Vintage Persian Serab Runner

This rug comes from Serab, a small village nestled in the Sabalan mountain range in northwestern Iran. The community is remote, and that remoteness is exactly what shaped the weaving tradition here, isolated from commercial pressures and outside influence, Serab weavers developed a style that is entirely their own. Serab rugs are almost always found in long, narrow runner formats. That is not a coincidence. The proportions reflect the architecture of traditional Persian homes, which were built long and narrow, and the rugs were made specifically to fit those spaces. They were domestic objects first, woven for the rooms they would live in. The designs are distinctive and immediately recognisable, long lozenge-shaped fields with crenelated diamond medallions running along the vertical axis, set against elaborate latticework backgrounds that echo the Jali screens of Persian architecture. It is a design vocabulary that belongs entirely to Serab. Hand-knotted from hand-spun wool on a cotton foundation. As a vintage piece, the colours have already softened and the pile has settled into itself. This rug has been improving since it was made.