Saruk Sarouk Rugs and Carpets

SARUK RUGS By Arthur Urbane Dilley (Western Persia) The modern oriental rugs made at Saruk are the Ispahans of the present day. Although not to be compared with the finest antique weavings of this district, they are tightly woven, gracefully designed, commonly with center medallion, and harmoniously colored with dark, rich dyes. The people who make them, living (but of the paths of trade up in the Feraghan mountains, have held well to the old traditions of their art. Oriental rugs By Arthur Urbane Dilley, A. U. Dilley & Co., inc., 1909

Saruk/Sarouk Rugs and Feraghan Rugs are very much one in the same, it is just a matter of time. Before 1920 Feraghan was the market leader for that region and all over Persian Arak weavers wove feraghan Rugs. Then the market shifted and Sarouk rugs became more valued in the marketplace. So it is almost certain that a woman may have woven feraghan rugs in her home on her loom and her daughter may have woven Sarouk rugs in the same house on the same loom. So for now I am going to deal with Sarouk and feraghan rugs together. I will probably split them later but fo now it works.

Antique Feraghan Rug Retail price $40.00 FERAGHAN RUG No. 28, Page 91. Size 8' x 4'-3" An antique of fair quality and attractive colors and designs. Retail price $40.00. A little over thirty-three square feet at about $1.21 a square foot. The mystery of the oriental rug: the mystery of the rug, the prayer rug, some advice to purchasers of oriental rugs: by George Griffin Lewis, J. B. Lippincott company, 1914

FERAGHAN Country The plain of Feraghan, seven thousand feet above the sea, surrounded by mountains, lies just west of the line of travel between Teheran and Ispahan. The mountains of this region resemble the Highlands of Scotland, and in the clannishness of the people and their feuds they remind one of Scott's stories of Scottish border life. The hillsides, where large flocks find pasturage, are radiant with flowers— the tulip, iris, narcissus, carnation, red anemone, scarlet poppy, yellow snapdragon, flower of henna, and others dot nature's carpet with brilliant colorings. So that perhaps this is one reason for the close all-over floral patterns of the old Feraghans, which are among the finest rugs of the old looms. There are two characteristic de- Designs signs—one, the Herati, with its flowers enclosed in cloud bands, like the Herat rugs, and the other, the " flower of henna," its tree-like shapes of yellow flowers arranged in rows through the carpet and surrounded by a profusion of floral designs. Sometimes a medallion center, with the tulip and other flowers, is set in the center of a floral field; or, again, from free and graceful curves in the center are flower-stalks united with rhomboids, with flowers from the center; but whatever the design, the garlands of flowers are in subdued colors. The borders are an important feature, of which the ground of the widest is often of a soft, restful green, with wavy lines connecting floral patterns. The field is usually dark blue, sometimes a soft red or ivory, which gives a rich coloring, although the modern rugs are more pronounced and less refined in tone. While they are a firm and durable rug, they are more loosely woven than the Kermanshah and Senneh. The modern Feraghan, made in great numbers, is of coarser texture, with longer pile than the antiques, and may be considered an excellent rug of the cheaper quality of Persians. It is well suited to living-rooms, and the coarser ones for summer homes and offices. The difference in texture is accounted for by the number of knots to the square inch. While antiques have from one hundred to one hundred and fifty, moderns have as low as thirty. The warp and woof are of cotton and the pile of good wool, closely cut in the old and longer in the new. The edge is overcast in black, and the ends, one with narrow selvage and the other with a short fringe. They come in all sizes, from three Size by five to eight by twenty feet, with many carpet sizes. The name Iran is often given to Iran these rugs, but it may be applied to all Persian rugs, as Iran was the ancient name of Persia . How to know oriental rugs, a handbook, By Mary Beach Langton, D. Appleton and Company, 1904

FERAGHAN FABRICS by John Kimberly Mumford

Mainly for the purpose of condensation and in order to bring the matter into easier focus, I have chosen to consider the Feraghan rug district as comprising practically all the central province of Irak Ajemi, extending from the eastern slope of the Bakhtiyaris to the great salt deserts or " Death Valleys " of Persia on the east, and from the Caspian Sea southward to the grim left shoulder of the Kuh Banan. The adjustment is somewhat arbitrary, and considered from a geographical standpoint would be erroneous, for the Feraghan district is clearly defined by the maps and does not include the localities where some of the rugs here classified as of the Feraghan group are manufactured. There will be imparted to the Feraghan by this arrangement a great diversity, but in reality not greater than the small territory enjoys, since the actual Feraghan industry has become wholly commercial, and under direction of European managers the weavers of the province now turn out copies of almost every known fabric as well as the original variety which made it famous.

But aside from this, viewed as a whole its fabrics show, under the present classification, more nearly than those of any other section, all the features of design and color common to Persian carpets, whether recent or traditional, though in all save one variety they are lacking in the peculiar ornamental character which abides in the Kerman and Tabriz. In examples which will be noted, it is plain that some of the group have to a certain extent been made in imitation of the medallion rugs. Where they have been the expression solely of the Persian genius they preserve more of apparent spontaneity; there is more of nature in them, more likeness to the carpeting of blossoms upon which, in imagination if not in fact, the Persian treads his whole life through.

There is close resemblance between some of these carpets of Feraghan and the fine fabrics of Senneh, which, as has already been said, are, in spite of proximity to the Turkish towns of Bijar, Hamadan and Tabriz, fairly loyal to Iranian tenets and fashion in art. The difference between the several products of this comprehensive group lies mainly in the designs adopted and the quality of material used.

As floor coverings they are of about equal value. Exception, however, must be made to the common grades of Feraghan proper. This variety marks in Persia, as the low class Ghiordes does in Turkey, the maximum of deterioration from an artistic standpoint. With quantity alone in view and with an ancient reputation to trade upon, quality, for which its name was for centuries honored, seems to have been lost sight of for a time.

Feraghan Proper.—The saving clause in whatever may be said of modern Feraghan rugs must be that until lately they have retained the typical patterns and colors, but it requires some imagination to form from some of the Feraghans of to-day an idea of what their prototypes were. More wholesome, well wrought and altogether likeable floor coverings than the old-time Feraghans it would be hard to find. To the Persian they are the acme of carpeting. The Herati design, which has been held almost a distinctive mark of the Feraghan, has been, on the whole, quite steadfastly adhered to In one form or another—possibly because familiarity enables the weavers to produce it quickly. In the better examples it is repeated upon a ground usually blue, with rich but modest variations of color. The borders, well balanced in width against the body of the rug, are wrought after the common plan of alternating rosettes and palmettes upon a waving vine. The borders have more white and pale tints, and more pronounced blues and red than the body. The ground of the main stripe is often laid in some shade of green. The very old pieces leave no room for doubt that this diaper and the same general character have long been distinctive of Feraghan carpets.

The other design most often found in old and finely wrought Feraghans, is the Guli Hinnai, or Flower of the Henna, to which reference has already been made in the chapter on Design. It is more ornate than the Herati, and when well woven and in the antique coloring makes a much richer and more effective carpet.

Within the past year or two the Sultanabad firm, which is paramount in Feraghan, and some weavers in other sections, have begun reproducing this design in some excellent rugs, though chiefly in small sizes. For some time hitherto the Guli Hinnai had been much used in large, slipshod form, in coarse carpets.

Many modern Feraghans, borrowing from all sources whatever will fill space, have a huge medallion in the central field, which, with the small corner spaces, has usually an ivory or white ground. The medallion is broken by three more or less geometrical diamond shaped devices, two in blue, supporting a central and larger one in red. All of the central field not taken up by these labor-savers is filled with the recognized small Herat pattern on a blue ground. This design for Feraghan has been largely adopted by the manufacturers of Persian carpets in America as well as in the factory towns of Persia and Turkey. Its borders sometimes preserve vaguely the old conventional Herat or Persian ideas, but more often the main stripe is made up of separate flower devices. Running patterns are retained in the small border stripes. Some of the latter Feraghans have wandered so far from their traditional designs as to use, for the central medallion, geometrical shapes somewhat like those of the Caucasians, or the singular medallion with plain ground so common in the Hamadans.

The true Feraghans are worked in the Senneh knot. The weft is of cotton, which in the moderns has deteriorated commensurately with the rest of the fabrics. Their pile is of wool. Instead of from ninety to one hundred and fifty knots to the square inch, moderns sometimes run as low as thirty.

Sultanabad.—In its practical phase the whole enormous rug industry of the province of Feraghan itself and much of that of the surrounding territory centers in Sultanabad. It is the carpet headquarters of the European firm which controls so large a part of the weaving business of this section of Persia. Aside from the old designs and the modifications of them to which reference has been made above, the Sultanabad carpets are the conceits of European and American designers, working, in a way, on the old Persian models, but changing the colors and supplying such additions as seem likely to meet capricious demands. The regulation grades are heavy carpets of the same sizes as those made in Ghiordes and Oushak, but rather superior to those in quality. In the American markets the Sultanabads are often called " Savalans," after the range of mountains which towers to the north of the district. In the wholesale trade they are classed as "Extra Modern Persians." The designs of this order are known to the weavers as tereh Lemsa. The groundwork is usually of a pale yellowish cast, and the patterns, vines, flowers and the like, are boldly drawn, in stable shades of red, blue and green. The general effect is brilliant and the carpets have on the whole given satisfaction. Harsh criticism has been passed on the Sultanabad enterprise, in various quarters, on the ground that it had urged the weavers to hasty work and by confining them strictly to the designs placed in their hands had substituted European ideas for the " spontaneous originality " which in times past has been the greatest charm of all Oriental art. On the other hand it may be, and is, contended that the Persian populace, having little or no means to prosecute the work of carpet-making, would have been forced to forget its craft entirely if some competent agency had not intervened to supply the necessary materials and support. In this measure, at least, concerns of this sort have been conservative forces and the employment which they have afforded has without question kept life in the body of many a poverty-stricken Persian who otherwise would long ago have surrendered in the struggle for the wretched bread of the country.
Oriental rugs by John Kimberly Mumford, 4th Edition, Scribner, 1921