1800s, Persian; Sehna

Carpet, hand-knotted woollen pile on cotton warp and weft; Persian, 19th century
Warp: white cotton; Z?S; 44 threads per inch/176 per dm; ?depressed
Weft: white cotton; Z-spun,possibly Z3S; ? number of shoots after each row of knots; ?23 knots per inch/92 per dm
Pile: wool; 7 colours: red, light red, yellow, light green, dark blue, light blue, white; asymmetrical knot tied around two threads and open to the left; 506 knots per sq.inch/8096 per sq.dm
Side Finish; one cord oversewn with dark red wool
End Finish: Upper: 5 passes of dark red woollen weft; 1 row of warp twining; 2 rows of offset knots; 1 row of warp twining and loose warp threads forming a fringe. Lower: ???
Design: Field: light blue ground with a large red ground serrated lozenge framing a serated central lozenge which has [a light blue ground] and pendants. All are covered with a small scale Herati design on a light blue ground. The Herati pattern has a red diamond with light red blossoms, light red and red leaves when it is on the light blue ground, and a green diamond with predominantly white and dark blue blossoms and light red and light blue leaves when it is on the red ground.
Borders: from the inside:
[1] dark blue ground, light red and red blossoms and diamondshaped leaves on a finegreen meander
[2] white ground; broken meander predominantly light red and outlined in dark blue
[3] as [1]
[4] yellow ground; anguklar meander with alternately lighting blue and pink blossoms, white serrated leaves; light green meander outlined in dark blue
[5] as [1]
[6] as [2]
[7] as [1]

Purchased by Lt.-Col. Murdoch Smith.

Sehneh

The most noticeable elements of this pattern (sometimes called the Herati pattern) are a diamond and four curling leaves. It remains one of the most popular carpet patterns and appears with many variations: radically different effects can be achieved by simply changing the proportion of the motifs or by using colour to highlight particular parts of it. The use of colour in carpets is a design factor which is often over-looked. One pattern is used across the field of this carpet, but it looks quite different within the red lozenge where colour has been used to emphasis different elements of it.

312-1884