Bidjar Bijar Persian Rugs

Bidjar — the heaviest carpet Persia produces

Bidjar (also written Bijar) is a Kurdish town in north-west Iran, and its rugs are unlike anything else woven in the country. The weavers work the weft in while it is still wet and beat it down with a heavy metal comb, row after row. As the yarn dries it contracts and locks, and the result is a carpet of extraordinary density and weight — the reason the trade has called them the iron rugs of Persia for well over a century.

What that buys you is wear. A Bidjar takes daily traffic in a way a finely knotted city carpet does not, and antique examples that have been walked on for a hundred years still have pile. This is the rug for the hallway, the dining room and the room the dogs go through.

The two designs to know

• Mahi (Herati) — the small lattice of rosettes framed by curved leaves, read in Persia as fish around a pond. Drawn geometrically in Bidjar rather than with the flowing line of a city workshop, usually on indigo or madder.
• Gol Farang — literally the foreign flower: naturalistic bunches of roses, taken from European textiles in the nineteenth century and absorbed into Kurdish weaving. The rose Bidjar is softer and lighter in feeling than the Mahi and often has an ivory or beige ground.

Halwai Bidjars are the finest group, more tightly knotted and with better wool than the standard production, and Sherkat Farsh marks the state-supervised workshop weaving of the twentieth century.

Living with a Bidjar — an honest note

The weight is not a figure of speech. A room-size Bidjar can weigh two to three times what a comparable Tabriz weighs, and moving one is a job for two people. Practical consequences worth knowing before you buy:

• Never fold one. The compacted foundation is stiff, and a sharp fold can crack the warp permanently. Bidjars are rolled, always, with the pile facing outwards.
• Check your doors. These are thick rugs. An inward-opening door with little clearance will not pass over one.
• The handle is firm, not plush. A Bidjar underfoot feels solid and slightly hard. If you want something soft to sit on the floor with, look at Berber or a Tibetan weave instead.

On antique pieces, the usual signs of age apply: lower pile in the walking lines, reduced or restored ends, occasional old repairs. Buying one keeps a rug that is already a century old in circulation instead of replacing it with something new — and each piece is described individually so you know what you are getting.

At a glance

• Origin: Bidjar, Kurdistan province, north-west Iran
• Construction: wet weft beaten down with a metal comb; exceptionally dense and heavy
• Knot: symmetric Turkish knot
• Pile: Kurdish highland wool
• Foundation: wool warp and weft in older pieces, cotton in later production
• Designs: Mahi (Herati), Gol Farang roses, medallion layouts
• Sizes: small accent pieces through to palatial formats above 500 × 300 cm
• Underfloor heating: suitable
• Label STEP Fair Trade: fair wages, no child labour, monitored working conditions
• Documentation: written assessment of origin, material and knot count with every rug

Care

Vacuum in the direction of the pile; a Bidjar tolerates normal suction better than most rugs, but keep the rotating brush bar off the fringes. Turn the rug end for end once a year. Blot spills rather than rubbing. Store and transport rolled, never folded. A hand wash every few years lifts the grit that a dense pile holds at its base; the weight makes this awkward to do at home. Customers in Germany can use our rug cleaning service in Würzburg, including collection and return in the region; elsewhere we are glad to help you find a specialist nearby.

Related collections

Persian rugs overview · Heriz · Sarouk · Bakhtiari · Palatial carpets · Runners