Handmade Bakhtiar carpet

Cosy-up your home with this traditionally designed handmade Bakhtiar carpet. Featuring an age-old Persian village rug design, this Afghan carpet showcases an all over floral panelled theme of Cypress trees and floral emblems. 

The colours used create an ambience of warmth with lightness. It displays a rich rusty-red field / main colour along with secondary colours of cream and green. It contains numerous other detail colours including orange, rust and tiny touches of navy blue. 

Discover some more about this Handmade Bakhtiar carpet

This Bakhtiari design carpet was handmade in Afghanistan. In recent years, the ingenious Afghani rug producers have been recreating historic rug designs from across the world. Utilising their rug producing heritage and technical knowhow to make these designs more appealing for modern tastes. 

This Bakhtiar carpet draws inspiration from a distinctive type of Persian carpet woven by the Bakhtiar tribe of Persia. The Bakhtiar were a historically powerful, once nomadic tribe which has mostly settled into villages west of Isfahan in central Persia. In the towns such as Chaleshotor and Shahr Kurd elaborate garden design rugs were produced. This handmade Afghan carpet is influenced by these garden design rugs. 

What this handmade carpet is made from

Akin to the tradition of Persian village Bakhiar rugs, this Afghan carpet is made with a wool pile and cotton foundations. 

The pile is made from high quality Afghan wool, which was naturally dyed and hand-spun. This is noticeable from the gentle and attractive variations of colour. The hand-spun nature of the wool allows for a sturdier fibre, because spinning the wool by hand creates a tight twist to the yarn. 

The cotton foundations are the warp threads. These have an important role in the carpet. Indeed, the warps are the first yarns that are attached to the loom before the weaving can start and they are what the knots are secured onto. 

On this rug, you might notice and admire the neatness of the fringe. These are secured in a tidy lattice formation. On a handmade rug like this, the fringes are not sewn on afterwards, but are in fact an integral part of the rug as they are also the rug's warps. 

How this Afghan carpet was made

This Afghan Bakhtiar carpet was handmade by age-old carpet weaving techniques. These methods are little changed over generations. 

The woollen pile of this Afghan carpet was made by hand-knotting tufts of coloured wool onto pairs of warp threads. Each knot makes a single tuft of pile. The weavers (there would have been two  weavers making this rug) tie the knots in rows across the width of the loom. Each row of knots is followed by a series of threads called wefts which are woven betwixt the warps and are beaten closely to the row of knots. A rug like this has many rows of knots, the expert placement of the coloured knots combine to make the pattern of the rug. 

Using this Bakhtiari carpet in your home

Oriental rugs are well known for their durability. This Afghan carpet was handcrafted using traditional techniques that have proven over time to be long-lasting. The natural fibres used in it's creation: wool and cotton are renowned for their hard wearing properties.

This handmade carpet is therefore suitable for use in many places in your home. It's size and visual interest makes it a good candidate for use in a living room between sofas. However, it is also robust enough to position in an entrance hall (size permitting of course). 

Key details: 

• Country of origin: Afghanistan
• Size: 238×175cm / 7’10″x5’9″
• Thickness: 8mm
• Pile: Wool, hand-knotted
• Warp: Cotton
• Age: New