Salmiya

I assume that only few Westerners who have lived for some time in the Middle East have not become addicted to oriental carpets. It is wonderful, handmade artwork. You’ll see the efforts, the vision, and talents of the artisan. A good carpet always tells a story. Interesting carpets may also have little anomalies in symmetry or irregularities in pattern which invite us to study them in greater detail. Sooner or later you will end up in counting the colors and checking the type of the knots: Is it Ghiordes (Turkish) or Senneh (Persian) ? And you may also count the knots per square inch. The finer the better, but tribal carpets may have few and are charming anyway. Persian carpets have been manufactured for thousands of years. The so far oldest fragment is the Pazyryk carpet which had been discovered in the Altai Mountains in Siberia in 1949. Although it was found in a tomb of Scythian prince, the pattern is Achaemenian. Amazing is the number of symmetrical knots per square inch: 232 (or ...