Rug No. has found its new home.
Every rug we sell is one of a kind, so that piece is gone. Here are others in the same spirit, or tell Rug Finder what you are looking for.
Botteh Rugs
The botteh, the little teardrop the West renamed paisley, is one of the oldest figures in Persian weaving, scattered in neat rows across a field or worked into a border. The motif turns up all over Persia, and rugs built around it look lively but orderly. Each one here is a vintage piece, professionally cleaned and unlike any other.
Botteh: the paisley motif, repeated across the field
The botteh is one of the oldest and most widespread motifs in Persian weaving: a teardrop with a curved tip, the ancestor of what the West calls paisley. It appears across many origins, from fine city carpets to tribal village weaves, and this collection gathers the rugs where it is the organizing idea rather than an incidental detail.
Most botteh rugs set the motif in ordered rows across an open ground, sometimes alternating direction row by row, sometimes all facing the same way. The effect is somewhere between pattern and texture.
Hallmarks of a botteh rug
- Field: repeating botteh in rows, on an open ground.
- Origin: all Persian; the motif is shared by many weaving areas, so construction varies from rug to rug.
- Color: deep red fields dominate, with a few burgundy, navy and charcoal pieces.
- Sizes: particularly strong in runners, where the repeat suits a long field, and in small mats.
A pattern that goes anywhere
A repeating field is the easiest kind of pattern to live with. There is no medallion to center, so a botteh rug can go under furniture, run down a corridor, or turn a corner into another room without the design breaking. For hallways and dining rooms in particular, this is a real practical advantage.
The motif itself
Botteh has been interpreted as a cypress bent by the wind, a flame, a leaf and a droplet. Weavers used it freely and drew it differently from region to region: crisp and upright in city work, loose and curled in tribal weaving. Comparing how two rugs handle the same motif is one of the pleasures of this group.
About the botteh
Is botteh the same as paisley?
Paisley is the Western name, taken from the Scottish town that mass-produced shawls copying the Persian motif. Botteh is the original.
Do all botteh rugs come from one place?
No. The motif is woven across Persia and well beyond it, so the rugs in this group vary in construction and drawing. That variety is intentional.
Is the repeat monotonous?
Rarely, because hand-drawn botteh vary slightly from one to the next. At a distance the rows look like texture; up close every one is a little different.
How to pick one
Decide on the field color, then look at how the motif is drawn and how evenly it repeats. No other rug carries quite the same rows of botteh.