Lavar Kerman Prayer Rug, Southeast Persia, late 19th century Lot 57

Lavar Kerman

Kerman is both a city and a Province of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The city of Kerman is the largest in the province while the most importet city is Rafsanjan as it is the the home of his excellency Former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. So a Kerman rug may be from the city but more likely the carpet would come from the Province. Raver or Lavar as it is called in the West has had the reputation for the finest Kerman carpets. These so called Lavar Kerman may actually be made in a number of places in Kerman but the market calls them Lavar Kerman. Evidence shows that Laver Kerman rugs were also made in Rafsanjan and that the production of certain producers such as Atiyeh are sold as Lavar Kerman.

Raver was a town 120 miles from the city of Kerman where American companies owned a large number of looms. Through the 20th century the Atiyehs were a major producer of Kerman carpets. It only stopped when due to the Islamic revolution and ensuing difficulties they shifted production to China.

I am pleased to mention that through the efforts of Vice President Seyed Hossein Mar'ashi and Dr. Khosrow Sobhe of the Iranian Carpet Exporters Association working with Tom Atiyeh of Portland Oregon, Atiyeh International, LTD. has returned to Kerman.

In the twentieth century Laver Kerman carpets made a major design shift. One of the key designers in this change was Mohammed Arjomand Kermani. To the left we have a nice example of his work.

Arjomand Lavar Kerman Carpet, Raver Kerman, Mid 20th century

We can expect Kerman carpets to range between 200 and 400 knots per square inch. If a carpet is towards the upper end of the range then it is often called Lavar Kerman. mid to lower end of the scale it is called Kerman. At the low end or below 200 kpsi if the carpet has blue wefts then an attribution to Yazd must be considered.

One consideration that I use in attribution is the borders. It is not an absolute but is a clue is the propensity to use broken or nontraditional borders. Most Persian carpets use a box or frame system of borders. What I am trying to say is that the border frames the field and the field does intrude into the border and vise a versa. As we can see in the Arjomand Kerman carpet above the exact line between field and border is not so rigorously defined. This is getting to be more common but traditionally when I see this I think Kerman, Yazd, or Kashmar.

Heinrich Jacoby mentioned a propensity to use Purple and Nile Green. Jacoby, Heinrich. How To Know Oriental Rugs and Carpets

A Lavar Kerman carpet, first quarter 20th c lot 145

Persian Knot, Open Left, Depressed Warps

Structure: Depressed asymmetrical knot open to the left. However particularly in older Kerman Rugs we see three shots of weft. In the first course it is rigid. the second course is sinuous and the third course is rigid. this is a distinctive weave most similar to a Vase Carpet" weave. This appears to be the main reason that (the woman British Doctor) made a tentative attribution to Kerman for all Vase Carpets. The similarity between Vase Carpet weave and Kerman weave are similar but not exactly the same. Whereas I have seen a new Vase Carpet weave from Khorasan.