Every rug on this site is hand-knotted, vintage or antique, and one of one. Nothing here is a reproduction, machine-made, or reorderable. This page explains what we can tell you with confidence about a piece, what we can't, and what we do to each rug before it reaches you.

What "one of one" actually means

These rugs were made by hand, one at a time, often decades apart, in towns that each weave differently. No two are identical. When a rug sells, it is gone — we cannot order another, and we cannot find you a matching pair. If a rug is speaking to you, that urgency is real rather than a sales device.

It also means the photographs are of the exact rug you will receive. Not a sample, not a representative image of that style.

Attribution: what we know and how we know it

We attribute each rug to a weaving region — Hamedan, Tabriz, Kashan, Isparta, Anatolia and so on — based on structure, knot type and density, palette, dye character, wool quality, and design vocabulary. That attribution reflects professional judgement built on handling a great many rugs.

It is not a certificate. Very few vintage rugs carry documentation, and any dealer who offers you laboratory-grade certainty about a hundred-year-old village rug is telling you something they cannot know. We give you our best reading, offered in good faith, and we tell you when we are less sure rather than rounding up to a more marketable town.

Ages are estimates expressed as ranges for the same reason.

Condition, and what is not a defect

A rug that has been underfoot for sixty years shows it, and that is the point. The following are characteristics of age, not flaws, and we do not treat them as grounds for return:

• Abrash — bands of tonal variation where the weaver moved to a new batch of hand-dyed wool. Widely considered a mark of authenticity.
• Low pile in areas of historic traffic, and the softer sheen that comes with it.
• Minor dimensional variation. Hand-knotted rugs are not perfect rectangles. A slight waist, a corner out of square, or an inch of difference between the two ends is normal.
• Old, sound repairs made during the rug's working life.
• Colour on your screen differing from colour in your room. Displays vary, and so does daylight.

What we do disclose, in the listing and in the photographs: holes, active damage, significant reweaving, colour run, and any repair we consider material to the value or the life of the rug. If we noticed it, you will see it. If you want more photographs of a specific area before you commit, ask — we would far rather send you ten more pictures than process a return.

Before a rug is listed

Each piece is inspected, professionally cleaned, and where necessary restored — securing edges and ends, and repairing damage — before it is photographed and offered. A rug arrives at your door ready to live on, not as a project.

If a rug isn't what we said it was

Our returns policy covers you if a rug simply isn't right for your space. Separately and more importantly: if a rug arrives materially different from how we described it — undisclosed damage, wrong dimensions, a condition we missed — that is our error, not a change of mind, and we will make it right.

Read the full Shipping & Returns policy, or ask us about a specific rug.