In the general market are found over fifty different kinds of rugs, most of which are named after the towns or districts in which they are made, from which they are marketed, or after the people who make them. There is generally also some slight difference in the weave, the material, the color, the design or the finish, which gives each class its distinguishing, technical character. Of late years, however, there has been such an intermingling of races and transmission of ideas from one country to another, that even the expert is often unable to identify a rug with the place in which it was made.
There is occasionally a dealer who has many of his own names which he uses to the extinction of all others and some of the names used in Western countries would not be recognized in the countries from which the rugs come. Under such circumstances classification becomes rather difficult and it is not to be wondered at that authorities sometimes disagree. Importers and dealers in Oriental rugs would find it greatly to their advantage if they had a strict rug nomenclature based on facts and if they discountenanced everything in the trade which tended towards charlatanism or inspired distrust in the minds of buyers.
In the classification to follow we will consider rugs from a geographical stand-point.
To begin, we will consider them in the following order: 1st, Persian; 2nd, Turkish; 3rd, Caucasian; 4th, Turkoman; 5th, Beluchistan; and 6th, Chinese.
No reference will be made to Indian rugs for the reason that, outside of the fact that they are made in India, they can nowadays hardly claim a right to be classed as Oriental products, inasmuch as they are wholly modern creations made merely upon a trade basis, often by machinery, and after designs furnished by American and European designers.
BOKHARA CAMEL BAG HALF
Size 4' × 2'10"
PROPERTY OF MR. J. H. STANTON, AUBURN, N. Y.
(See page [284])
| { | Bakhshis | |||||
| { | Herez | { | Gorevan | |||
| { | { | Serapi (a) | ||||
| { | Azerbijan | { | Kara Dagh (b) | |||
| { | { | Kashan | ||||
| { | { | Souj-Bulak (c) | ||||
| { | { | Tabriz | ||||
| { | ||||||
| { | { | Bijar, Sarakhs, (d) Lule (e) | ||||
| { | Ardelan | { | Kermanshah | |||
| { | { | Senna (c) | ||||
| { | ||||||
| { | { | Feraghan (f) | ||||
| { | { | Hamadan | ||||
| Persian or | { | { | Ispahan | |||
| Iranian | { | Irak-Ajemi | { | Joshaghan (g) | ||
| { | { | Saraband (h) | ||||
| { | { | Saruk | ||||
| { | { | Sultanabad | { | Mahal (i) | ||
| { | { | Muskabad (i) | ||||
| { | ||||||
| { | Farsistan or Fars | { | Niris, Laristan (j) | |||
| { | { | Shiraz | ||||
| { | ||||||
| { | { | Herat (k) | ||||
| { | Khorasan | { | Khorasan proper | |||
| { | { | Meshed | ||||
| { | ||||||
| { | Kirman | { | Kirman | |||
| { | ||||||
| { | Eastern Kurdistan | { | Kurdistan proper. | |||
(a) After the village of Serab.
(b) Mountains.
(c) A Kurdish product, named after a city.
(d) More commonly called Sarakhs, after the city by that name, which is situated on the border line between Persia and Turkestan and within a few miles of Afghanistan. They are so called because the people who make them formerly came from this district.
(e) A corruption of the Persian word "roules," which means a pearl.
(f) A province.
(g) A district. Joshaghan is the English way of spelling it and Djoshaghan the French way of spelling it.