Handmade Red Afghan Mamluk rug

Add an ambiance of intrigue and dreamy eastern charm to your room with this handmade red Afghan Mamluk rug. Ideal for placement in living rooms and entrance halls, the geometric medallion design of this rug will provide the perfect focal point to your room.  

The colours & design of this handmade red Afghan Mamluk rug

This Mamluk rug offers visual cosiness to your room with its rich red field colour. Within its intricate geometric pattern it contains numerous other colours too. These include a prominent cream border, along with cream detailing plus additional shades of orange, ochre, blue, green and brown. 

The design of this handmade Afghan rug oozes in history. In recent years, the innovative Afghan carpet weavers and producers have honed their expertise into recreating ancient rug designs from across the world, adding their unique Afghan flair to their carpet creations. 

This Afghan rug takes it's name from historic carpets produced in Egypt during the reign of the Mamluk dynasty (AD. 1250-1517). A few of the Mamluk rugs produced in this period still exist today and can be viewed in museums such as the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. 

In this red Afghan Mamluk rug, it is the eight pointed central medallion in colours of cream, orange and blue that your eye is drawn to. This contrasts beautifully with the red field which is adorned with an intriguing myriad of geometric motifs including roundels, star flowers and rosettes. 

The materials this red Mamluk rug was created from

This Afghan Mamluk rug was handmade from wool and cotton. The pile of this Afghan rug is made from hand-knotted wool, which was knotted onto cotton foundations. 

Not only is the wool pile hand-knotted, but this yarn was also hand-spun which results in a stronger fibre. The cotton foundations are the warp threads of the rug. The warp threads are the first yarns attached to the loom before the knotting can begin. On the completed rug, you can see the warps at each end of the rug as they are also the rug's fringes. 

The fringes of this Afghan handmade rug have also been created into a decorative feature. Firstly the fringes have been secured into a neat lattice formation, and then grouped and wrapped with colourful yarn. You can see close-up images of this beautiful feature in pictures 7 and 8.

How this Afghan handmade rug was made

In many ways the method by which this Afghan Mamluk floor rug was made has changed little since the days of the Mamluk Sultans. This rug was handmade by hand-knotting the woollen pile onto cotton warps (the Sixteenth century Cairo rugs were hand-knotted onto woollen warps). 

The method of hand-knotting is a time-honoured way of weaving rugs. On this hand-knotted rug, each tuft of pile is created from a strand of wool tied onto pairs of warp threads - each tuft is therefore formed from a knot.

All of the different coloured knots that the weaver carefully ties in the correct sequence combine to make the pattern of the rug. These days, the visual pattern plan of the rug is designed with the aid of a computer, however, not so long ago (20-30 years ago) these patterns were drawn by hand by carpet artists. 

Key details:

• Country of origin: Afghanistan
• Size: 198x146cm / 6'6"x4'10"
• Thickness: 7mm
• Pile: Wool, hand-knotted
• Warp: Cotton
• Age: New