Full Description: Beautiful fragment of a NW
Persian long rug. Killer color especially in the
border. Lots of old repairs.
A small point but this pattern is not
actually an Afshan. It is a closely related
pattern called a Harshang. I suspect that this
piece is early 19th century. These rugs were made
in the Caucasus (Baku) until the early 19th
century then in the face of the Russian advance
there is a division in the Harshang type rugs.
The weavers who stayed in the Caucasus evolved
into what we see later as the Karagashli. This
is not one of those. Other weavers moved to
Persian Azerbaijan where they produced these rugs
in the Tabriz area. This border says Tabriz to me
while the body remains true to it's Baku
antecedents.
