Persian & Oriental Silk Rugs

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See our current range of 100% silk rugs, rugs with silk details and rugs with silk foundations.

Persian & Oriental silk rugs are the most intricate, and often most valuable, of all hand-knotted rugs. The fine yet strong silk fibres used in these rugs allow more knots per square inch to be tied giving a clearer pattern with more detail and increased likeness to real-life, a good analogy being that of an HDTV over a regular TV.

The most valuable silk rugs are 100% silk from the warp and weft to the pile. Because of their silk foundation there can be more warp strings (visible as tassles or fringes at the ends of the rug) across with width - meaning more knots can be tied in a given area. With the more expensive materials coupled with finer knot counts comes more skilled artisans. Below is a Persian Qom silk rug in a relatively large size, the rug below is 3x2m whereas most silk rugs are much smaller (often around 1.5x1m).

Many Persian & Oriental rugs are wool, often 'kork' wool or merino and have silk details. Included in these are many rugs woven in Nain and Tabriz, often the white areas in these fine rugs use silk details to give them added luxury and depth.

Other rugs are knotted in wool but based on a silk, rather than cotton, foundation. This gives the rug strength yet flexibility while allowing for tighter, more accurate knotting than thicker strands of cotton would.

Some rugs, particularly those from Kashmir can be made from silk but woven on a cotton foundation, these tend to be larger pieces with lower knot counts. The idea being that a person can have a large rug made from silk without the need to spend tens of thousands of pounds. These rugs will generally have a knot-count similar to a good wool rug, meaning it will take the same time to weave. Any additional costs over a fine wool rug are due to the more expensive materials used without the extra time, labour and expertise required to weave the piece over a normal wool carpet.

A typical Persian or Oriental rug made in wool might have between 100 and 300 knots per square inch - a typical 100% silk rug on the other hand would have between 300 and 600 KPSI. As a result, weaving the rug will require 3-4 times the amount of work which becomes more skilled the more intricate the pattern; meaning at least 3-4 times the price. However, silk rugs are well worth the investment. Not only are they beautiful works of art that can be admired for generations to come but some of the most expensive rugs ever sold at public auction are silk.

Some of the finest silk rugs can have more than 1,000 knots per square inch but these are extremely rare and most likely found in museums or private collections.

There are a few things to note when buying a silk rug. Firstly, many untrustworthy dealers, particularly abroad, sell artificial silk rugs claiming they are silk. Be careful to use reputable dealers particularly when dealing with silk items. 'Art-silk' which is synthetic materials such as Rayon (cellulose), is not bad in itself, the material gives a soft luxurious feel similar to silk and offers good stain resistance. These are often suited to machine-made equivalents or modern rugs to give them a silk-like appearance without the high cost of the fabric. But to claim an art-silk rug is real silk is misleading and unethical at best. Another major issue is that artificial silk has many problems when it comes to cleaning, colours often run badly and when wet white areas begin to yellow. We do not recommend buying silk rugs abroad unless you are certain the rug is genuine item or are an experienced collector.

An extreme example of this is a customer who came into our store with 3 "silk" rugs for cleaning. One of these was a high quality 575 KPSI Chinese silk; another was a Chinese dragon rug made with what appeared to be mercerized bamboo "silk" fibre similar to rayon; while the third was a synthetic viscose rayon fibre. One customer, with three 'silk' rugs, yet only one was genuine silk.

Real silk

Mercerized Bamboo

Rayon Art-Silk

Another important factor is the level of foot traffic a silk rug has to put up with. You do not want your intricate masterpiece to be destroyed by hoards of teenagers with mucky shoes trampling it every day in a hallway; many people hang silk rugs on the wall or keep them in formal rooms that do not get heavy use. Another downside to art-silk is the textile strength - while wool is extremely strong and robust (folding on itself 20,000 times before breaking) and silk not as strong but still reliable at 8,000 folds; rayon breaks at just 1,000 and often a lot less for lower quality grades. While silk rugs do not have the same strength as wool they are less susceptible to losing their shape in the way wool rugs can, and do not rot as badly as cotton which is used in most wool rugs for the foundations, hence many of the worlds' oldest rugs are silk.

Quality silk rugs are robust pieces, but cleaning should only be carried out by a trained professional. This brings up another problem with many art-silk rayon rugs, there are many horror stories of heavy dye running in synthetic rayon carpets during washing. Unfortunately many people do not know their 'silk' carpet is in fact artifical silk until after this happens. It is difficult to wash a silk rug but even more so for an art-silk replica. While it is possible to carefully clean your own wool rug, doing so with a silk rug is definitely not recommended. We would recommend you to consider the planned usage and maintenance involved before purchasing a silk rug.

There are a number of tests for silk with varying levels of usefulness. The rub test suggests rubbing the rug to see if it heats up or not, a silk rug should feel warm whereas a art-silk will remain cool - personally we do not find this test very useful, or accurate. Another method is the burn test, get a small strand of fabric and hold it with tweezers and attempt to burn it. A silk rug, because it is made of protein (the same as hair) will smell like burnt hair (or more accurately feathers, sometimes charred meat) and will ball up when on fire, the ash should be crispy. A rayon or art-silk fabric will smell of burnt paper or wood (most paper is made from cellulose) and the ash will be softer and chalky. Many fine wools can often be mistaken for silk which creates a problem as both smell of hair when burnt due to their protein content. The most accurate method of testing for silk is to immerse it in a chemical test solution - guidance on this can be found online.

With these factors in mind, make your decision whether you want to go for the most intricate and collectable of rugs. Up until 2009 the world's most expensive rug sold at public auction was a 300 year old Isfahan silk rug which fetched $4.5m in New York (2008). Silk rugs are an excellent choice if they are to sustain light traffic and the budget is permitting. They are the pinnacle of the rug world and are exquisite centre-pieces and focal points for any room or collection.

See our current range of 100% silk rugs, rugs with silk detailing and rugs with silk foundations.