners. That history is why collectors chase them: a baby rug is the workshop's own proof of what it could do, at a fraction of the price of the full-size piece it advertised. For more on the town and its silk, read our Qum rug guide. At 11.5" x 18" this one is made to be framed and hung, set on a side table or a desk, or given as the first Persian silk rug in a collection, and it is the least expensive way to own a 900 knot Qum silk.
