Tree of Life Hamadan Hand Knotted Certified Silk 340-400 KPSI Persian Oriental Area Rug (3'x5')

Exquisite! This is a beautiful hand knotted silk Hamadan rug from Kashmir. Hand crafted by artisans from rural cottage units, this rug showcases a multi panel field containing tree of life manifestations. Each panel is Mehrab encased making this rug a prayer rug. It took 15 months to make this intricate details-rich rug. The interplay of light and silk threads gives a luminal quality to the rug and imparts it a dark and a light side. 

Made of real silk, the rug has a high 350-400 kpsi (knots per square inch) count.  It comes with Govt. of India certification of authenticity.

 History of Kashmir Rugs: With an illustrious history dating back to the 14th century, Kashmir carpets today are renowned for their jewel like luminous color tones, exemplary craftsmanship and fine quality. It was by the way of Mir Sayyid Ali Hamadani, a Sufi saint from the Persian city of Hamadan that the textile weaving in Kashmir grew and developed between 1379 and 1383. With a flock of over 700 followers that included various craftsmen and carpet weavers, Mir Sayyed Ali introduced pashmina shawl and carpet making to the Kashmir valley. The weaving industry flowered under the reign of Kashmiri King Zain-ul-Abdin (1420-1480) when more craftsmen were invited to Kashmir from Persia. This is the main reason why the rugs from Kashmir are so similar in construction and design to their Persian counterparts. However, it was during the Mughal rule in India that the carpet industry reached its zenith and came on its own as an art form. With Emperor Akbar setting up carpet weaving centers in Agra, Delhi and Lahore, the Indian carpets began to grow their own lexical and semantic iconography. The Kashmir carpet also benefitted from the Mughal patronage and acquired a distinct style as it embraced specific Indian motifs and incorporated Mughal symbology of hunting and nature's grandeur. With time, the Kashmir carpet has undergone significant stylization like the complex lattice systems as background for floral motifs and the millefleur pattern with its clusters of tiny blooms. Other patterns like Persian Chahar Bagh, Garden of Paradise layout and the medallion have been appropriated, transformed and adapted as typical Kashmiri designs which also include significant and culturally important motifs such as the paisley, chinar tree (the oriental plane) and tree-of-life.