2'6" x 3'6" Turkish Hereke Pure Silk Rug | Haj Khanoumi Crown Design | 14x14 | Signed

This 2'6" x 3'6" Turkish Hereke is woven at 14x14 quality, approximately 1250 knots per square inch, in the finest Bursa silk on a pure silk foundation. Very few weavers can work at this density; a piece like this represents the ceiling of what a Hereke loom can do. The design is the famous Haj Khanoumi, the Millefleurs, sometimes called the Crown for its silhouette, a pattern celebrated in antique Tehran carpets of the late Qajar and early Pahlavi periods and here paid tribute by Turkey's greatest silk workshop. Woven about 30 years ago, never used, signed, and in excellent condition, it comes with a certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

The composition builds like architecture. A crowned niche rises through the center: at its heart, an ornate vase on a pedestal releases a bouquet of carnations and rosettes into a mint green panel where tiny songbirds perch among the stems. Around this panel, thousands of miniature blossoms, the millefleurs that give the design its name, carpet every surface in tight, even rows, first on deep navy within the arch, then on soft celadon across the outer field. That is the astonishing part: at 14x14, each of those flowers, smaller than a fingernail, is a complete drawing with petals, center, and outline. An ivory border of scrolling vines, tulips, and small vases frames the whole, and the workshop's woven signature sits in the guard band.

Color

The palette is cool, calm, and unmistakably aristocratic. Deep navy fills the crown, sown with burgundy and ivory blossoms; the surrounding field softens to celadon and cream scattered with French blue and olive gold; the central panel glows mint green behind the vase. Burgundy appears only as punctuation, in the flower rows, the panel frame, and the thin outer band, so the rug reads serene rather than rich-dark. Because every thread is Bursa silk, the colors shift with the light: the navy deepens toward midnight from one angle and lifts toward steel blue from another, and the pale grounds shimmer like watered silk. It is a colorway that flatters both traditional rooms and spare modern ones.

Origin

Hereke, the imperial weaving town on the Gulf of Izmit near Istanbul, has supplied palaces since the Ottoman court founded its workshop there in the 1840s, and Bursa, the old silk capital of Anatolia, has always supplied Hereke's finest thread. The truly interesting story here is the design: a silk Hereke woven with a Persian pattern is a love letter from one great weaving tradition to another, proof of the admiration Hereke masters held for Persian carpet art. They chose the Haj Khanoumi of old Tehran and executed it at a fineness even the originals rarely reached. A signed 14x14 Bursa silk Hereke is a rarity in any market; one carrying this design is a collector's find.