Ersari Rugs — Authentic Turkmen Tribal Carpets

Ersari rugs — Turkmen weaving from the Amu Darya

The Ersari are one of the Turkmen weaving tribes of Central Asia. Their territory runs along the Amu Darya through the borderlands of northern Afghanistan, southern Turkmenistan and parts of Uzbekistan. The other weaving groups usually named alongside them are the Tekke, Salor, Saryk, Yomud, Chodor, Arabatchi, Imreli, Kizil Ayak and Beshir.

You will often see these rugs sold as “Bukhara”. That is a trading name, not an origin: Bukhara was the market through which red-ground Turkmen rugs were sold, never a weaving tribe. The same applies to “Afghan” as a blanket label. If provenance matters to you, it is worth insisting on the tribal name. The Jozan Carpet Encyclopedia documents the gül designs and structures of the individual tribes.

The gül — how to read a Turkmen field

The gül (Turkmen for flower) is the repeating medallion that fills the field of almost every Turkmen rug, and each tribe kept to its own version. The Ersari gül is comparatively large and close to octagonal, quartered into colour blocks and set out in a regular grid.

Two things distinguish an Ersari from its finer-knotted Tekke and Salor neighbours: the gül is bigger in relation to the field, and the borders take up more of the surface. The palette runs to madder red, indigo, ivory and aubergine, often with more brown and yellow than other Turkmen work. Ersari are also among the few Turkmen weaves that regularly appear in true room sizes — most Turkmen rugs stay small.

How an Ersari is built

• Pile: hand-spun highland wool, traditionally spun with its natural lanolin left in, which is what gives the surface its sheen
• Foundation: wool warp and weft in older pieces, cotton in more recent production
• Knot: predominantly the asymmetric knot open to the right, as in most Turkmen weaving
• Dyes: madder, indigo, walnut and pomegranate on older and better pieces

Living with an Ersari — an honest note

The palette is dark. In a north-facing room with little daylight, a rust-red Ersari will read almost brown, and the drawing of the gül gets lost. These rugs come into their own on a pale floor or against light walls, where the red has something to play against.

Older pieces were woven for tent floors, not for European rooms, so sides are not always parallel and the ends can differ in width. The wool is dense and takes traffic well, but it is sheep’s wool: pieces that sit undisturbed under a heavy cupboard or spend years rolled up in storage are the ones moths find. If you like the geometry but want a lighter, softer palette, the Ziegler and Chobi weaves in our Afghan collection cover much of the same ground.

At a glance

• Origin: Amu Darya region — northern Afghanistan, southern Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan
• Material: hand-spun wool pile on a wool or cotton foundation
• Design: large octagonal gül in a repeating grid, wide borders
• Colours: madder red, indigo, ivory, aubergine, brown
• Sizes: small formats through to room and oversize pieces
• 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, with the brush bar switched off on the fringes. Dense Turkmen wool holds a lot of fine grit at the base of the pile, so it is worth vacuuming the reverse a few times a year as well and letting the dirt fall out. Turn the rug end for end once a year so wear and daylight fall evenly. Blot spills rather than rubbing them. Every few years a hand wash restores the lustre that lanolin-rich wool loses to dust; machine and chemical processes leave it dry and flat. Customers in Germany can use our hand washing and restoration service, with collection and return in the Würzburg region; elsewhere we are glad to help you find a specialist nearby.

Related collections

Afghan rugs · Kilims and flatweaves · Vintage rugs · Large room-size rugs · Palatial carpets