Craft · a Light

A carpet signed by its maker holds 26 million knots

Two carpets were woven for the shrine of Shaykh Safi al-Din at Ardabil in northwest Iran and finished in 1539 or 1540. Both carry a date and an inscription naming the work of the servant of the threshold, Maqsud of Kashan, with a couplet of Hafiz above it, which is rare because carpets are usually anonymous. The larger, now in London, is about ten and a half metres long and contains something near twenty six million knots, roughly three hundred and fifty in every square inch, each one tied by hand around two warp threads. Persian workshops used an asymmetric knot looped around one warp, Turkish workshops a symmetric knot around two, and the difference can still be read off the back of any old rug.

Ardabil, Iran · dated 946 AH, 1539 CE