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.
Nain Rugs
Nain rugs, from central Persia, are among the finest the country weaves: ivory and cream fields, intricate floral tracery, often with a thread of silk picking out the detail. They suit bedrooms and formal rooms where a light floor helps. Every Nain here is vintage, unique, and inspected before it reaches you.
Nain: the finest ivory fields in Persian weaving
Nain sits on the edge of the central desert near Isfahan, and it is a relatively young weaving center by Persian standards, established in the mid-1900s when the town’s fine wool cloth industry declined and its craftsmen turned to carpets. That heritage shows: Nain weaving is exceptionally fine, and the drawing has the precision of textile work rather than of village weaving.
The signature is an ivory or cream field with delicate blue floral drawing, often with silk highlighting the outlines of the motifs so that the pattern catches the light differently as you move around it.
The marks of a Nain
- Field: ivory or cream in about half of ours; the rest are navy, red, burgundy or green.
- Drawing: fine blue floral work, curvilinear, with a well-resolved central medallion.
- Knotting: very fine, on cotton, with a firm and precise handle.
- Detail: silk outlining is common and is one of the things to look for.
Rooms that suit a Nain
A Nain makes a light, elegant floor. It suits formal rooms, bedrooms and any space where you want a Persian carpet that will not weigh the room down. The blue and ivory palette is unusually easy to build around, sitting comfortably with gray, navy, natural linen and pale wood.
They are less suited to hard traffic. The pale field and fine pile are best kept away from entrance halls and kitchens.
What fifty years does to a Nain
Ivory warms slowly toward cream and bone, and the blues soften. Because the knotting is so fine, wear shows first as a change in the way light catches the pile rather than as any loss of pattern. Silk highlights, where present, keep their sheen remarkably well.
Nain, question by question
Is the silk structural?
No. In a Nain the silk is normally used to outline motifs within a wool pile. It is decorative, catching light against the matte wool, and does not affect durability.
How old are these Nains?
Most Nains anywhere date from the second half of the 1900s, since the weaving tradition there is comparatively recent. Ours are vintage, decades old; much older Nains are scarce, simply because the town was not weaving carpets before then.
How fine is fine?
Nain is among the finest knotted Persian work in regular production, which is why the floral drawing can carry so much detail without breaking up.
Picking a Nain
Look at how crisply the medallion resolves and how evenly the ivory has aged across the field. Each Nain here is the only one of its kind. For the town’s short but remarkable weaving history, see our Nain guide.