Pictorial blue Loribaft Rug

This charming handmade Afghan pictorial rug will be a pleasure to gaze upon and a joy to walk over wherever you lay it. 

It shows a blue main colour with an enchanting all-over theme of trees, including Cypress trees as well as featuring motifs of birds, wandering goats (or are they dogs?) and grazing elks. 

What this Pictorial blue Loribaft rug is made from

This eye-catching handmade Afghan rug is made from traditional carpet weaving materials: wool and cotton. Each of these fibres is durable and long-lasting. 

The weaver has used wool for the pile. This is luxurious and hard wearing to walk over, but from a visual perspective, the fascinating patterns that catch our eye are made from the woollen pile.

The cotton part of this Afghan rug is the foundation material, also known as the warps. It's a part of the rug that we don't really pay much attention to; the warps however, play an important part of the construction of the rug. 

The warps are the earliest yarns to be secured to the loom before the rug weaving can commence. These warps are long strings of cotton which are stretched from top to bottom of the loom, and they are also what the knots are tied onto. 

On this rug, you will notice the beautiful and intricate finishing on the ends and the fringes. What you are looking at here is the ends of the warp threads. Secured in a neat lattice formation and the fringed ends have been bunched and wrapped with colourful yarn.

How this Afghan rug was handmade

Although this is a modern rug, it was made by traditional carpet making methods that have been used for generations. 

The luxurious pile that we feel underfoot was made by the technique of hand-knotting. This is a time-consuming way of rug making, but is still the best. Each tuft of pile is made from a knot tied onto pairs of warps threads. The weaver meticulously ties the knots in rows across the width of the loom. Each row of knots is followed by a series of weft threads which are woven between the warps and are beaten against the knot row. Row-by-row the rug takes shape. All of the knots combined together form the colours and design of the rug. 

As you can imagine, there is thousands of knots contained within this Afghan rug - in fact, we'd estimate there to be around 350,000 knots in this rug.

The design inspiration of "Loribaft"

This Afghan pictorial rug draws upon the tribal design heritage of Persian Gabbeh rugs. "Loribaft" was a name given to a fine type of Gabbeh rug. These Loribaft rugs are appealing because of their whimsical designs and eye-catching colours. 

The name can be broken into two parts: "Lori" is a famous Persian tribe, and "baft" translates to woven. 

Where to use this Pictorial rug in your home

The nature of this handmade Afghan rug is such that you could use it either on the floor or on a wall as a wall hanging. 

This 6x4 sized rug is a handy size that could be positioned in numerous places in your home. It's tough enough for use in an entrance hall, yet is luxurious enough to be positioned in a bedroom.

Should you wish to hang it on the wall, we can arrange to sew a sleeve on the back of it, so you can hang it from a dowel rod. Please contact us for further information on costs.

Key details: 

• Country of origin: Afghanistan
• Size: 183×121cm / 6’0″x4’0″
• Thickness: 6mm
• Pile: Wool, hand-knotted
• Warp: Cotton
• Age: New