6'7" x 9'10" Persian Nain 6La Rug | Signed Habibian | Navy Field, Ivory Star Medallion, Wool and Silk on Silk
There is a short list of names in Persian weaving that a collector recognizes on sight, and Habibian of Nain is on it. This 6'7" x 9'10" rug carries the workshop's woven cartouche in the end border, reading Iran Nain Habibian, and it is a 6La, the finest grade Nain produces: about 700 knots per square inch, wool and silk pile on a pure silk foundation. That combination gives the drawing a precision you can read from the photographs, every vine a single knot wide, every palmette outlined in silk that catches the light. The design is the classic Nain composition, a 16-point ivory star medallion on a midnight navy field of Shah Abbas palmettes, with powder blue corner spandrels and a wide ivory border. The rug has never been on a floor, the pile is full and even, the ivory silk fringes are clean, and the selvages are bound in leather on the back. For the background on the town and its grades, see our Persian Nain Rugs Guide. A certificate of authenticity from Rugs.net accompanies the rug.
Design and Motifs
The medallion is drawn as a 16-point star, and it is built from the center outward in rings. A small ivory rosette with a camel sunburst sits at the very middle, surrounded by a ring of 8 pointed petals in mid blue, each one holding a tan flower on a navy ground. Around those petals sit 8 burgundy trefoil blossoms with white centers, the only red on the rug, placed so they read as a second star turned half a step. Beyond them the ivory ground of the medallion carries pale leaves, small flowers and camel palmettes, and the outer edge steps out in 16 scalloped lobes with a powder blue outline and an ivory palmette at the tip of each lobe. The navy field around the medallion is filled with a symmetric lattice of Shah Abbas palmettes, blossoms, curled leaves and cloud-band cartouches on thin burgundy and ivory vines, with a small ivory cartouche and pendant at the top and bottom center. The 4 corners of the field are cut by large ivory spandrels with a scalloped edge, each one holding an arabesque of navy and blue flowers, and set inside those spandrels a second, smaller spandrel in powder blue carries an ivory vine around a burgundy palmette. A camel inner guard with a blue vine and rosettes separates the field from the main border, which is wide and ivory, carrying a continuous line of large palmettes alternating with clusters of 5-petal blossoms on blue and brown stems. A powder blue outer guard with an ivory vine and a plain ivory selvage complete the frame, and the Habibian cartouche sits in the outer guard at one end.
Colors of This Navy and Ivory Nain Rug
Nain is famous for a palette of blue, ivory and camel and nothing else, and this rug is a textbook example of it. The field is a midnight navy that reads close to black in flat light and opens up to a deep marine blue under a lamp, and it is the darkest color on the rug by a wide margin, which is what makes the ivory medallion and spandrels stand out as if they were laid on top. The ivory itself is a warm cream rather than a white, and it is used for the medallion ground, the spandrels, the border and every outline, so that the drawing reads in ivory on navy from across the room. Between those two poles the weaver used a powder blue, soft and slightly gray, for the spandrel grounds, the outer guard and the medallion lobes, and a mid cornflower blue for the petals and the smaller flowers. A camel tan carries the inner guard and the border palmettes, with a warm brown for the stems and an olive for a few leaves, and a small amount of burgundy is kept for the 8 trefoils in the medallion, the vines and the corner palmettes. The silk in the pile sits in the ivory outlines and the pale flowers, so the design brightens as you move around it while the navy stays matte. The back shows the same colors in a lighter key with no bleeding, and the knot rows are almost invisibly fine.
Nain 6La and the Habibian Workshop
Nain is a small desert town east of Isfahan that took up rug weaving only in the 1930s and within a generation was producing some of the finest pieces in Persia. Its rugs are graded by La, the number of thread strands twisted into each warp: 9La is the standard commercial grade, 6La is the fine grade, and 4La is the rare top. A 6La with a silk foundation, as here, sits at the point where the knot count passes 600 and the rug becomes thin, supple and almost cloth-like in the hand. The Habibian family founded the workshop that made Nain's name; Fatollah Habibian is credited with bringing the Isfahan drawing style to the town, and the workshop's cartouche is the most sought-after signature in Nain weaving. Our guide to Nain 6La and Habibian rugs covers what sets these pieces apart. In the room-size class of 7x10 Persian rugs this is a piece for a formal living room, a dining room or a master bedroom, and it is fine enough that many buyers will put it on a wall.
