Bag Face, hand-knotted woollen pile on woollen warp and weft; Persian, West Iran, Kurdish; late 19th century,
WARP: white wool; Z2S; 15 threads per inch (60 per dm).
WEFT: dark red wool; Z2S; 2 shoots after each row of knots; 18 knots per inch (74 per dm).
PILE: wool; 6 colours: dark red, orange, dark blue, blue, dark brown and white; symmetrical knot tied around 2 warp threads; 135 knots to the sq. inch (2220 per sq. dm).
SIDE FINISH: one cord oversewn with blue wool
END FINISH: Lower: incomplete. 1" (2.5 cm) flatweave in soumak with evidence of 2 shoots of white weft below it. The soumak pattern is a blue zigzag creating two bands of triangles decorated by single soumak and diagonal weft wrapping. There is a very narrow band of white/dark brown weft twining before the pile. Upper: 3.5" (7 cm) wide. After a very narrow band of weft-twining in white/dark brown there are two passes of soumak (over three and under one) in red and then blue. Above are 13 tapestry woven blocks in dark red, red, dark blue and light blue, green and dark brown, each separated by a slit edged with buttonhole stitch. Above the blocks there are three passes of soumak in dark blue, dark red and blue followed by white and dark brown weft twining (see above) and then a line of soumak in red. Finally, there is a band of plainweave with blue weft, turned and stitched in place with brown hair.
DESIGN: Field: there is no ground colour but 7 bands of 4 or 3 and two half diamonds each within a fine-lined, dark red grid. The outer band of each diamond has a reciprocal latch-hook pattern in all the colours. The inner diamond of a contrasting colour encloses a hooked motif of three vertical diamonds.
Borders (from the centre outwards):
(1) 2 lines of brown and white offset knots
(2) 2 lines of dark brown and dark blue offset knots
(3) dark red or red ground with a blue zigzag with horned points and enclosing orange or white florets.
(4) 2 lines of dark red and dark blue offset knots.
(5) dark brown ground with white zigzag (compressed on both sides) between paired knots of blue or red.
(6) 2 lines of orange and dark red offset knots.
(7) blue ground with variously coloured rosettes. Along the top and bottom these are separated by small rosettes which along the sides become orange and white triangles.
(8) as (1)